Yuffie's Book Reviews

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This book was....

...the most brilliant and bizarre conglomeration of trippy, existential, wacky, coincidence, and genius I've ever read in a book.

I'm still meandering around zombie-like and directing full suspicion at the mice and shedding tears at the mere mention of sperm whales. Okay since I just finished reading the book half an hour ago, no one's gotten around to mentioning sperm whales, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to cry when they do.

It's the most random, yet utterly believable series of events. Arthur Dent is having a bad day when he finds out his house is about to get bulldozed in order to build an overpass on it. But then aliens show up and blow up the earth. Luckily for him, another alien named Ford saves him! Onto an alien ship that wants to destroy them.

But... that's just the beginning, and the rest blows so drastically out of proportion that I can't even begin explaining it right now. You have to read it for yourself to truly understand. Or not understand. I swear I came out of this book more flabbergasted and dumbfounded (in a good way!), and I'm questioning the universe right now.

But the author turned the universe into a complete joke. He stretched the limits of creativity and reality farther than any work of fiction I've come across. If you guys thought Doctor Who and Adventure Time and Regular Show were bizarre and spastic and random and wtf, their predecessor, The Hitchhiker's Guide, will twist your mind.

The book doesn't take itself seriously, so it literally rewrote the laws of everything, and its wacky logic allowed the story to include the biggest coincidences in the history of the universe, which was so cool to see pulled off.

It's not a typical novel by any means. There's very little characterization, and yet there's a lot. The plot is nonsensical, and yet it makes perfect sense. It's like the Matrix on steroids. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if Doctor Who, Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Matrix, and like every good fantasy/sci-fi/kids show was inspired by this book. I see threads of influence in all of them, so now I'm really curious if this book is just that all-encomapssing, or if the writers of all these great shows and movies have read this book. Chicken or the egg, but still intriguing.

I keep seeing this on "best sci-fi novels" lists, heralded as one of the classics of the genre, and now I know why. Holy crap.

It's seriously trippy, so if you couldn't get into DW, AT, RS, etc. then this book is probably going to rub you the wrong way as it's more extreme in every way possible, but if you like wackiness and mindblowing creativity, then you absolutely need to read this book. It does take a little while to get used to the style of writing, but by last few chapters I couldn't put it down.

WOW. This was good on so many levels. I can't even explain how intricate and inspired and yet utterly ridiculous this story was.

5/5 stars