The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy door Douglas Adams

Summary

Arthur Dent’s about to have his house demolished. While he is lying in front of the bulldozers in the mud, trying to stop them from knocking his house down, his friend, Ford Prefect (which is a funny name because it’s also a car) asks him to come to the pub with him. They have a few drinks and suddenly Ford announces that the earth is going to be destroyed to make way for an interstellar bypass. Ford, who is actually from a planet called Betelgeuse, hitchhikes all over the galaxy. When the Vogon battleships approach Earth, Ford decides to hitchhike onto them and he takes Arthur with him. The Vogons themselves hate hitchhikers and throw them off the ship straight away. They would have died in a matter of seconds if it wasn’t for a ship that just passed at that very time in that specific part of the galaxy, which is enormous. It picked them up and before they knew it, they were sitting on a beach which looked a lot like a beach back in England. Suddenly it vanished and they were in a normal spaceship. That thing that caused the beach effect was called the Improbability Drive. Ford and Arthur were picked up by Marvin the depressed robot, also known as Paranoid Android! Marvin led them to the bridge where Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian sat. Zaphod was President of the Galaxy, not that it meant much for the President of the Galaxy had no power whatsoever. Ford knew Zaphod because they were cousins. They went on their way and run across a planet which Zaphod knew as Magrathea. Ford and Trillian didn’t believe it because no one knew the exact coordinates of Magrathea. Arthus had no idea what they were talking about. The planet was dead, but they still had a very old defense mechanism and it fired missiles at them. They had no way of escaping and were sure that they were going to die until Arthur managed to turn the Improbability Drive on and the missiles turned into a bowl of petunias and a rather surprised sperm whale. They landed on the planet and went to look. Where the sperm whale had crashed Zaphod found tunnels. He, Ford and Trillian went into them. Arthur and Marvin stayed on the lookout. Arthur walked around a bit and ran into an old man whowas called Startiblartfast. He told Arthur that the magratheans made planets and had just had a three million year sleep to avoid the crisis in the stock market. He told Arthur the Earth was a big computer made by the Magratheans and that mice were the most intelligent beings on it. Second were dolphins. It was designed to find the answer to the Ultimate Question – what is the answer to life? Just before the project was completed it had been destroyed. The mice, though, had come to Magrathea, so that the Magratheans could build a new Earth. Slartiblartfast took Arthur to the mice and Arthur saw that Zaphod, Ford and trillian were already there. The mice wanted Arthur’s brain because they said it contained information on the answer to the Ultimate Question and they thought they could find it by looking at Arthur’s brain as he was the only human alive. They wanted to give him an electronic brain but they all escaped and were immediately shot at by policemen. Zaphod had apparently stolen the spaceship they were on, called the Heart of Gold, and the policemen had found it parked on the planet. They had a heated conversation with the policemen who suddenly dropped dead. It looked as if someone had turned their breathing masks off. That could only have happened from within the police ship – of course – Marvin. They had left him behind and he had found the police ship. They returned to the Heart of Gold and took off …

Information on the author

Douglas Adams is a modern writer. He has written four books in this series. The series has even been filmed as a comedy series but because Douglas Adams is a modern writer, it is very difficult, even practically impossible, to find any information whatsoever on him. In encyclopaedias of literature only historical writers are written about.

Theme

This book is a science fiction comedy. It is very ironic because Arthur’s house was demolished to make way for a bypass and so was Earth. The mice being the most intelligent beings on earth was also funny. I think this book is about friendship and trust between Ford and Arthur. Ford could have left Arthur behind on Earth and then he would have been killed. I think that Douglas Adams also wants to show how big the world is and, of course, that human beings aren’t half as super intelligent as they think they are.