The restaurant at the end of the universe door Douglas Adams

Beoordeling 9
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  • 13 januari 2018
  • 2 keer beoordeeld
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Boek
Auteur
Douglas Adams
Taal
Nederlands
Vak
Eerste uitgave
1980
Pagina's
208
Oorspronkelijke taal
Engels

Boekcover The restaurant at the end of the universe
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The restaurant at the end of the universe door Douglas Adams
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Bookreport

 ‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’

  1. The story begins with Ford, Arthur, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin on a spaceship called ‘Heart of Gold’. They have just escaped the planet Margrathea when they are suddenly under the attack of a species called Vogons. Zaphod somehow asks his dead great-grandfather to help him, and after a lot of arguing, he does help the group. Though, it doesn’t go the way they wanted it to go. Marvin and Zaphod are teleported to planet Ursa Minor Beta. The actual Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is on that planet, which is very special. The rest of the group is still on the Heart of Gold. Zaphod is captured by inhabitants of Frogstar B and is thrown in a device made to torture. Frankly, the device has no effect on Zaphod, and he manages to escape. He finds Heart of Gold and the rest of his group back, but not Marvin. They head for the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, grab a bite and steal an old rockstar’s spaceship from the garage. They also find Marvin there.  But they have a problem, because the ship’s autopilot  has coursed the ship right into a sun. They teleport out of the ship, but Arthur and Ford are dropped back in time on another ship and Trillian and Zaphod back on the Heart of Gold. Marvin was repairing something on the ship and didn’t teleport, so he sadly crashed into the sun. The ship Arthur and Ford are on, is crowded with insane people. The ship crashes into the prehistoric earth and the insane people replace the creatures that were already there. Basically, those insane people are the forefathers of the modern human.
  1. There aren’t really two or three main characters in this story, so I’ll just tell about the two characters I like most.

Marvin is a chronically depressed, but incredibly smart robot. He is able to solve all the problems in the universe except his own. Though the rest of the group barely let him use his head,  which is about as big as a skippy-ball,  and give him boring, easy tasks like unlocking doors and picking up pieces of paper instead.

Arthur is an Englishman who isn’t much interested in the whole spacetravelling-thing and never knows what’s going on, although he is more aware of things than he was in the previous book ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’. He is also very fond of his tea, which is a feature I can really appreciate since I love tea a lot as well.

  1. I think the message Douglas Adams wants to give is not to take everything so seriously. I think that, because not a single thing in his books makes sense. Also, I think he kind of wants to say that modern mankind as we know it now, is just pain crazy. For example, there is a scene in this book, where insane creatures from a ship crash into the earth and replace the already existing creatures on earth. They are the forefathers of the humans we know now, so I think that Douglas (secretly) thinks humans and insane.
  1. I really like this book, just like I liked the previous book of the trilogy. What I like most about it is the infinite fantasy of the writer. I think it’s incredible how this man put this all together and made all these things up. I also like the humour he uses and the strange, but funny plot-twists that happen all the time.

Creative Exercise 6

  1. Did you give all the characters weird names on purpose?

 I’d like to ask Douglas Adams this question because almost all of the characters in the book have rather special names, such as Zarniwoop, Zaphod, Roosta and Gargravarr. These names are funny of course, but sometimes they are a little confusing for you can’t really remember their names. I wonder if he gave those creatures these weird names to kind of make all the things that were happening extra funny and confusing or if he just made them up without a specific reason, maybe because he thought it’d fit the character.

  1. What actually is the ultimate question of life?

 I want to ask him this question, because in the previous book  (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy), the ultimate question of life was asked to a supercomputer that knows everything, and the answer was 42. Now I am of course very eager to know what the actual ultimate question of life is, since it is not described clearly in the book and I can’t imagine a very important question to which the answer is 42.

  1. How did you come with the idea of The Total Perspective Vortex? And why was Zaphod able to come out of it without it having any effect on him?  I would like to ask him this question, because The Total Perspective Vortex is quite a disturbing thing, if you ask me. It makes people realise how tiny and unimportant they are in comparison to the rest of the universe and it mentally tortures them. I want to know how he made that up, and how Zaphod exactly escaped the thing with no harm being done to him at all.
  1. Did you expect your books to be so successful and popular when you first decided  to bring them out?

 I would like to ask him this question, because Douglas Adams didn’t even start university when he started making this story up. I know he always wanted to be a writer, but I am eager to know if he already thought, or maybe knew, that he had it in him to become such a known and fortunate writer.

  1. Do you actually believe that there are living creatures in the universe apart from the ones on earth?

 I would like to ask him this question, because he is basically talking about Vogons, Jatravartids, Golgafrinchans, Betelgeusians and Blagulon Kappans for five books long. I don’t think Douglas Adams really believes there are existing  creatures exactly like, for example, the Grebulons, Haggunenons and Hrarf-Hrarfy’s he describes, but maybe he does believe there are some kind of aliens out in this universe. I just can’t imagine that Douglas wrote these amazing books without believing in ‘aliens’.

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