Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy (HGG) follows the misadventures of an earthling 'Arthur Dent' through the galaxy after his homeland 'Earth' is blown up by aliens. The book originated as a BBC radio comedy in 1978, and was later formed developed into a 'trilogy' of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in Adam's lifetime (c 2001). It also generated a tv series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and in 2005 a feature film.
The book is about Arthur and a cast of characters that travel through the galaxy. His companions include, Ford Prefect (an alien adopted the name thinking it suitable after the car) an alien from that assumes a human like lifeforms, Japan Beetlbrox a two headed alien, Trillian another earthling that was grabbed into galaxy travel earlier on, and marvin a highly depressed robot.
Adams, was a British author with a penchant for technology. He was an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, a over of fast cars, technological innovation and the Apple Macintosh. In fact he was the first person to buy a Mac in Europe, the second being Stephen Fry. He bought his first word processor in 1982.
HGG is a highly creative and amusing read, that no doubt influenced many makers and creators of this time, notably in the 80s and 90s.
The book is broken up in 35 chapters, the chapters are short and easy to make this a good read that can be put down and picked up easily. Some chapters flip to different characters that are stuck in various situations or different points in time, as they move here and there, overall it works well and the short chapters seem to make it easy to follow and break up the book nicely, making it possible to introduce a lot of different radical things happening simultaneously.
The book is overall funny, and richly descriptive adopting some very interesting use of language. The dialogue is scattered and amusing between so-called higher developed being and humans, and robots. Picking the world and thoughts from each of their perspectives. It's quite interesting how it picks on earthlings and their peculiarities form an alien perspective. For example when the house is being crushed the developers sight that had done all the relevant permits and procedures, or how we engage in chit chat about the weather.
The book was very interesting and is littered with interesting references that can still be found in 2021. For example the quote "Don't panic" on Elon Musk's space X car promotion material. The answer to everything being used as a random seed in random number generators. There was an early reference to the Googleplex. It leaves me wondering how many of the great technology innovators were influenced by this book.
Science fiction lovers will enjoy this book, others may or may not perceive the creativity which may come across us overly absurd at times. Nevertheless it's great to read to appreciate this type of use of language and to dabble into a different genre which it was for me. It's great for understanding the references to it that seem to pop up every now and then. I found quite interesting how technology and computers were described and used back then, and can see how that may have influenced how computers are used these days. Personally, I didn't find the book as humourous as suggested by reviews, but nonetheless found it entertaining. It may be a time related thing.