(Movie) Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy (all 5 books) written by Douglas Adams

The thing with cult-classics which you have not read or seen is that you many times you feel let down by the end of it, having driven your expectations sky high before you started off. Something similar happened with me with Star wars after I finally decided to see all the six movies in one go (the first three were enjoyable, the last three were a let down)…it has something to do, I think, with the fact that many of the cult classics became such at a certain time and place and with the decades passing and with changing technology and sensibilities, things that might have seemed extraordinary become pedestrian or archaic…

So, it was with some trepidation that I started off with this hugely successful series - a series that started with a radio show, grew into a trilogy and then five books, spawned comic books, movies and two types of towels!!!

After having finished all the five, all i can say is that I don't remember having laughed so much except for “Three men on a boat” and “Yes Minister” series…and I have never read such veritable nonsense that strangely seems to make sense. Even though I knew that Adams had improvised while writing, which led to some contradictions, the storyline is solid enough to be a immensely rollicking ride. You have to suspend your belief of course and after the first few pages when the earth is destroyed, it is not really difficult to do so!!!!

What pops out of the pages are not something alien as such but things you can almost relate to but they happen in such bizarre combinations that they cant help but bring a grin to your face. The combinations of such absurdities are just too numerous to recount but one thing for sure is that out of almost every page would come out something that can only be the product of a feverishly creative imagination taken notches higher by a haze of cannabis!!!

I think that the cake for the most unintentionally comical character in literature has to go to Arthur Dent!! if the best humour is created by contrasts, Dent’s perennially flummoxed character has to be one of the best examples. From the moment he is rescued by Ford Prefect by the use of a towel and had a fish stuffed in his ear, Dent goes unboldly where no man has ever gone before!!! Along with Ford, Zaphod, Marvin the depressed robot and Trillian, a fascinating and unlikely group is formed to trawl the universe. They are helped along with the encyclopaedically unreliable ‘Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy’.

The incidents and the stories and the sub stories are just too numerous to recount but something that I found fascinating was that in the total of 1000 odd pages that make up the five books, the humour never flags and you never lose interest, inspite of the absolute nonsense that seems to be going in the pages. Strangely for all that nonsense, you never once feel alienated from it or feel that its been too much. 1000 pages of utterly fascinating nonsense – that's quality writing!!!

How can you forget the question of meaning of life, the actual rulers of earth, the real message of dolphins, Gods last message, the origin of cricket and the reason why the rest of the universe hates earth, the real ancestors of earthlings and so on…if you want the answers to all these, turn the pages. You wont be disappointed with the answers though you might be a little more than surprised

If I have to pick the best out of the five, it would be difficult to do so, since each one has a character of its own. The first one is the most fascinating, probably because its the first of the series and you get almost a culture shock when you read it. The last one is pretty dark at the end…

For someone who goes through life without reading these, it would be a huge loss. These books redefine a genre of their own and the humour is right there among the top in world literature…

The review has to go on for atleast two dozen pages if the books have to be described properly in all their humorous glory. Better still to read them…

Labels: Books, comedy, humour, science-fiction, series

posted by Protik Basu @ 12:10 AM