When I was about nine years old, my mother remarried. Contrary to the common, knee-jerk reaction kids tend to have toward this kind of change, I was okay with it. That's not to say it was smooth sailing from day one. It was still a change, a very big change. It wasn't until after the excitement of the wedding was over and my new stepfather actually moved in to our tiny, two bedroom duplex that I realized how big. I didn't actually know this guy. Up until their actual marriage, their relationship had been a long-distance one, and I was too wrapped up in being a kid to notice it much, besides the fact that he made my mom really happy, of course.
But one night soon after he had moved in and situated his things in our small living room, he pulled out a massive book with a blue cover that read: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Without much explanation, at least that I can remember, he started reading it out loud to us.
I remember being completely entranced by the absurb, yet oddly compelling story, and as my shy, quiet new stepfather read to me and my mother, I was pulled into the strange universe crafted through Adams' words. The story begins with an unlikely event for an opening; the end of the world. But it's all okay.
I recently revisited this book, this time with a couple more decades of maturity under my belt and from the perspective of a writer, and I was awed by Adams' style. He creates highly irregular characters, ridiculous plot beats, and settings that can be just plain weird. But his writing style is descriptive without being boring, he manages to describe things that are often abstract and intangible in a highly entertaining way, and it all melds together fantastically well in this strange alchemy of a story.
From his opening line, Douglas Adams pulls you into this wacky, zany, irreverent universe he creates. His hero, Arthur Dent, wakes to a very bad day where soon after he begins his morning routine, finds himself lying in front of a bulldozer that has come to knock his house down to make way for a new bypass. He is taken from this oddly specific and highly improbable forshadowing event by his friend, Ford Prefect, who takes him to a nearby pub, buys him three pints of beer, and tells him that he is not in fact from Guildford as he has always claimed, but rather a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelguese. Without much ceremony, he also informs Arthur that the world is about to end.
It turns out, the Earth is in the exact same predicament as Arthur's house, and has been slated to be demolished to make way for a new intergalactic bypass by an alien race called the Vogons. Seconds before Earth is evaporated, Ford and Arthur hitch a ride on one of the Vogon ships. So, with a lot of confusion on the part of Arthur, and after a harrowing experience with the Vogons (who hate hitchhikers) they begin their intergalactic adventures.
This universe is populated with a very diverse array of aliens and characters, and Douglas Adams takes his time developing them all, even if they are only mentioned once.
Arthur Dent, the kind of everyman hero of the story, is an ordinary guy thrown into extraordinary circumstances. Toward the beginning, right after the destruction of the earth, he is very shell-shocked and confused, and understandably overwhelmed at the blows he's dealt all at once. For example, right after he finds himself on the Vogon ship and learns of the Earth's distruction, Ford insists that he put a fish in his ear (Ford has a good reason for this, but not knowing what it is, Arthur reacts as well as any sane person would at this suggestion.) But as he goes along on his adventures, even though he is the one person in this cast of characters who is the least experienced in the goings on of the galaxy, he adapts quickly, and in dangerous situations thinks of solutions that his more savvy friends would have never dreamed up.
Ford Prefect, a researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, (an actual book in the universe of this book, and imagined as an electronic book decades before Kindle was a thing) has been stranded on Earth for fifteen years. He has blended very well into human society, the only odd thing about him being that he doesn't blink as often as you think he should, and doesn't seem to understand Arthur's sarcasm at all. He is described as "a frood who really knows where his towel is," or a really amazingly together guy who is highly prepared for interstellar travel, a towel being a hitchhiker's most essential tool.
One of the more entertaining characters in this cast is Zaphod Beeblebrox, described as an "adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch." He is also the President of the Galactic Empire (that sounds wrong, but this is Douglas Adams, and he has a perfectly reasonable explaination for it, so go with it). Zaphod is the swaggering lovable jerk, a trope in the similar vein of Han Solo or Peter Quill, the only difference being that Zaphod is a bit more of a narcissist then those two (and boy is that narcissism!) and has two heads and three arms. You're also never sure if he actually knows what he's doing, or if he's completely insane. To be fair to Zaphod, though, he's not sure about that either.
My favorite character would probably have to be Trillian, the only woman in the cast. Her real name is Tricia McMillan, and she is a woman from Earth that hitched a ride with Zaphod a few months before her planet was destroyed. She has an "Arabian appearance," has degrees in astrophysics and math, and decided that going to space with the weird and wacky Zaphod was better than her career choices on earth with her background. Trillian is possibly the smartest, if not the wisest of the bunch, and keeps a cool head even in danger.
An adventure in space wouldn't be complete without the oblitagatory robot sidekick, and in this story, his name is Marvin. But if you think this character is anything like the extremely nervous C-3PO, or the wildly resourceful R2-D2, or even the entertaining innocence of Data from Star Trek, all your expections will be shattered. Marvin is vastly intelligent, with a "brain the size of a planet," and in his mind, this means that there is no task that could help him live up to his potential, and the thought makes him very depressed. In fact, he informs everyone of how depressed he is constantly. This doesn't stop him from being sarcastic and witty and perfectly willing to point out how stupid something is.
As I read, I imagined the worlds Adams describes as being as big and bold and colorful as anything George Lucas dreamed up when he created Star Wars. The humor, the energy reminded me a little of the spirit of Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, but with all the wit and absurdity of classic British comedy, and I had to shake my head in dismay that there hasn't been a visual adaptation of this story since the unsuccessful attempt back in 2005. But though Adams' work reminds me of these other more successful properties, the universe he creates is completely original, and though highly absurd, very relatable.
From the very first page, he pokes fun at bureauocracies, politics, religion, philosophy and just the silly nature of humans all around. He will take you away from the story, sometimes right in the middle of a bit of excitement to explain something about the workings of the universe, the backstory of a minor character, an interesting anecdote, the political system of the galaxy, and sometimes these take the forms of excerpts from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I've read, or rather attempted to read other books that do this, such as Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, but unlike that book which was frustrating and distracting whenever Hugo made a digression, Adams makes them highly entertaining, often using the information he's just given you to set up for brilliantly complicated joke.
I have to say that even if I had revisited this book and found it to be a lackluster plot and not at all as entertaining as I remember, I would have still loved it. This book was one of first ways I got to know the man I call my dad, and that alone has earned it a special place in my heart. It introduced me to his dry, witty sense of humor, something I'd have never expected from such a shy, quiet guy. And I have to confess, Douglas Adams showed me in yet another way that you can do anything through writing, your only limit being your imagination.
