Tag: Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

by Douglas Adams (Pan, 1984); audiobook read by Martin Freeman (Macmillan, 2012)

Adams_So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

The ideas, as ever, are ingenious, and Adams is at the top of his game in reuniting Arthur Dent with the erstwhile-destroyed Planet Earth. The story, however, such as it is, hitchhikes half-heartedly while secretly yearning to become a Dirk Gently novel.

 

 

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Live in Concert

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Live at the Almeida Theater, London, 1995

by Douglas Adams (Phoenix Books, 2008)

Adams_HHG Live in Concert

The greater part of this reading (or more accurately, performance) comes in the form of two long excerpts from Life, the Universe and Everything. Suddenly that which seems facetious on the page springs to life and we hear what Adams himself intended.

 

 

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

by Douglas Adams (Pan, 1980); audiobook read by Douglas Adams (BBC, 1990)

Adams_Restaurant

Like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy before it, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe is a satirical explosion of SF ideas, its brilliant droll humour being marred (this time around) only by Adams’ determinedly facetious approach to prose narrative.

 

Life, the Universe and Everything

Life, the Universe and Everything

by Douglas Adams (MacMillan Audio, 2006) [First published by Pan, 1982]

read by Martin Freeman

Adams_Life the Universe and Everything

Reprising the vast zaniness and existential satire of the original Hitchhiker’s duology, Adams ups his trademark discursiveness, redoubles his protagonists’ fecklessness and yet achieves an oddly cohesive transcendence (while Martin Freeman’s delivery makes a virtue of Adams’ sometimes facetious approach to prose).

 

Derelict Space Sheep