Take a photo of a barcode or cover
fanta 's review for:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
adventurous
funny
lighthearted
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
TL;DR: Hitchhiker’s was a little too middle-school-boy-level humor for me, but I respect its place in the intergalactic hall of fame—and I’ve gained a better appreciation for how we got from point A (absurd space bureaucracy) to point B (political intrigue + serious space bureaucracy).
Okay, so I finally read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and… yeah. I can see why it’s considered a classic. I can also see why I, born in the late ’90s and seasoned on a diet of early 2000s sarcasm, meme culture, and emotionally complex robot protagonists, maybe didn’t vibe with it (published in the late ’70s) as hard as others have.
It’s like stepping into a vintage carnival funhouse: everything is wobbly and almost familiar, but just off-kilter enough to be unsettling. There were moments that made me teehee, and some lines were absolute bangers but a lot of the humor felt like the literary equivalent of someone elbowing me in the ribs going, “get a load of this!” And while I absolutely have my teenage boy-core interests (cue shounen intro theme), this felt young in a different way. Like, “hehe she said but” energy.
That said, I totally get why this book is important. You can feel Adams’ fingerprints all over modern sci-fi, from the dry humor of All Systems Red, to the clever play on language-as-culture in A Memory Called Empire, to the genre’s growing willingness to be both weird and thoughtful. Arthur Dent had to stumble through space so Gideon Nav could respond to cosmic horror with finger guns and unresolved trauma.
So more like a 2 in a vacuum but an infinity drive when it comes to paving the way for the stories I love.
Okay, so I finally read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and… yeah. I can see why it’s considered a classic. I can also see why I, born in the late ’90s and seasoned on a diet of early 2000s sarcasm, meme culture, and emotionally complex robot protagonists, maybe didn’t vibe with it (published in the late ’70s) as hard as others have.
It’s like stepping into a vintage carnival funhouse: everything is wobbly and almost familiar, but just off-kilter enough to be unsettling. There were moments that made me teehee, and some lines were absolute bangers but a lot of the humor felt like the literary equivalent of someone elbowing me in the ribs going, “get a load of this!” And while I absolutely have my teenage boy-core interests (cue shounen intro theme), this felt young in a different way. Like, “hehe she said but” energy.
That said, I totally get why this book is important. You can feel Adams’ fingerprints all over modern sci-fi, from the dry humor of All Systems Red, to the clever play on language-as-culture in A Memory Called Empire, to the genre’s growing willingness to be both weird and thoughtful. Arthur Dent had to stumble through space so Gideon Nav could respond to cosmic horror with finger guns and unresolved trauma.
So more like a 2 in a vacuum but an infinity drive when it comes to paving the way for the stories I love.