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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 25th Anniversary Edition (精装)
by Douglas Adams
| Category:
Science fiction, Fiction |
| Market price: ¥ 158.00
MSL price:
¥ 148.00
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| Stock:
In Stock |
MSL rating:
 Good for Gifts |
| MSL Pointer Review:
Combining comedy with science fiction, the book is laugh out loud funny. The characters, the hilarious storytelling and dialogue, the comical, strange situations, make this a good read from start to finish |
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AllReviews |
1 2   | Total 2 pages 16 items |
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The New York Times (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
It's science fiction and it's extremely funny... inspired lunacy that leaves hardly a science fiction cliché alive. |
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Washington Post (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes, and his travels afford a wild satire of present institutions. |
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Chicago Tribune (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Very simply, the book is one of the funniest SF spoofs ever written, with hyperbolic ideas folding in on themselves. |
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An American reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
Douglas Adams takes the reader to the end of the universe and back in this hilarious science fiction novel. Arthur Dent is an earthling who has had everything goes wrong with him. His house is about to get torn down when he sees his old friend Ford Prefect, an alien that has lived on earth for fifteen years doing research on his revised Hitchiker’s Guide. Prefect comes at no better time because the world is about to end in eleven minutes. Just before the world comes to total alienation, the are picked up and travel around the universe. They arrive in Magrathea, which is just a factory planet for building planets for rich people. The people of Magrathea were woken up to build another earth because the previous earth, our earth, was a giant computer that's program was to find the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everthing. Magrathea was going to build another earth because our earth was destroyed just minutes before the answer was questioned. Since everyone wanted to know the question, they decided to re-build another earth to find it out. Once the mice, the secret rulers of earth, find out that there is an earthling alive, they wanted his brain. Arthur runs away and the mice are stuck with nothing. They make up a question and everybody is happy, or are they? This book opens your thoughts to many different questions we have about the universe and that we would like to know. If you want to broaden your horizons and open your mind, then read this book to be thoroughly entertained. |
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Gadfly (MSL quote), Canada
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I decided to read this novel because it is widely acclaimed as a contemporary science fiction classic. Douglas Adams' description of Arthur Dent, who is the lone man to survive the destruction of the planet earth, is consistently humorous and entertaining. Dent is set loose to roam the galaxy, accompanied with an alien friend who is thankfully equipped with the indispensable Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
As the novel progresses, it becomes evident that despite the superficial whimsical tone, Adams is dealing with deeper themes relating to the meaning and existence of human life. The absurdity created by his imagination is not just a matter of light-hearted sci-fi entertainment, but is a cloak which Adams uses to convey his philosophy of human life and his personal worldview.
One needs to recall that this novel was born in the late 1970s, in the hey-day of technology and space travel, a time when there was a great deal of optimism and faith in science as the savior of mankind. Adams mocks this human arrogance. The arrogance of Bent's fellow-humans in destroying his home, becomes a microcosm for the arrogance of humankind, and when it is applied to man's own home earth, results in man's own destruction. Adams' scorn for scientific arrogance is especially manifest when it appears that the rulers of earth are not scientists, but their own laboratory mice, who were secretly conducting large-scale experiments on their captors all along.
Yet this novel achieves much more than a scoffing of scientific arrogance. It becomes painfully evident that something essential is missing from the universe described in The Hitchhiker's Guide: God. When questioned by man about his existence, God "promptly vanishes in a puff of logic." God's absence from Adams' fictional universe corresponds to God's absence in Adams' personal worldview. The worldview which Adams believes in and portrays is a galaxy without a Creator. Adams is in fact a self-confessed "radical atheist", and holds this position very seriously.
But if Adam's universe is a world without God, this leads to an inevitable question: In such a universe, what is the meaning and purpose of life? Adams toys with this question when he describes the "The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything." After seven and a half million years of calculation, the super computer "Deep Thought" announces that the answer is "Forty-two." This meaningless answer is incomprehensible, and is apparently so because we don't understand the question properly! Here Adams whimsically propounds his purpose for planet earth: earth is a gigantic experiment, because it is on earth that the question about the meaning and purpose of life is voiced, but never answered! The purpose of earth is to raise the question about its purpose.
In Adams' atheistic worldview, the question about the purpose of life cannot be answered, because the existence of the very creator of the universe is denied. Such a question can only be asked, answered, and understood in a Christian worldview where the existence of the Creator is maintained, because apart from Him, creation is indeed purposeless. In this respect, the message of Adams' classic is the same as that of the Bible book of Ecclesiastes: there is no purpose and meaning in a world that rejects God. However, it is eternally unfortunate that Adams does not have the same conclusion as Ecclesiastes, where the premise of practical atheism is reversed, God's existence once again affirmed, and purpose discovered by serving and obeying God the Creator. Present day adherents of practical atheism who share Adams' empty worldview will discover that they will spend their life in the same way as Adams - in life whimsically hitchhiking an empty earth without God, and in death discovering that that God was always there, but that by their rejection of Him in the past, they will spend eternity without Him in the future. But then it will be too late. Because unlike the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, eternity without God has no room for frivolous laughter, but only for sorrow and regret.
In portraying the emptiness of an atheistic worldview, Adams is outstanding. In endorsing this worldview, Adams is to be most pitied. May God spare us from echoing his endorsement. |
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Yan (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The Guide is surely one of those books best enjoyed between the ages of 15 and 20, but I still had a great time with it at 25. Douglas Adams' genius is in gently but decisively subverting a genre while staying true to its best and purest roots. Thus, he dispenses with the dorky obsessiveness to which sci-fi is susceptible, using humor and non-stop action,
The Guide is a tribute to science fiction and a paean to its great patron saints. Exploring space and time travel in an infinite yet income- prehensible universe, Adams offers a view of the universe without the self-importance and Earth-centered myopia of the human race. Yet just when the Earth is destroyed, we take comfort in the realization that the rest of the galaxy turns out to be populated solely by other creatures very similar to ourselves. No stone is left unturned, no nasty trait of humankind is immune from Adams' sharp, yet not quite caustic, wit.
At a rudimentary level, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy appeals to the fantasy-addicted, carefree spirit of our inner child - the mystery and wonder of space and time surrounding us without all the baggage of the adult who has ceased to dream and look into the stars, content to rest on his laurels and in his certainty of death and taxes. |
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Jim McPartlin (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
I've read many books in my day, mostly for my own pleasure but never until now have I read a book that made me laugh out loud. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a story about Arthur Dent, his friend Ford Prefect, and their adventures in outer space. Ford Prefect, an alien from the planet Betelgeuse V was on earth, in disguise to complete research. Ford is a reporter for the encyclopedia known as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This guide is a giant encyclopedia stored in a small computer that contains important information for intergalactic hitchhikers. When Ford discovers that the Earth will soon be destroyed, he alerts his friend Arthur Dent. Ford urges Arthur to leave Earth with him and they soon hitch a ride on a Vogon spaceship. But as Arthur soon finds out, Vogon's aren't friendly beings, and the captain of the ship wasn't to happy they came aboard. The Vogons tortured the two with horrible poetry and then dumped them into space. Now according to the Hitchhiker's Guide, a person can hold his breath in space for 30 seconds before he dies. 29 seconds later Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent were rescued from space. They now found themselves on a ship called the Heart of Gold with the president of the universe, Zaphod Beeblebrox and his friend Trillian. Douglas Adams is a comedic genius and does a wonderful job of satirizing the human race. Humans are considered to be primitive, the third smartest species on Earth, and Earth is considered "mostly harmless". Unlike many books I have read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy kept me interested and wanting to read more. I definitely recommend this book and I will most likely begin reading the other books in this series. If you enjoy science fiction books and have a good sense of humor, you would definitely enjoy this book. |
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A Canadian reader (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
To me, there's certain literary classics like Les Miserables, the books about the Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas and a lot of Shakespeare books where they're often quoted or referenced and on people's classics of all time list yet how many can actually stomach Les Miserables' 1300 pages? Hitchhiker's Guide is like this only it's very short, funny, and really needs the other books to understand the story.
Arthur Dent wakes up in the morning and finds a bulldozer wanting to bring down his house so he lies in front of it. A man named Ford Prefect comes up to him and convinces the bulldozer to not demolish his house. However, an announcement says that a galactic highway(or something, lot of science speak in here) needs to be built and Earth's in the way so Ford and Arthur escape just in time.
They eventually get aboard the Heart of Gold, a ship carrying Zaphod, a rather smallminded man who just happens to be President of the Galaxy, his science-y partner Trillian, the ship's computer "Eddie", and Marvin, the depressed robot, also the Paranoid Android(yes this is a Radiohead song). They then find themselves on a legendary planet which does rather cool business and want to know the answer to Life and Everything.
One thing that I didn't care much for was as soon as things were starting to get good then woosh, book's over. Unlike Narnia or Harry Potter which are standalone books, this feels like a big book separated into smaller books. You could even read one of the Lord of the Rings books without even reading the other 2. Here it's like "you just read 200 pages, now buy the other books."
However, the book is funny and contains interviews with cast members and a foreword and photos (Zooey Deschanel who plays Trillian is sure hot), just be warned that you'll probably end up getting the others as well. |
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Scott (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
The Hitchhiker's series is arguably one of the greatest satiric productions ever devised by mankind. As for Douglas 'hating' his own books and characters... well, forgive me if I'm a mite dubious. Throughout the books he shows a genuine love for his creations, especially the oft-confused Englishman Arthur Dent and the delightfully odd Ford Prefect. To call these books anything less than a masterpiece of wit is not only an insult to the text, but an insult to one of the greatest comic minds of the 20th century. So he hated his works?? Interesting, since he wrote little else. If he were to denounce Hitchhiker he would basically be dismissing himself as an author.
But all retaliatory remarks aside, this book (and all the sequels) is an absolute triumph of the ludicrous over reason, a battle that I wage daily. So treat yourself to a view of the Universe as it should be seen!
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Beady Fish (MSL quote), USA
<2006-12-29 00:00>
In my opinion, this is one of the funniest, intelligent books that has come out in a long time. While there is not much in the way of plot, that is, rising action, climax, and falling action, it is still worth it to buy and read many times over. The characters are memorable, each with their own unique personality and view of the world. My favorite is Marvin, the 'paranoid android.' He is a manic depressive, and has the best insight into everything. The humor is intelligent, a kind that makes people think about what the joke is, not the kind of crass humor that is so popular today, like Austin Powers or Blue Collar TV stuff. I am currently reading the second book in this series, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and am enjoying it as well. I give The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a high recommendation to all. |
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