So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

WARNING: This review contains a slight spoiler.At the end of  Life, the Universe and Everything , the third book in Douglas Adams' five-book "trilogy," as in the first two --  The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy  and Th The Restaurant at the End of the Universe  -- Arthur Dent pines due to the destruction of his home planet, Earth.Only it didn't happen. That's right -- in the eight years that Arthur has spent dodging bullets and lasers and otherwise just barely evading death, going back millions of years to the dawn of time on Earth, bemoaning the lack of a decent cup of tea, and having dozens of adventures, Earth has been just fine. In fact, just six months have elapsed back on planet Earth. His house in the West Country hasn't been flattened to make way for a bypass, nor has the Earth been destroyed by the Vogons to make way for an intergalactic bypass -- even though Arthur is certain that he witnessed both destructions. Despite all of that, here's the earth pretty much as he remembered it, except that everyone he meets remembers a platoon of spaceships hovering overhead at just that time, but chuck it up to mass hysteria.So was this series a complete sham of the  Dallas  variety where everything was just a dream? What do you take Douglas Adams for? Some Hollywood hack? Of course not! I won't ruin the book, but, of course, it's more complicated than that -- or as Ford Prefect says in another context, "nothing so simple, nothing anything like so straight-forward" -- although I don't think we'll know the entire story until the fifth book,  Mostly Harmless .While I absolutely adored the first two books in this Adams' five-part "trilogy," the third book simply didn't measure up to Adams' usual standard: It wasn't as funny or engaging or -- I have to admit -- philosophically stimulating. And as So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish tacitly admits, not enough Marvin the Paranoid Android, either. However, Adams has completely redeemed himself here.What I can reveal is that So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish finds Earthman Arthur Dent, who thought he was literally the last man in the universe, reveling in new love and coming into his own. After three volumes where poor Arthur always ended up the goat in every mishap or misadventure and the butt of every joke, it's nice to see Arthur finally happy and feeling more sane and confident than ever. How nice to see Arthur finally getting answers and the happiness he's been seeking all along.

There is a really different feel to this when compared to the previous Hitchhiker books, but it works. The other novels go hard at the weirdness, and this one does as well, but in a much more personal way. It follows Arthur almost completely, but breaks periodically to follow Ford. With Arthur you get an almost melancholy romantic comedy that is very human. This is contrasted with Ford's wild alien adventures, ridiculous and flippant. If you want a kooky and eccentric space epic, you might like the other books better, but if you want to get inside Arthur's head, you will be very entertained and moved.

This book is very good at drawing the reader in to the story. It also has an interesting plot. 96 / 100 would recommend.

Douglas Adams is a master of simile, he has no issue comparing the absurd to the abstract to the absolutely stupid. This is not his first book either, and it shows. In fact, his fourth installment of his trilogy is most certainly the most human and down to Earth *two. But nonetheless alikens the human experience to a undoubtedly absurd one, reminding us that outside or in, our world is explainable to the hardly sane. Pick this one up, despite the print, the read is palatably brilliant.

This thing is full of Unmitigated Silliness. It's book Attempt to answer the questions what happened to our Heroes Arthur, Ford Trillion , Marvin and Zaphod. We also find out what happened to the dolphins and there mysterious message In the last message of god to all his people. Personally I think colonel mustard Did it in the bathroom with the pin cushion And the copy of the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy You've been following this series read this book

This book is a continuation of Douglas Adams original Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is really 5+ stars, possibly because he redid it several times between the radio series, the books, and several iterations of movie scripts. So Long and Thanks for all the Fish does not seem quite as good, possibly because I have got used to his humor, or possibly because he did not have as many iterations to polish it. I just finished "Mostly Harmless", and it seems more of a let down, possibly for the same reasons. Don't get me wrong. Douglas Adams is a great writer, whose stories keep nothing sacred. I just think that the absurdity of the ideas eventually dulls the senses, and it does not seem as new and refreshing as the original stories.

This one was bittersweet for me. It's the fourth of five in the Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. I'm not sure I want to read the fifth book - I've heard it doesn't end happily. I like the way the fourth one ended and I think I'll just stop with this one and pretend it is the end of the series. But what makes this so bittersweet for me is the knowledge that the incomparable Douglas Adams, who died in 2001 at the age of 49, won't be giving us any more books. I just started reading The Salmon of Doubt - a book of his writings put together by his friends and editors after his death - and I don't want to read it too fast, because there aren't too many more of his books left for me to read after this one.

Different style than the first three in the series, which isn't necessarily bad. The plot more or less hangs together, but there are some parts that don't do much for the plot and I think are just there for filler material. The love relationship was OK, but went a bit juvenile. I wish the ending wouldn't have been so sudden, it was like Adams was just in a hurry to get it over with for some reason. Poor Marvin! Still, it certainly is worth reading and deciding for yourself if it's good or not; it would be a shame to pass it up based on some negative reviews and possibly miss out on something you might really enjoy.

This is an enjoyable book but the weakest so far in the series. Douglas Adams writing style dictates that every now and then there are entire chapters that are there just to give us a back story into a location, a character or an event to facilitate progression of the actual story. This entire book feels like one of those chapters. There are things and people in this instalment that to my mind served little purpose. As a first-time reader of the series, I'm unable to comment on whether they were addressed in the subsequent book. That being said, I did enjoy it and it flows well as a continuation of the main story even if it is quite a departure from the previous one.

Douglas Adams is a true comic genius, and Marvin the Paranoid Android is the creation of a diseased imagination. May they both rest in peace! "Luckily there was a stall nearby where you could rent scooters from guys with green wings." Now that's an ending, or a beginning, but not quite yet...

How can you return to a totally destroyed planet? ask Douglas Adams.

Book came in good shape, overall great trilogy

More lighthearted nonsense. I bought this to complete the set that replaces my disintegrating paperback copies. You really need to have read the previous parts, to understand what is going on.