The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide-Five Stories. Douglas Adams. Random House. 1989.

Book review by Joel
I got this book as a Christmas loaner gift--the real gift being able to read it and talk about it to someone who appreciates it as much or more than myself. This is the omnibus edition that contains all 5 books of the guide: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy;The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, The Universe, and Everything; So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, and Young Zaphod Plays It Safe.

This was a delightful book that put me in my place in the vastness of space and time. Aliens are already on Earth, and one of them works for a publisher writing inputs to the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. He is stuck on Earth but is able to hitch a ride one day. He gets Arthur Dent, gives him a towel, makes him drink several pints of pub brew, and then they both hitch a ride in a spaceship as the Earth is destroyed. Unfortunately the ship they hitched a ride on belonged to the Vogons who just destroyed the Earth to make way for a hyperspace freeway. Of course Arthur doesn’t know anything beyond his own earthly existence so he freaks out. This is the set up for the whole series, and what a setup! It doesn’t get any better than that! If it weren’t for the fact Arthur saved Ford Prefect from being hit by a car, the whole story never would have happened.

I really liked the whole premise of this book. The dry British humor and wit, the belief that we are at the center of the universe, the fact that the Earth was built by an alien race and put into service by a giant computer to answer the question of everything. That the answer is in our DNA (that’s Douglas Noel Adams), and it is 42.

What?

Anyway. I don’t want to spoil it for anyone. This was a page turner for me. Definitely a book to keep in storage for when the #%*@# hits the fan. It will come in handy. I wish I had it before the millennium scare, instead of all that bottled water and crowd control gear.

Joel.