So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

I absolutely loved it! Another excellent book! Marvin is so my favorite character! This is a must read series! I can’t wait for the next book!

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.

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.

I'm a strong fan of DnA's style, but the stress he went through to write this part of the series really shows. The story reads in a disjointed fashion that has none of the characteristic charm of the hitch hiker series, we are left with never resolved gaps in the fabric of the author-reader continuum. Clearly this historic part of the series cannot be left out of any reader's journey through the hitch hiker series, but it must be read with an extra helping of patience and faith.

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.

Great book, bought it as a gift but ended up keeping it.

bien

Pazzo e divertentissimo! Ultimo di una saga....

自粛生活で家にこもっている毎日を楽しくしてくれています。前3作と違う始まりに最初戸惑いましたが、ストーリーの面白さにすぐ引き込まれました！辞書片手に少しずつ読んでいますが、audibleも素晴らしいので併用をお勧めします。

Haven't read the book yet. So this review is just about the product or this edition(ISBN : 9780330508605).The delivery speed was much better than i expected even if it was from some seller called " @123 read " or something like that. The product quality is really good for a paperback and it fits in the hand right. The font is of perfect size and the page color and quality is on par(Considering the fact that i bought this book for around 180 Rupees) . Furthermore this edition has got some exclusive contents like the actual draft hand written and marked by the Man( Douglas Adams obviously) Himself as well as some of his mails to his publisher. It even contains a foreword written by Neil Gaiman.