The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The universe is weirder and more wonderful than Arthur Dent could ever have imagined. Ever since Earth was destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass, Arthur has been hitchhiking with his friend, Ford Prefect, who is from a small green planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. Now they’re looking for a spot of lunch, and what better place to dine than the Restaurant at the End of the Universe?

I tried reading this in audio earlier this year and didn’t get on with it at all. In print, however, it was delightful. I remember a lot of moments primarily through the lens of the 1981 TV miniseries: Hotblack Desiato, Max Quordlepleen (who always scared me a bit, frankly) and the Golgafrinchans (may I never be as useless as they show more are). The book was much funnier than I remembered: I was laughing out loud frequently. I especially liked the piece on the grammar of time travel, and the Scrabble scene was unexpectedly amusing. “The only word they know is grunt and they don’t know how to spell it.”

I’d certainly recommend this if you read and enjoyed the first book in the Hitchhiker’s Guide trilogy of five. show less

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz är fortfarande efter det stulna skeppet Hjärtat av Guld och dess brottslingar till passagerare och det dröjer inte länge förrän han är ikapp dem. Han har tur – lagom till att han anländer lyckas Arthur Dent äntligen få dryckesautomaten att tillsammans med skeppets dator koka en äkta kopp te till honom. Tyvärr krävs det så mycket tanke och ansträngning för detta att resten av skeppets funktioner stängs ner. Det är lagom lämpligt när en hel vogonflotta är på väg att anfalla.

I ett panikslaget sista försök lyckas Zaphod Beeblebrox kalla fram sin förfader och ber honom att hjälpa dem. Zaphod Beeblebrox den Fjärde skickar genast iväg dem. Problemet är dock att de hamnar på helt felt show more ställe. Eller så kanske är det helt rätt ställe...

Det känns som jag knapp behöver säga att Douglas Adams är ett geni, men jag gör det i alla fall. Douglas Adams är ett geni. Han är en mästare på att använda ord på helt nya sätt; han vrider och vänder på dem och visar hur ord är så mycket mer än bara ord. Han är otroligt på att använda ord för att beskriva och skapa. Jag hoppas att jag kan kan bli åtminstone hälften så skicklig som honom när det gäller att verkligen använda ord när jag skriver.

Men det jag beundrar mest med Adams är hur underhållande han är. Det är en annan sorts humor – till stor del satir – än, till exempel, Vonneguts men på samma sätt är den lika utmanande utan att någonsin vara på någons bekostnad. Jag är så otroligt trött på människor vars humor endast verkar bestå av att tracka ner på andra personer (till exempel rasistiska skämt, transfobiska skämt...) men här visar Adams, än en gång, att det är mycket möjligt att vara rolig på ingens bekostnad... och det är mycket roligare dessutom.

Det är dessutom en spännande historia vars vändningar man definitivt inte anar förrän de redan har hänt. Karaktärerna är alla märkliga och helt underbara. Det är svårt att inte vara på bra humör när man läser Douglas Adams. show less

Restaurant at the End of the Universe - Adams
Audio performance by Martin Freeman
2.5 stars

I did like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is a little surprising, because it isn’t the kind of humor that usually appeals to me. However, I did laugh at it. The satire had just the right amount of bite to make me love the exaggerated absurdity. In this book ... not so much. It felt too much like an overdone reworking of the gags in the first book.

I did have a favorite bit that saved the book from being a complete waste of time. It was the discourse on the grammar of time travel.

The major problem ( with time travel ) is simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveler's show more Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it.

It’s a teacher thing. I got a laugh out of just imagining the complications of teaching and correcting a time travel grammar lesson. My red pencil is twitching. show less

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the direct sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, although reading them this time they feel more like two parts of the same novel. There is of course a third part to follow this. And then a further two novels, which were not based on the original radio series.

Zaphod Beeblebrox, president of the galaxy, is kidnapped from the Heart of Gold and finds himself on the home world of the company responsible for publishing the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Apparently, he deliberately became president for a reason but then removed the reason from his mind. When he attempts to meet a contact suggested by another part of his mind, the city is attacked by Frogstar fighters and the entire show more building in which Zaphod is waiting in an office is carried away to another planet. There, Zaphod meets the man who really rules the universe, and whose identity Zaphod became president to discover. He decides the universe is in good hands.

The others meanwhile find themselves at Milliways, the titular restaurant. They’re then joined by Zaphod. They steal a ship to leave Milliways, but it turns out to be the stunt ship which will dive into a sun at the climax of the next concert by Disaster Area (a very loud music group). They jury-rig the ship’s emergency teleport system, and escape…

Ford and Arthur find themselves aboard a generation starship carrying only hairdressers, middle managers, “telephone sanitisers”, and others from the service industries. It’s the second of three generation ships – the first contains the elite, and the last the professional classes. It’s not a joke that’s aged well. It’s all very well to mock “useless” professions, but they’d been better to send off the first generation ship instead. Telephone sanitisers, whatever they are, as a rule do not fuck over vast swathes of the population on a regular basis. The generation ship crashes on a habitable world, which proves to be Earth in its prehistory.

The jokes in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe have not weathered the decades as gracefully as those in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. At Milliways, the diners are introduced to the food they’re about to eat. Taking the piss out of vegetarians and vegans is not so funny these days. Disaster Area’s manager is spending a year dead “for tax purposes”. Also not a good topic for humour, when you have billionaire scumbags decamping to tax-free countries to avoid paying their contribution. Having said that, the revelation about who really rules the universe is probably more poignant now than it was in the 1970s and 1980s.

Generally, more misses than hits in this volume. True, there’s a lot of nostalgia at play here – and for those of us who remember the 1970s, that even applies to the targets of Adams’s humour. The humour in the first book struck me as less tied to its time than here. Which is not to say The Restaurant at the End of the Universe isn’t a fun, quick and light read, but YMMV. You may be better off stopping after The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. That novel at least shows how to do science fiction humour successfully – and I admit it’s British humour, not American, which is an entirely different beast – but it’s something a few current genre authors should probably look into. show less

The last time I read this book was back in 2010 which was before I started writing reviews. As this is my first reread since, it's time to correct that. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe picks up right where the first book ends, with our group of misfit characters on their way to the most famous restaurant. We're dropped right into the middle of some action as our dont-want-to-be heroes are attempting to survive being attacked.

This one feels like a more cohesive story even as the plot meanders around. The asides and snippets from the Guide are hilarious. Yet again, this book is quite quotable. Some of my favorites:

"Reality is frequently inaccurate."

"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."

"The History of

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every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why, and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question 'How can we eat?' the second by the question 'Why do we eat?' and the third by the question 'Where shall we have lunch?"

Just as fun and irreverent as the first book though missing some of the newness factor. This book also has the best use of a seance I've ever read. Nothing like call up dearly departed great grandad to ask for advice in the middle of a battle! show less

Scorribande Universali

Il pianeta Terra ha i giorni contati. Strane forme di vita vagano per l'Universo. Un alieno, un umano, un ex-Presidente della Galassia, un androide, una profuga viaggiano su un'astronave alla ricerca di un posto dove stare e... dove cenare! Irresistibile, semplice, divertente e profondo, Adams ridicolizza questi "umani" egocentrici e presuntuosi che credono di sapere tutto e di avere nelle loro mani la spiegazione a tutto. La "risposta alla domanda fondamentale" affidata al computo di un supercomputer cos'è senza avere la domanda? Uomini che si fidano e affidano troppo alla tecnologia e robot depressi più umani degli umani stessi. Questa è la Babele cosmica di Adams che mi diverte sempre e rende più "leggera" show more la vita senza per questo privarla della sua poesia e complessità. show less

Published in 1980, this is the follow-up to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I enjoyed the first book very much, so thought I would give this one a try. It is another absurdist space-and-time-travel adventure filled with nerdy humor, which happens to be something I enjoy (but will of course not be to everyone’s taste). It is playful, especially with mathematical concepts and there is even a math joke at the end. Adams gives hints along the way, so what appears to be a typo is math humor. The characters are eccentric (this is a severe understatement) and the plot is zany. I particularly enjoyed the extraterrestrial receptionist and the depressed android. It is a satire of bureaucracy and leadership. It contains philosophical show more concepts dressed up in humorous costumes. What a fun read! show less