Resumo de The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

An Englishman Arthur Dent awakes one day to discover planet earth is to be demolished. The aliens responsible for this destruction are known as the Vogons. Vogons are compassionless, bulbous creatures obsessed with bureaucratic procedure and bad poetry. They must destroy Earth to make way for an intergalactic bypass.

Arthur Dent discovers his friend, Ford Prefect, is a marooned alien in human disguise, hailing from the Betelgeuse star system. With Ford's help and a minute after Earth's demise they end up on board a Vogon constructor spaceship. After being subjected to Vogon torture they are expelled into space for twenty nine seconds.

Improbably they are picked up by the two headed President of the Universe, his human girlfriend and a hopelessly depressed android. In an absurd serpentine search for the answer to the ultimate question they all set off in the President's stolen spacecraft.

During their travels, they are attacked by a bunch of Hamlet obsessed monkeys, meet some mice geniuses, chat with the creator of Norway, are involved in an altercation with the Galactic Police and begin a quest for a nice cup of tea. Eventually a supercomputer tells them the answer to the ultimate question.

The Hitch hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an unconventional, dark and very comic novel regarded by many critics to be in the top one hundred books of all time. Highly entertaining and humourous it is deeply rooted in the Theatre of the Absurd. A basic theme of this art form is that human survival is at odds with the universe. Additionally; the further a cosmic context is expanded only increases the incomprehensibility of human existence.

The basic premise of novel and theatrical art form suggest there is no ultimate purpose. For instance, Arthur Dent's pre-hitch hiking existence when compared to his survival after the Earth's destruction belongs to a reality that is minuscule and fragile. It was a point where struggles of individuals, associations and powers were manifest in a fixed world of recognized stratified values. This wafer thin reality of blind survival gave Arthur a feeling of control, purpose and meaning. However, after the Earth's destruction Arthur becomes confused, disturbed and randomly menaced. His old world with its established outward reality no longer exists and loses all meaning in space. The harder he fights for his old values and searches for meaning only highlights the fact that nothing happens to change his existence. In the end Arthur decides to just go along for the ride.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy through savouring the unexpected and logically improbable provides a heady amusing freedom. The idea for the novel began in March 1978 as a BBC Radio 4 series and has now transmutated into a series of best-selling novels, a TV series, a record album, a computer game, several stage adaptations and a motion picture. A number one in the UK Bestseller List, Douglas Adams became the youngest author to be awarded a Golden Pan award. Douglas Adams died of a heart attack in 2001, aged 49.

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