The hitchhikers guide to the galaxy

so far a few chapters into this book i really like it its funny and clever and has some really great questions and thought provoking bits to it, i wanted to ask though if the rest of the series is just as good, or does excitement kind of die down? below is one of my favorite quotes.

ex: CH 6 "The Babel fish," said The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy quietly, "is small, yellow and leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the Universe. It feeds on brainwave energy received not from its own carrier but from those around it. It absorbs all unconscious mental frequencies from this brainwave energy to nourish itself with. It then excretes into the mind of its carrier a telepathic matrix formed by combining the conscious thought frequencies with nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain which has supplied them. The practical upshot of all this is that if you stick a Babel fish in your ear you can instantly understand anything in any form of language. The speech patterns you actually hear decode the brainwave matrix which has been fed into your mind by your Babel fish.
"Now it is such a bizarrely improbable coincidence that anything so mindbogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as the final and clinching proof of the non-existence of God.
"The argument goes something like this: 'I refuse to prove that I exist,' says God, 'for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.'
"'But,' says Man, 'the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don't. QED.'
"'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.
"'Oh, that was easy,' says Man, and for an encore goes on to prove that black is white and gets himself killed on the next zebra crossing.
"Most leading theologians claim that this argument is a load of dingo's kidneys, but that didn't stop Oolon Colluphid making a small fortune when he used it as the central theme of his bestselling book, Well That about Wraps It Up for God.
"Meanwhile, the poor Babel fish, by effectively removing all barriers to communication between different races and cultures, has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in the history of creation."

 

I have been wanting to read it. The excerpt that you posted sounds good. How has the book been since your post?

 

I saw the movie...it was hilarious. I didn't actually know it was a book..

 

Yeah the movie was pretty good. And for your Sig.. If we keep hoping for things to happen instead of making them happen, then we as a species are doomed along with all that we take with us. We do not have time to sit around waiting for the mass awakening. There is no time for hope..

 

The whole series extends to 5 or 6 books, I think. I've read them all, though not for a while.

I'm a bit ambivulent about Douglas Adams as an author - some great ideas and really funny writing on the one hand...on the other, I found the plot lines to be a bit thin at times, and as the series went on there seemed to be a bit of the old diminishing-returns problem.

I actually prefer his Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective novels - 2 or 3 of them, I think - which have all the good bits from Hitchhikers, and fewer of the bad traits.



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After reading this thread i decided to dowload and watch this film, i really enjoyed it, thanks

 

the series is brilliant! read them all when I was about 14 and loved them ever since
the film is brilliant too although a lot of fans of the books really hate it but hey, you can't please everybody.

one of the few books that actually makes me laugh aloud!

 

The books should be read before the movie is watched, in my opinion!
Incidentally, the BBC also did a really good radio adaptation of it, which is available to download in various places. I've listened to it many times...it never gets old

 

the radio series is quality too! got it on my ipod, the voices are all spot on

 

Make sure you read the whole series of books in order,cosmic;it really DOES make a difference.

[incidentally,my fave is 'So long and thanks for all the fish'.

....and when you get finished,get stuck into the Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. same deal-you have to read them in order.