*Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (book)

“Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Eoin Colfer and Douglas Adams is an amazing book that grabs your attention and keeps you interested. As a 12 year old that loves sci-fi and a good laugh, this novel was captivating, but still had parts that were difficult to understand.

The humor inside the story was absolutely terrific. Many ironic moments inside the story popped up, and the skillful authors came up with endings incredibly different from what was expected. For example, one moment in the story, a supercomputer called Deep Blue was programmed to compute the answer to the question of the universe. It took the supercomputer 7.5 million years, but it finally found the question out. You’ll have to read the book to find out the answer! The answer is so “mind-boggling” that its funny. However, the computer failed to find the question to the ultimate question of the universe, since it was way too complicated for Deep Blue to figure out. Another super-computer is needed to find the question of life, and what happens to the supercomputer and its question of life is very different from what I expected; the author did a great job at interpreting what the reader was going to think and create an ending that contrasts with that greatly. Overall, the excitement and humor in the story made Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy an amazing read that kept me amused for the whole book.

The philosophical parts of the story were difficult to understand. The philosophers were looking at topic at so many angles, it hurt my head to think, much less understand them. The conversation would build on itself one too many times and would have not two or three but four or more perspectives on the subject. It was always difficult to understand the speech because it involved so much thinking. For example, a ship with a hyper drive was driving through space, and a few people were debating about the probabilities involved with picking someone up in space. According to the text, physics was needed to understand the complicated fractions and math that they were talking about. What about the people that don’t know about physics? How would they understand this part? In parts such as these, I believe that the story needs to be watered down a bit so a majority of the people could understand what was happening.

Though Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy had its parts where it was difficult to understand, the humor made every second of reading the book worth it. Due to its hard- to-understand philosophy, I would rate it a ⅘ stars. I personally got the book from the library since it a pretty well-known book and it was available. However, if I was forced to buy it to read it, I would buy the book for about $10. Because of the humor, this book qualified for a great read on my strict scales, and it was worth the time to read it. Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is an incredible book that you should get, but would probably be better if the philosophy was easier to understand.