2G1L Book Review: HitchHiker's Guide

I had to read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams because it is Mr. Ultimate Nerd Elman's favorite book. Yes, that is his given name. Of course Elman has horrible taste in everything, but I gave the book a chance because other people with opinions I actually value said it was worth reading.

So I meandered over to the used book store, was saddened I couldn't find the book myself, and was forced to ask the guy at the front desk where the nerd aisle was. I then made the mistake of buying the volume that compiled all five novels together instead of just buying the famous first one. My nerd eyes are clearly bigger than my stomach because at this pace, I will get done with all five novels around 2050.

The first novel is only about 140 pages long. I could certainly read that in a day if I put my mind to it. Ahem... I started this book about a month and a half ago. I had to reread the beginning because I had forgotten what happened. This actually wasn't too unfortunate because the first couple chapters are really really good. You are introduced to the two main characters, the human Arthur Dent and the alien Ford Prefect.
In fact, I thought all the characters were great, like the evil Vogon race they come across who uses recited poetry as a means of torture. This is something I can totally identity with. My downfall with the book was the plot, a good amount of the time I just had no idea what the hell was going on. I admit, I'm no genius but I understand the English language... pretty damn well. Can somebody translate this for me?

"The principle of generating small amounts of finite improbability by simply hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to an atomic vector plotter suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer (say a nice hot cup of tea) were of course well understood-- and such generators were often used to break the ice at parties by making all the molecules in the hostess's undergarments leap simultaneously one foot to the left, in accordance with the Theory of Indeterminacy."

HUH!? First of all, could that sentence BE any longer? And what's with the tea? Crazy British bastards. You're probably thinking this would make sense if given in context, but no, not really. The context is Arthur and Ford were saved from imminent death by some infinitely improbable ship, and this only happened because of some horrible physics explanation. Did I mention I HATE physics? There is no wonder this book makes me feel nauseous, it teleports me back to high school physics class when I sat there with the same blank look I had while reading this book.

Now then, if we extract all this physics garbage because really, what has that crap ever done for us, then we have a story I can work with. And by work with, I mean I am now headed to Blockbuster to rent the movie so that Hollywood can better explain to me how aliens and astrophysics go together.

In other news, The Oxford University Douglas Adams Society has cooked up a HitchHiker's Guide roleplaying drinking game. Maybe those British aren't so crazy after all. They advocate cross-dressing while bar hopping and drinking massive quantities of booze. Where was THAT in the book!?

Go to The Hitchhiker's RPG