World Famous Comics: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
By: Douglas Adams Publisher: Del Rey Average Rating: Binding: Mass Market Paperback Label: Del Rey Number of Items: 1 Number of Pages: 224 Publication Date: March 29, 1999 Release Date: March 29, 1999
Product Description: Back on Earth with nothing more to show for his long, strange trip through time and space than a ratty towel and a plastic shopping bag, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription, the mysterious disappearance of Earth's dolphins, and the discovery of his battered copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy all conspire to give Arthur the sneaking suspicion that something otherworldly is indeed going on. . . .
God only knows what it all means. And fortunately, He left behind a Final Message of explanation. But since it's light-years away from Earth, on a star surrounded by souvenir booths, finding out what it is will mean hitching a ride to the far reaches of space aboard a UFO with a giant robot. But what else is new?
Fish Food for Thought I just spent a long weekend catching up on this series by reading books 2-4. I have to say I enjoyed "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish" far more than I enjoyed the previous two books in the "increasingly inaccurate trilogy." The difference for me is that with this fourth novel Adams seems to take a far more focused approach to the story instead of running around like a kid in the toy aisle as he did in the second and third books. (And really I thought the end of the third novel was a huge cop-out that I could see coming from 93 million miles away.)
In the first book of the series, Earth was destroyed by the bureaucratic Vogons to make room for a hyperspace bypass, subsequently displacing Arthur Dent. Eight years later (for Arthur, not for anyone else) Arthur hitchhikes back to find Earth is back and the whole Vogon demolition chalked up to a mass hallucination caused by the CIA. The only difference is that the dolphins that disappeared before Earth's demise in the first book are still missing. When he comes back, Arthur gets a ride from a man who has a beautiful (albeit crazy) sister in the backseat whom Arthur is instantly smitten with, if only he can find her.
So what we have in this book is actually a sort of romance as Arthur tracks down the woman named Fenchurch for where she was conceived--that's one of those things that's probably funnier if you're British and have been to Fenchurch Station--and they fall in love. Then in the very rushed last couple chapters of the book they go off to visit Wonko the Sane, an expert on dolphins, and in search of God's Last Message to the Universe with the help of Ford Prefect and a giant robot who invades Earth to talk to our "lizards."
Overall, as I said in the beginning, I liked that with this book Adams focused almost exclusively on Arthur and thus we actually have a little bit of character development, which was sorely lacking in parts two and three. I only wish Adams would have taken a little more time with the ending as they get from Earth to this other place far too quickly. Maybe he could have broken it up into two books. But still it's the best in the series since the first one in my mind--others will disagree I'm sure.
On a final note, it doesn't sound like I want to read the fifth one as it sounds like Fenny is written off with little fanfare, thus rendering most of this book moot. What a shame that is.
That is all.
One of these books is not like the others... Be forewarned: while this book is unmistakably a Hitchhiker's Guide book, it's also quite unique among the series. If you're in it only for the zany off-the-wall humor, well, you might not be disappointed because there is certainly plenty of that here, but Adams proves he can do so much more. Notably, the love story between Arthur and Fenchurch is quite moving, and as a result Arthur's character takes on whole new dimensions.
While I love Zaphod as much as the next guy, his absence here is actually a welcome reprieve, since he wouldn't fit in too well with this particular story. Unfortunately, however, it seems he's disappeared for good.
The ending is sort of, well, hmmm?, even though Marvin does make a last memorable appearance, but the rest of the book is good enough that one can't be too disappointed.
Solid entry in the series It's been a long time since I read this, so I don't remember many specifics. What I do remember is that, while this book isn't nearly as funny as its predecessors, it is still a very good piece of work. Adams' prose is still wonderful and, at times, beautifully inspired. His storytelling prowess is intact, as he draws from, and builds on, many of the invisible clues offered in the first three books (when the series could still properly be called a trilogy). The connection between Arthur and Fenchurch is touching without being sentimental; it's actually more fun than any of us imagined, watching Arthur Dent actually get what he wants, and Adams captures perfectly that lighthearted feeling of the early stage of love.
But the negative--and of course there must be a negative for this novel to miss out on a gold star--mainly has to do with the humor. There is still a genius at work here, as many brilliant comedic flashes will attest (God's final message to humanity, Ford's encounter with a special kind of prostitute). Unfortunately, there's also a fair amount of lesser such instances scattered throughout. Arthur's relation to Fenchurch of a story about a pack of muffins, while funny in theory, comes out as flat and uninspired and a bit hard to slog through. Less specifically, there are also many instances of Adams trying to rework descriptions of commonplace items to highlight the inherent absurdity locked within (a method used to great success in previous novels), but these often come off as forced and labored. It's almost as if Adams injected them five minutes before the final draft was snatched out of his hands to try and convince readers that, although space-traveling was kept to a minimum and Arthur Dent was allowed to act rather than react, this is still a new volume in the much-loved series, see all the irrelevant anecdotes and clever truisms?
That is, fortunately, a small enough complaint that I still recommend this book wholeheartedly, though offering it with a grain of salt.
The fourth book in Adams's trilogy That, by itself, gets you off to a cockeyed start that will help you through Adams's brilliant series. The set was a landmark of popular culture when it came out in the 1980s, and is still a riotous trip through a universe that's just a little too believable.
This book, however, just doesn't sustain the wild energy of the earlier books.
//wiredweird
A Second Time Around The fourth book in the Hitchhiker Trilogy, "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" is much like the first book in the series. It is a chronicle of strange travels and happenings, written with wry humor and Douglas Adams' penchant to mock everything, even the writing process. The fourth novel is much more cohesive in plot than the previous two, but the story is just as strange as ever.
In "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", Arthur Dent found out that his long-time friend Ford Prefect, was an alien, and that within minutes, the Earth was going to be destroyed. He saw the Earth destroyed and spent the next eight years wandering the universe, pondering what really happened. "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" is a fresh start to the series, with the implication that the Earth wasn't actually destroyed: those yellow Vogon spaceships people saw were hallucinations created by the CIA. Therefore, Arthur Dent has returned home as if nothing had happened, and meets a girl who seems to know something about why Earth still exists, but cannot remember what it is. The fourth novel is their quest to find what she has forgotten and to discover the Creator's final message to his creation.
"So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish" is a fast-paced, humorous trek through what makes the world tick. Douglas Adams is a master at oddity and dry wit, making his novels both laugh-out-loud funny, if not a little perplexing. This fourth entry makes up for the unbalanced two previous books that rambled way off course, even if that was the point. Who knows if there even is a point to these stories after all? Certainly not the chronicler.
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