The fifth and final book in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. This book had been sitting on my shelf for nearly a year. Despite having read the first four books in the series, I was somewhat hesitant to read this one. It was the last in the series written by Douglas Adams. There is one more (And Another Thing…) written by someone else, but with approval from Adams’ estate. The reviews of Mostly Harmless painted it as a bleak story. I did not really find that to be the case. Much of the humor in Adams’ writing comes from the misfortune of the characters Arthur Dent and Marvin the robot. Marvin does not make it to this book, having met a merciful end in So Long and Thanks For all the Fish, but Arthur is with us until the end of this one. His misfortune is almost always of the harmless variety – he gets horribly embarrassed in public or is left alone in his bath robe on a planet of Neanderthals for a significant period of time. In this book he finds out he has a daughter. And it turns out, a very disgruntled one. But nothing I would characterize as bleak. It has Elvis performing with the house band in a bar on some distant planet. That can’t be characterized as bleak!
The same reviews I read that said all the characters get together at the end also appear to be incorrect. We do have Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent, and Trillian reunited on some dimensional abstraction of earth, but the multi-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox is noticeably absent from the book, despite being mentioned several times. Adams is a great writer, the imagery he evokes, the dialogue he presents, and the absurdist humor he presents is unequaled in science fiction. It is so unfortunate that the man spent so little time with us, he passed away at just 49 years old, but his stories will likely outlive us all.