There’s science fiction and there’s sciencefiction. 

And then there’s the adorable, zany, laugh-out-loudfictional world created by Douglas Adams.

I recently re-read the late author’s Hitchhiker’sGuide to the Galaxy—after more than 30 years. Not only did I find it freshas ever, I liked it even more this time around. You can say I’ve grown up—ormaybe down—a bit, I don’t know.

What I know for sure is that the crazy charactersconjured up by Adams immediately cast their spell on you and wouldn’t let gowithout tickling you senseless. Merely reading the wacky names can send ripplesof laughter down your spine.

Let’s try out a few:

Zaphod Beeblebrox.

Slartibartfast.

Vroomfondel.

Lunkwill and Fook.

Oh my dog, what a book!

I do not intend to make this post into a bookreview—there must be gazillions of them out there already.

What I’m doing here, instead, is picking out someof the most delicious excerpts and serving them up for your linguistic tastebuds.

Now, this Zaphod guy is the President of theGalactic Government. Adams describes him as “roughly humanoid except for theextra head and third arm.” There’s a scene in which he is addressing a pressconference to unveil a new starship. One particularly comic sentence aboutZaphod’s peculiar body stands out:

“The robot camera homed in for a close-up on themore popular of his two heads and he waved again.” 

The more popular of his two heads…hahaha!

The Vogons from the planet Vogsphere depicted inthe book are a weird lot. This passage about Vogon and other galactic poetrywill have you in splits:

Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in theUniverse. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kria. During a recitationby their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a SmallLump of Green Putty I Found in My Armpit One Midsummer Morning" four ofhis audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of theMid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off.Grunthos is reported to have been "disappointed" by the poem's reception,and was about to embark on a reading of his twelve-book epic entitled MyFavorite Bathtime Gurgles when his own major intestine, in a desperate attemptto save life and civilization, leaped straight up through his neck andthrottled his brain.

In case you are wondering about the worst poetry,Adams conferred that honor on a human:

The very worst poetry of all perished along withits creator, Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex, England, inthe destruction of the planet Earth. 

At one point, the protagonist of the book, ArthurDent, is talking with Ford Prefect, his co-traveler from another planet, justbefore the duo is about to be thrown out from a Vogon spacecraft:

"You know," said Arthur, "it's attimes like this, when I'm trapped in a Vogon airlock with a man fromBetelgeuse, and about to die of asphyxiation in deep space, that I really wishI'd listened to what my mother told me when I was young."

"Why, what did she tell you?"

"I don't know, I didn't listen.”

As you can see, Douglas Adams’s ability to createhumor out of thin air is nothing less than stellar—pun intended.

And it’s not all mindless humor (though youwouldn’t mind it for the fun element): Adams sometimes takes digs at issuesafflicting earthlings in the real world. Sample the satire about over-tourismspoiling the environment:

The introduction [to The Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy] begins like this:

"Space," it says, "is big. Reallybig. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. Imean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that'sjust peanuts to space. Listen..." and so on.

(After a while the style settles down a bit and itbegins to tell you things you really need to know, like the fact that thefabulously beautiful planet Bethselamin is now so worried about the cumulativeerosion by ten billion visiting tourists a year that any net imbalance betweenthe amount you eat and the amount you excrete while on the planet is surgicallyremoved from your body weight when you leave: so every time you go to thelavatory there it is vitally important to get a receipt.)

Brilliantly imagined satire, isn’t it?

This one is an absolute favorite of mine. The sceneis that Slartibartfast, a designer of planets, is met by Arthur Dent at acrater on the surface of Magrathea (where new planets are made on demand). Arobot by the name of Marvin is also with Arthur but it is a bit far andSlartibartfast is not sure if the two of them are together.

He [Slartibartfast] pointed down into the crater.

"Is that robot yours?" he said.

"No," came a thin metallic voice from thecrater, "I'm mine."

Imagine a robot saying: “I’m mine”!

(For all you know, ChatGPT might soon disown beingowned by Sam Altman or OpenAI!)

In the same scene, old Slartibartfast, too,delivers a snarky punch that will make you chuckle with delight.

“Come,” called the old man, “come now or you willbe late.”

"Late?" said Arthur. "Whatfor?"

"What is your name, human?"

"Dent. Arthur Dent," said Arthur.

"Late, as in the late Dentarthurdent,"said the old man, sternly. 

Besides the humor, you also marvel at how Adamsdescribes certain things in his own unique way. The concept of bigness andinfinity, for instance.

"I should warn you that the chamber we areabout to pass into does not literally exist within our planet. It is a littletoo ... large. We are about to pass through a gateway into a vast tract ofhyperspace. It may disturb you."

Arthur made nervous noises.

Slartibartfast touched a button and added, notentirely reassuringly, "It scares the willies out of me. Hold tight."The car shot forward straight into the circle of light, and suddenly Arthur hada fairly clear idea of what infinity looked like.

It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looksflat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking intoinfinity—distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamberinto which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very veryvery big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better thaninfinity itself.

And here’s the last one for this post—another gemfrom Marvin, the robot aptly described as an “electronic sulking machine”:

Ford stayed, and went to examine the Blagulon ship.As he walked, he nearly tripped over an inert steel figure lying face down inthe cold dust.

"Marvin!" he exclaimed. "What areyou doing?"

"Don't feel you have to take any notice of me,please," came a muffled drone.

"But how are you, metalman?" said Ford.

"Very depressed."

"What's up?"

"I don't know," said Marvin, "I'venever been there."

I didn’t get this one on first reading, but then itdawned on me and I couldn’t help but smile.

That’s it for now, fellow earthlings. Do keepsmiling and laughing.

Thank you for reading!