Mostly Harmless

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Mostly bleak - Rated
Douglas Adams himself called his last Hitchhiker book "a bleak book" because he had such a miserable time, when he was writing it. I'm just rereading "Mostly Harmless" and it appears to me, that there is much to learn about Douglas Adams' emotional situation at the beginning of the Nineties (and of course about commercial pressure). But the whimsical Adamsian wit, that was often hilarious and deeply philosophical at the same time, is almost totally gone. Instead there is a strong feeling of disillusionement mirrored in the incidents Arthur, Trillian and Ford are confronted with. You will find some typical hitchhiker passages, but they often read like self-parody and are sometimes unnecessary gross. Very disappointing.

Deliberately depressing finale - Rated
A chasm seems to separate this volume from the previous four, rather like the fissure in the Earth's history in "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish". One gets the impression that something like this must have happened in Adams' life some time round 1987 (contrast the likeable "Dirk Gently" with the frankly disappointing "Long Dark Teatime of the Soul"). The world view of friend Dawkins seems to have sunk in that much deeper: no more jokes about Oolon Colluphid and his anti-God philosophical blockbusters, but instead learned expositions of quantum physics and the multiverse.

Accordingly we see Arthur lost once more in an infinitely complex and varied universe in which he can find no joy or interest, because it lacks "just two things: the planet he was born on and the woman he loved": the respite of happiness in "So Long..." proves to have been little more than an illusion, and we return to the central theme of the series: loss and exile. (One reason, by the way, why the saccharine ending of the H2G2 film had me groaning and straining in my seat like Arthur and Ford being forced to listen to Vogon poetry.)

The frenetic change of scene and the fertile invention are all there and working as hard as ever, but it is all rather mechanical and there is little wonder or enjoyment there (the same change can be observed in "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince", which this book strongly resembles). This is not a case of failing powers, but an intentional effect: the central theme of the book is a world gone grey, in which the light-hearted anarchic wackiness of the original Guide has given place to efficiently (if self-defeatingly) streamlined corporate sameness and dullness, and who can disagree?

So as to leave no way of escape, the author presents the alternative of a traditional agrarian society (the planet Lamuella), where Arthur is briefly allowed to feel at home as the Master Sandwich Maker, but which it seems we are too old and sophisticated and tired to do more than regard with patronising superiority. (Oddly the ludicrous windbag Thrashbarg, representing conventional religion, turns out to know just a few rather vital facts.)

In the end the characters are driven into a logical corner in which total annihilation is actually welcomed with relief as the only possible happy ending; not even, as in C. S. Lewis' "The Last Battle", "So they all died, and lived happily ever after". One can only guess whether (and how) the series would ever have been continued ...

Delightful - Rated
Bringing the fabulous Hitch Hikers books to a fitting close, this final book of the "trilogy" is a fantastic return to form after the slightly wishy washy So Long and Thanks for all the Fish. Full of the usual wit, vivid imagination and memorable characters that typified the previous books, Mostly Harmless brings back and resolves the stories of Arthur, Ford and Trillian, although sadly leaves us to forever ponder the fate of Zaphod. To say too much of the plot would give too much away, suffice to say if you`ve read the first 4 you really need to finish off with this one! RIP Douglas Adams, sadly missed.

Ending on a high - Rated
When 4th Hitchhiker's novel So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish was published, Douglas Adams appeared to have run out of ideas, with a readable but decidedly thin romance novel being the result. A whopping 8 years later Adams finally produced a 5th and final Hitchhiker's book, seemingly with the intention of killing all his characters off once and for all so people would stop pestering him for more novels in the series, and while this does make for a rather bleak ending, thankfully Mostly Harmless is a massive return to form, combining the big science fiction concepts that drove the earlier novels in the series with Adams increased talent for character and prose to make this probably the most well rounded Hitchhiker's novel of all.

At the heart of Mostly Harmless is the concept of parallel universes, and in an extension of the running gag where Arthur's bag always seems to change whenever he travels, Adams contrives to retcon away virtually all of So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, with both Arthur's love Fenchurch and the entire replacement Earth vanishing into the infinite multiverse. The novel itself is divided equally between it's three leads - Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Tricia McMillan (no Zaphod Beeblebrox at all this time, so a possible get put clause for future Hitchhiker's books had Adams lived longer), with their interconnected tales only dovetailing towards the end of the novel.

Ford Prefect's strand turns out to include the main plot-driver of the novel, when he discovers that the publishers of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy have been taken over by the Vogons, and a new airborne Mark 2 version of the Guide that can operate not only throughout the multiverse - travelling and collapsing quantum waveforms from one possible universe to another - but also backwards in time. Meanwhile Arthur Dent is once more adrift in space, and spends his time trying and miserably failing to get back home to Earth, and typically just as he finds some happiness as a sandwich-maker on a Bob-fearing planet his tranquillity is shattered by the arrival of a moody teenage daughter he didn't even know existed. Mirroring the homesick Arthur's tale is that of an alternative Tricia McMillan, one who in her universe (where incidentally, the Earth was never destroyed by the Vogons) failed to leave for the stars with Zaphod, and has spent the rest of her life regretting her decision.

All three tales are amusing and enjoyable in their own right, and dovetail beautifully for the climax, taking in time-fractured wars, TV-obsessed aliens, Perfectly Normal Beasts, service industry squirrels, a manically happy robot and Elvis Presley along the way. Granted, the novel does suddenly come to a rather sudden and depressing stop when Adams kills off his entire cast, and a third act where our heroes actually managed to defeat the threat of the new Guide may ultimately have made for a more satisfying read, but as the final Hitchhiker's novel it does at least provide a definitive full-stop for the adventures of Arthur Dent and co.

A brilliant return to form after the decidedly average So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish - Mostly Harmless ends The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy on a high.

Fantastically funny, but not a thrilling and grand finale - Rated
This book is quite different from the other four in the Universe's only five-part "trilogy". Once again, you need to have read the whole series to appreciate it, but there's a lot that's not there in this supposed final book.

More like a set of short stories about Arthur Dent, Trillian and Ford Prefect, the greater part of the book is hugely entertaining and wonderfully witty, but for the first time, all the ends aren't tied up in the last chapter or so.

Unsatisfactorily sucked into the black hole of oblivion are Zaphod and Fenchurch, but the story is saved largely by the misadventures of our heroes, and the introduction of the perpetually happy robot, Colin.

It's full of knee-slapping slapstick, Mission Impossible type espionage, DNA donations and dandy sandwich making, but as a thrilling and grand finale it's a complete failure.

Refreshingly funny, but not satisfyingly wrapped-up.