largely described as one of the funniest sci-fi books of all time, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy (or HHGG), is exactly that: funny, pithy, and ironically british, if you're into that sort of thing, which i am. i love a good ironic, british persona. i enjoy dry, sly remarks and the concept of afternoon tea. in this book, arthur dent, is having a bad day. his house is minutes away from being bulldozed and his friend, ford prefect, is not making things any easier by explaining to arthur that his house is the least of his problems. well, i won't give away the whole storyline (and i'm glad that no one ever gave it away to me.. being that i should have read this book ages ago) but arthur ends up on a galaxy-wide romp with a two-headed alien, zaphod beeblebrox, his girlfriend, trillian, ford prefect, and the "paranoid android" (and i laughed when i read this because i love that track on OK computer), marvin. to be honest—to all of those people who can't stand sci-fi—there's really not much science here. just plenty of fiction. it's more about finding yourself in a really strange situation and laughing through it all. one of my favorite quotes is:

"it is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. for instance, on the planet earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, new york, wars and so on—while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. but conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons."

yeah, i guess to the dolphins we look like we're just mucking about in the water now, eh?

well, very little to tell the truth. seriously, i enjoyed this book to no end. i ripped through it in less than a week because it's written in a very simple style. now, this is not a bad thing (let me say that again! it's not bad to write simple sentences over long and tedious ones.) it's one reason that i love j.k. rowling so much. write for your audience! and her audience is children and all-be-it children-at-heart. i expected a bit more from a sci-fi book, though, because all of my experiences with sci-fi have been with frank herbert, arthur c. clarke, orson scott card, isaac asimov, etc.. highly educated men who wield the english language like a well-balanced spear. this book i would say is a little more comedy than sci-fi which is why i'll stick it in both categories. i think that more could have been done to flush out some of the humor and details which is why it falls short of a 10 for me, but maybe i'll change my mind after reading some of the other books in the series. oh, and be sure to check out the movie this summer! alan rickman (love alan.. can't say enough good things about that man) is the voice of marvin, the paranoid android. ha! looking forward to that.