Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a classic series of science-fiction/humor media that I found myself entirely sucked into. I didn't have time to listen to the radio play, but I had a copy of the collected book series, which I read earlier in the semester. I thought I would just read the first of the books, to get a palette for the humor, but before I knew it, I had read all of the books collected. A combination of the dry wit, the absurd situations, and the downright cynical outlook on the universe kept me engaged, although I felt the final book of the series was frankly just a downer. Hitchhiker's Guide is one of those series that rewards its readers for really paying attention, as it frequently jumps back to previous events and adds new layers of dramatic irony atop, playing it for as much humor as possible. It especially wrenches as much laughs as it can out of the complete and total destruction of the planet Earth, one of the very first events in the story. It mocks the concept of humans considering their existence important, revealing that our creators are essentially just intelligent mice, and that we were only ever the THIRD most intelligent animals on the planet. The series as a whole is perhaps best known today for the classic gag of “the answer to life, the universe, and everything” being 42, where it's pointed out that finding the “answer” is pointless when we don't even know the “question.” Even the numbering of the books mocks the trend for planned trilogies to slip into later books, which the fifth being labelled as “The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy.” The entire series is a delight, no matter what medium I look into with it, and I get the feeling I'll be rereading it every few years to discover what other jokes I may have missed on my first run. Although, perhaps I'll skip “Mostly Harmless,” next time. It's just far too bleak a conclusion for such a silly, lampshade-happy lampoon of a series.
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