The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
“There is a theory which states that if every anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another which states that this has already happened”
So begins the second book of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (technically a trilogy of five books.)
To recap: Earth has been blown up by Vogons to make way for a hyperspace bypass and plain old human Arthur Dent is taken on an adventure with a friend he previously didn’t know was an alien: Ford Prefect. Ford and Arthur run into Ford’s semi-cousin, Zaphod Beeblebrox and his girlfriend (and the only other human left alive) Trillian. They have escaped the lost planet of Margrathea and the mice that want Arthur’s brain because he knows the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. That’s because Earth was a computer built to find this question and it blew up 10 minutes before the discovery. They are to be on their way to eat at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Hence the name of this book.
We open with the Vogons preparing to blast away at the spaceship our heroes (if you can call them that) are travelling on. The Heart of Gold (the ship) also contains the Improbability Drive (which means that the higher the probability of something not happening is, the likelier it is to happen.)
After contacting Zaphod Beeblebrox’s dead great-grandfather, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth (to quote: There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine) the stage has been set to put into motion the idea Zaphod has locked away in his brain.
Zaphod gets zapped to the Hitchhiker’s Guide headquarters, kidnapped by the inhabitants of Frogstar World A and taken to Frogstar World B (a desolate, empty place) where he is to go into the Total Perspective Vortex (which shows you just how big the Universe is and how small you really are.) Turns out he entered an alternate reality controlled by guy sitting in an abandoned space cruiser waiting for Zaphod so they could go meet the man who Rules the Universe. You can only get there by using the Improbability Drive.
They go, they meet, they leave this guy there and go to the Restaurant and the End of the Universe (which means you have to jump forward in time), steal a rockstar’s stuntship (which is set to crash into the sun, and they have to go backward in time) and teleport off of it into different places. Zaphod and Trillian end up back on the Heart of Gold, but Ford and Arthur end up two million years in the past on a spaceship set to crash onto prehistoric Earth. This is where it ends.
It still has awesome excerpts from the Guide, that tell you all sorts of relevant (and rambling) information about certain bits of the situations. Like, how you are supposed to actually talk if you travel in time, taking into account all of the tenses and things.
The plot is just as interesting and twisted and jumpy and contradictory and coincidental as we’ve come to expect. But it’s a little dryer that normal here, not quite as laugh-out-loud funny and a little harder to read.
Still good, however
There is another which states that this has already happened”
So begins the second book of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series (technically a trilogy of five books.)
To recap: Earth has been blown up by Vogons to make way for a hyperspace bypass and plain old human Arthur Dent is taken on an adventure with a friend he previously didn’t know was an alien: Ford Prefect. Ford and Arthur run into Ford’s semi-cousin, Zaphod Beeblebrox and his girlfriend (and the only other human left alive) Trillian. They have escaped the lost planet of Margrathea and the mice that want Arthur’s brain because he knows the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. That’s because Earth was a computer built to find this question and it blew up 10 minutes before the discovery. They are to be on their way to eat at The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Hence the name of this book.
We open with the Vogons preparing to blast away at the spaceship our heroes (if you can call them that) are travelling on. The Heart of Gold (the ship) also contains the Improbability Drive (which means that the higher the probability of something not happening is, the likelier it is to happen.)
After contacting Zaphod Beeblebrox’s dead great-grandfather, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth (to quote: There was an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine) the stage has been set to put into motion the idea Zaphod has locked away in his brain.
Zaphod gets zapped to the Hitchhiker’s Guide headquarters, kidnapped by the inhabitants of Frogstar World A and taken to Frogstar World B (a desolate, empty place) where he is to go into the Total Perspective Vortex (which shows you just how big the Universe is and how small you really are.) Turns out he entered an alternate reality controlled by guy sitting in an abandoned space cruiser waiting for Zaphod so they could go meet the man who Rules the Universe. You can only get there by using the Improbability Drive.
They go, they meet, they leave this guy there and go to the Restaurant and the End of the Universe (which means you have to jump forward in time), steal a rockstar’s stuntship (which is set to crash into the sun, and they have to go backward in time) and teleport off of it into different places. Zaphod and Trillian end up back on the Heart of Gold, but Ford and Arthur end up two million years in the past on a spaceship set to crash onto prehistoric Earth. This is where it ends.
It still has awesome excerpts from the Guide, that tell you all sorts of relevant (and rambling) information about certain bits of the situations. Like, how you are supposed to actually talk if you travel in time, taking into account all of the tenses and things.
The plot is just as interesting and twisted and jumpy and contradictory and coincidental as we’ve come to expect. But it’s a little dryer that normal here, not quite as laugh-out-loud funny and a little harder to read.
Still good, however