The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy I

Most of you will know of this Google trick:

Enter "what is the answer to life, the universe, and everything" as a search word, and the calculator pops up and informs you that the answer to this is 42. Obviously.

That's from a book. Not that Google spits out that answer, but that the answer is 42. The book is insanely famous, and 4 books come after it. Technically 5, but the fifth was written by Eoin Colfer, the Artemis Fowl author, and so I actually don't really count that book as a part of The Series. (Yes, I just capitalized that so it would seem important and meaningful and also because it was fun). We're talking about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, who is very much dead.

Here's a picture of him that I think makes him look like a very friendly person indeed:

Now you can better imagine him, and I can go on. If you feel that my writing style is somewhat strange today, it's because I've started reading The Guide, as I will now start calling it, and it (The Guide) is capitalized because it is still a title, albeit a shortened one, and I do not feel like using italics every time I write The Guide, damn it!

Do forgive me for my rant.

God, I can't believe I just wrote that. It sounds so weird. "Do forgive me". That's something a British person would say.

No offense to the British, of course.

Anyway. Let's focus. Stay on track. Not discuss British accents.

I'm telling you about The Guide because I myself am reading The Guide. Well, not directly The Guide, okay, yes, I'm reading The Guide, but ... okay. Let's simplify this. I am reading The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which is merely a big book with many, waifer-thin (I'm talking Bible page thin) pages - 815 numbered ones, if you really must know.

It contains all 5 of the original, real, Douglas Adams books that follow each other. Their names are not important right now. It also contains an introduction by a certain Neil Gaiman, who I've never heard of, but it said in the book that he is (was?) the (quote): bestselling author of novels like American Gods and Neverwhere (end of quote). There was also some other stuff about graphic novels and a history of Douglas Adams and The Guide, which is probably why he (Gaiman) was chosen to do the introduction. The first title sounded damn familiar to me (the one with the Gods). I'm not looking it up on Wikipedia, though. I've got The Pact firmly in place, thank you. (If you don't know, what The Pact is, check out the Buffy posts I did a while back. The Pact has nothing to do with The Guide. Now relax.)

*Hint: please be aware that in this post, I'm not discussing the book's actual contents with you. I'll do that in later posts. Notice how there is an "I" in this post's title, meaning that the next post in this series will be of the same name but with a "II". Roman numerals, you know?*

So back to our 815 numbered pages, 144 of which belong to the The Guide, I presume, because it says here that the next story starts on page 145, and certainly the publishers would have the decency to start a new book on a new page. I'm currently on Bible-thin page 113, which means I don't have too much left to go. I'd tell you how many pages I still have to read to finish The Guide (which is a reference to the Hitchhikers's Guide, not the Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, please be aware of that). But I have a headache and therefore don't want to do math in my head, and finding an online calculator seems like too much effort to me at the moment.

To make this post more visual (it's been a lot of text and one picture of Douglas Adams up to now), I've included a picture of the cover of The Ultimate Guide, which is not to be confused with The Guide, like I've said before. This is what it looks like: (not my picture, found it online)

There it is, my paperback clunker that bends easily because of it's 815 numbered, extemely thin pages. I'll get back to you on it's contents one of these days.