The first of Douglas Adams' five-part trilogy (I know), The Hitchhiker's Guide is an iconic cosmic farse. It is endlessly inventive in its absurd humor, occasionally in a self-referential way. The work has everything from depressed robots to sarcastic half-page footnotes to a Hitchhiker's Guide existing in-universe.

More than any of that, though, Adams' novella is distinctly existential in both its presentation and humor. The prose is gorgeous, and impressively so given the weight that it carries with it: a sincere, postmodern argument to do with the nature of ontology itself... and whales.

I was largely impressed with the humor slewn throughout, and while a couple jokes fell painfully flat for me, that's something I can forgive. The ratio of hits to misses would make Adams a formidable batter. Still, there are a few points of redundancy that I picked up on, and the narrative tension is handled with not-infrequent clumsiness. But that point may be entirely moot—not only is the plot tertiary in importance here, but in one instance, its inconsistency is explicitly mentioned in a soft fourth wall break.

What I find most impressive of all is the effectiveness of the worldbuilding. It is ludicrously cartoonish and relatively insincere, but I still found myself caring about the universe and its quirks. There are so many small treasures sprinkled throughout which never leave their introductory paragraphs. Each one adds something, though, and they add up.

This is not hard sci-fi, not at all, but leaning into real sciences would have certainly been to its detriment. The misadventurous engine works best if you suspend your disbelief entirely. Allow it conceits and contrivances; it will reward you for it.

All in all, I think this is a wonderful book that deserves nearly all of the praise it's received. It's short, sweet, and mildly substantive enough to make for a great reading experience. How improbable.

- Lebenaut