So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

The fourth volume, and the odd one out: Arthur Dent comes home to an Earth that was demolished in book one and is now inexplicably there again, and the book becomes a love story set mostly in England. The science fiction is thinner and the sentiment thicker than anywhere else in the series, which is exactly why it divides readers — this is the volume where Adams was more interested in a person than in a joke about the galaxy.

Context: Carded from the a16z list’s five-volume Hitchhiker entry. Worth reading in sequence: the payoff of the book’s central discovery about the dolphins depends on remembering how the first book opened.

Connections

• a16z Infra Reading List — where this is listed, in the top tier.
• Douglas Adams — the author.
• Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy — volume one, already read.
• Life, the Universe and Everything — volume three.
• Mostly Harmless — volume five.
• Science Fiction — the genre.