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| Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Trilogy) | 
| Author: Douglas Adams
Publisher: Del Rey
Category: Book
List Price: $7.99
Buy Used: $0.01
You Save: $7.98 (100%)
New (45) Collectible (6) from $2.95
Avg. Customer Rating:  106 reviews
Sales Rank: 91225
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 240
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.5 x 4.2 x 0.6
ISBN: 0345391829
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780345391827
ASIN: 0345391829
Publication Date: September 27, 1995
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Also Available In:
| • | Hardcover - Life, The Universe and Everything | | • | Audio Download - Life, The Universe and Everything | | • | Hardcover - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Paperback - Life, The Universe And Everything: The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy 3 | | • | Paperback - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Paperback - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Hardcover - Life The Universe and Everything | | • | Hardcover - Life, the Universe and Everything (Gollancz S.F.) | | • | Turtleback - Life, the Universe, and Everything | | • | Paperback - Life, the Universe and Everything (Hitchhiker's Trilogy) | | • | Paperback - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Paperback - Life, The Universe, and Everything (Hitchhiker's Trilogy #3) | | • | Mass Market Paperback - LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING (Hitchhiker's Trilogy) | | • | Audio CD - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio Cassette - Life, the Universe and Everything: Complete & Unabridged (Word for Word) | | • | Unknown Binding - Life, the Universe and Everything (Word for Word) | | • | Hardcover - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Library Binding - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio Cassette - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio CD - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio CD - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | School & Library Binding - Life, The Universe And Everything (Hitchhiker's Trilogy) | | • | Library Binding - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio Cassette - Life, the Universe and Everything/Audio Cassette (Hitchhiker's Trilogy) | | • | Audio Cassette - Life, the Universe, and Everything | | • | Audio Cassette - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio CD - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Audio CD - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Hardcover - Life, the Universe and Everything (Millennium Miniature Editions) | | • | Audio Download - Life, the Universe and Everything | | • | Unknown Binding - Life, the universe and everything | | • | Audio Download - Life, the Universe, and Everything: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Book 3 (Unabridged) | | • | Hardcover - Life, the Universe and Everything |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
"HYSTERICAL!"
--The Philadelphia Inquirer
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the white killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation.
They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler, who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vicepresident of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox.
How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!
"ADAMS IS ONE OF THOSE RARE TREASURES: an author who, one senses, has as much fun writing as one has reading."
--The Arizona Daily Star
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| Customer Reviews: Read 101 more reviews...
 A series losing steam... November 14, 2008
And it's a real shame given the potential of the first two books, which are both fun, quick reads. As the featured review states, this title is less focused on the sci-fi and philosophical underpinnings of the first two books. Instead, Adams here maintains sequences that hinge on bizarre chains of events and silly, ponderous exchanges between characters who have less and less of an idea as to what exactly is happening around them. These felt a long 200+ pages indeed.
The bon mots and clever passages are fewer and further between than the previous two installments. In fact, much of this book is rather uninspired and infuriating... the Krikkit robots, the Bistromathematics, the reincarnations of the hapless multiple-murder victim Agrajag, none of the set pieces gave me more than a brief chuckle. Much of what aims to pass for characteristic Adams whimsy feels perfunctory, and the string of coincidences that form the crux of the plot are truly slapdash.
The highlights for me here are Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged's perpetual misanthropy and what amounts to the only real meat of the book--the story of the reason why the ultimate question and answer of the universe are (putatively) mutually exclusive. Thus leading to "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish". But nothing here matches the humor of, for instance, the truly inspired chapter containing the Hitchhiker's Guide's entry on The Universe in "Restaurant at the End of the Universe".
When Adams is working with less inspired ideas, his inability to write characters as anything but vehicles for punchlines and guttural confusions is trying. Vonnegut, while a weak painter of convincing personalities, instills a sense of humanity and pathos in the proceedings that eludes Adams. Some sense of feeling and sympathy, perhaps, plays foil to the general absurdity of exposition and content in Vonnegut. This is why he's a better read if you're comparing the two as I feel prone to do, and one of several reasons I'm not too concerned with making it through the fourth and final book in this series.
Silly but there's always a message July 17, 2008
I'm a latecomer to the "Hitchhiker's Trilogy", and just finished the series. "Life, the Universe, and Everything" is a bit less funny only because the humour and style is the same as the previous books. And seems to be less "meat" in this one. Still, in with all the silliness there are comments about war and xenophobia, as well as the reasons for space travel. Considering how many lives and how much money are sacrificed or spent by the human race on these issues, a topical but funny book about them is welcome relief: laughing a bit instead of crying is allowed.
I have no idea why they changed the cover. The original cover with an eyeless green monster sticking out its tongue made much more sense.
 A Big Thirll in the Triology April 27, 2008
Life, the Universe, and Everything is one of the best books in the Hitchhiker's Series. However, you must read the 2 previous books in the series in order to understand this book.
The story continues on from where the Restaurant at the End of the Universe left off. Arthur Dent is stranded on prehistoric Earth, and is very bored, so he decides to go insane. Just after he announces that, his best friend Ford Prefect suddenly appears and stops him from making this decision. Ford pulls him through an eddy, or time portal to Lord's Cricket Ground 2 days before Earth is to be demolished by the Vogons. During the middle of a cricket game, a group of white robots suddenly appear and steal the Ashes, or the trophy given to the winning cricket team. Luckily, Slartibartfast lets the two hitch a ride with him and help him chase the robots. He tells them about planet Krikkit's history. The Kirkkiters were once peaceful creatures. They thought they were the only beings in the Universe because their sun was blocked by a dust cloud, so the sky remains dark all day long. That is, unitl one day, when a spaceship crash lands on Krikkit. After the residents learn about other races besides themselves, they decide to murder all other races in the Universe.
So will the universe end, or will Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Slartibartfast save the Universe? The answer: hard to say, because remember that things don't always end happily in this series!
I recommend this book to everyone who loves comedy or science fiction.
Even better than the first two November 30, 2007
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of the better installments in the Hitchhiker's Guide series, this one has a much-improved plot over the first two, which is simultaneously self-contained (if you take for granted the opening set-up) and plays an important role in the wider story of the series.
Adams does continue the somewhat strange practice of throwing in random bits that aren't so much "science"-fiction as just pure nonsense--Agrajag's ongoing reincarnation and coincidental persecution at the hands of Arthur, for instance, or Arthur's learning to fly, or Thor. But as silly as some of these elements are, they are done much better this time around, and actually relevant to the story (both in this book and in the series as a whole). In general, there are far fewer disconnected episodes here in which it seems that Adams is just ranting; instead, everything fits naturally into the story, a clear mark of good plotting. That's not to say that there aren't any plot-holes, or that the story doesn't take completely wild veering turns, but that suits the nature of the work just fine.
This book continues Adams' trademark off-the-wall humor, but in new even wilder forms, and to great effect. The main self-contained story about the planet Krikkit is great, and all of the side-stories tie in quite nicely, with the one exception of Zaphod's endless sulking, which does grow tiresome after a while. Another sub-plot involving the longest party in the universe excellently brings the various characters' storylines together toward the end. And of course, everybody loves Agrajag.
Nothing new here November 26, 2007
Adams continues to produce laughs here, but this volume begins to repackage material from the first two books. You have the same type of jokes, situations, randomness and plot twists here from the previous books. While those things were hilarious the first time around, they lose some of their impact on the second and third helpings. Fans of the series will enjoy this volume, but I found it to be less satisying than the first two novels in the series. While I've enjoyed the journey so far, this book does not motivate me sufficiently to read the rest of the series. I can only recommend this book if you loved the first two.
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