I Read: So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, by Douglas Adams, was published in 1984.

It’s the fourth book in a five-part trilogy.

(There is a sixth book in the trilogy, but it wasn’t written by Douglas Adams. I don’t plan on reading it.)

I downloaded it from the Seattle Public Library.

It was 256 ePages on my phone.

The Prologue of this book is (I think) a word-for-word copy of the beginning of the Prologue from the first book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

The Prologue introduces us to an unremarkable planet orbiting around an unregarded sun in the unfashionable end of the Galaxy. That planet no longer exists.

This planet was inhabited by species of ape-descendants so primitive that they thought digital watches were a great idea.

One Thursday, a girl sitting in a small café in Rickmansworth finally realized what had gone wrong. She knew how to make the world a better place. A catastrophe happened before she had a chance to tell anyone.

The Prologue to Hitchhiker’s Guide includes: “This is not her story.”

The Prologue to this book ends with: “This is her story.”

A spaceship lands on Earth, in heavy rain.  A ramp descends, and a figure emerges. The spaceship starts to take off, and the figure realizes that they forgot their towel. They manage to retrieve the towel before the spaceship leaves.

Rob McKenna is driving a lorry loaded with Danish thermostatic radiator controls. He identifies the weather as rain type 17. He’s identified 231 types of rain, and he’s cataloged them all in a little book.

Rob McKenna is a “miserable bastard.” He knows it, and so does everyone else.

Rob McKenna sees a hitchhiker on the side of the road ahead. He deliberately plows through a puddle and drenches the already soaked figure. He feels good about that. Then he feels bad about feeling good. Then he feels good about feeling bad about feeling good.

In the Old Pink Dog Bar on the lower south side of Han Dold City, Ford Prefect has racked up a sizeable bar tab. He tries to pay with his American Express credit card. The bartender refuses to accept it, because he has no idea what that piece of plastic is. But, Ford knows, being a field researcher for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has its privileges, even though it’s not supposed to. There are loopholes.

Ford is proud of the entry he wrote for Earth, the planet where he’d spent fifteen years: “Mostly harmless.” He’d been paid a lot of money for that two-word entry. Tonight, there is going to be an update to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Ford is saddened by the thought that, since Earth has been completely destroyed, his marvelous entry will be deleted.

Ford watches as the update begins. He’s puzzled by seeing that his entry, rather than being deleted, has been replaced by several pages of actually useful information for aliens visiting Earth. (For aquatic species, New York City’s East River is full of valuable nutrients.)

One thousand, four hundred and thirty-seven light-years away from Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent is in the back seat of a Saab. He’s sitting next to a beautiful girl – or maybe it’s just that she’s the first female of his own species that he’s seen in years. The girl’s brother is driving. His name is Russell, and he insists that his sister is okay – she’s just drugged. It’s not recreational drugs, he explains, she’s under sedation. Russell’s sister’s name is Fenny.

It’s been eight years since Arthur Dent left Earth, moments before yellow Vogon ships destroyed the planet. And yet, here he is, back on Earth.

Russell explains to Arthur that Fenny is under the delusion that she’s living in the real world. She was in a small café in Rickmansworth when she went “barking mad.” According to Russell, the whole world had been the victim of a CIA drug experiment that made everyone hallucinate that there were big yellow ships in the sky. But as soon as the drug wore off, the big yellow ships vanished. But it effected Fenny differently. For her, the drug never completely wore off. She’d stood up in that café, calmly announced that she’d had a revelation. Then she collapsed, screaming.

Arthur is dumbfounded – the big yellow ships vanished?

Russell is annoyed that Arthur doesn’t seem to know about the big yellow ships, their appearance and disappearance. Where has he been all this time? They pass a lorry marked “McKenna’s All-Weather Haulage.”

Russell drops off Arthur, and drives away. Arthur walks to the pub where he and Ford Prefect had those last pints before the Earth was destroyed. Everything is exactly the same as he remembers it. Is this Earth? How can it still be here?

Arthur walks to his house, which hasn’t been demolished. He retrieves his hidden key. He has to shove the door open, because it’s being blocked by eight years of junk mail. The electricity is still on. (This is logical. The electricity gets cut off every time Arthur pays his bill, so it makes sense that it would still be on after not paying his bill for eight years.)

Arthur realizes that he’s lost his copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Everything inside is house is as was before it, and the Earth, had been demolished – except for that box.

Inside the box is an amazingly beautiful bowl, engraved with the words, “So long, and thanks…” Arthur fills the bowl with water, and shakes the babel fish out of his ear into it.

Arthur Dent changes out of the muddy bathrobe that he’s been wearing for eight years, and thinks about Fenny.

That’s about 25% of the book.

Arthur does happen upon Fenchurch. (Only Russell calls her Fenny, and she hates the nickname.) Arthur loses her number, and then happens upon her again, in a way that could only happen in this series.

I was concerned, and curious, about how this book was going to continue the story, after the trilogy wrapped up so nicely. But, of course, it did the most illogical thing: It reset the story, and shifted from science fiction to a romance between Arthur and Fenchurch, set on Earth, while keeping the references from the trilogy. It worked.

Arthur and Fenchurch are perfect for each other.

Arthur Dent is the happiest he’s been in eight years. He impulsively walks into a Greenpeace office and says he wants to contribute money toward freeing the dolphins. “‘Very funny,’ they told him, ‘go away.’“

Arthur learns of a man in California, named John Watson, although he prefers to be called Wonko the Sane. He’s a scientist, and he’s supposed to be an expert on the dolphins. Arthur and Fenchurch agree that they need to speak with this man.

Fenchurch’s parents named her after the Fenchurch Street railway station, in London. The book never tells us her last name.

Rob McKenna shows up often. He seems to be a side plot that goes nowhere.

Trillian is mentioned several times, but she never appears in the story.

Zaphod Beeblebrox doesn’t appear in the story, either. He’s mentioned once or twice.

At the end of Chapter 25, the author steps in to tell us that if we want to read about Marvin the Paranoid Android, we should skip ahead to the last chapter (Chapter 40). Marvin does appear there, and it’s awesome.

I don’t know if this book is any more chaotic than the previous three books, but it felt like it was. It’s full of side plots and random stories. It jumps around from topic to topic.

There were many things I didn’t like about this story, but there were many more that I did like about it.

Overall, I liked this book a lot.