Mostly Harmless

Mostly Harmless-Douglas Adams

How I found this book: I read it immediately after So, Long, and Thanks for all the Fish.

Setting: In a parallel universe to the one we’ve come to know, Trillian never left Earth with Zaphod, no one knows anyone else, and pretty much everything is different…oh, and there is an alternate Trillian. I am so confused.

Main Characters:

Tricia McMillan: Tricia never left earth with Zaphod, she is a TV news anchor on Earth who he sought out by aliens looking to use her knowledge to help them create a working model of the solar system.

Arthur Dent: After losing Fenny in a hyperspace traveling accident, Arthur wallows in depression, and takes to hitchhiking again till he settles on a planet a random planet, Lamuella, where he is a sandwich maker. He is the unwitting father of Random, Trillian’s daughter, and is left to take care of her when Trillian dumps her on his doorstep.

Trillian: The Trillian we know, (I think), like her alternative counter-part, has had a career in journalism, and decided to become a mother. Since Arthur was the only creature in the universe for a while who was left of her species, she decided to use his donated sperm to have a daughter. When her career calls, though, and her daughter starts to irritate her, she dumps Random with Arthur and leaves.

Ford Prefect: Despite his previous grievance with the Guide, Ford has returned to work there, but is annoyed with the Guide’s new image. He eventually get’s his hands on the new, enhanced version of the guide and sends it to Arthur, where it is stolen by his daughter in a fit of teenage angst.

Random: The teenaged daughter of Trillian and Arthur, (by insemination), she is an angry, whiney teenager, who resents her jet-setting mother’s neglect of her, and this new ‘father’ that she is thrust upon. She takes off with the new Guide, using its powers to go to an alternate version of her parents home world, where she runs into the alternate Tricia McMillan, her mother, but not

Plot: Arthur has lost his beloved Fenny, and has settled on a planet as a sandwich maker. Unbeknownst to him, Trillian, the only other human to have survived the original Earth’s destruction, has had herself inseminated with his sperm, so that she could have a child. However, she apparently was ill-prepared for motherhood, and as her career in galactic journalism takes off, she dumps her angry, whining teenager named Random off on Arthur to raise while she pursues other things. A first time father to a teenage daughter, Arthur obviously is going to mangle this, especially when Ford Prefect sends him a mysterious package. When Random takes off with it, it forces Arthur, Trillian, and Ford to chase after her as she goes to an alternate Earth, where her mother never left with Zaphod. Everything climaxes to this point, when Arthur realizes that there is nothing else left really, and you have to let fate take its course.


Themes:

The randomness of life: It’s strange how different ones life can be all based on one decision that they made. Trillian’s life would have been very different had she delayed in following Zaphod into outer space. Life after Zaphod she is a successful TV reporter, but Life without him, she is a struggling one, who randomly meets aliens out to destroy the Earth.

Death, and well the end of all things, is inevitable: Arthur knew, thanks to a twist of fate, he wasn’t supposed to die until a certain point. Once that point is reached, knows that his death is ultimately inevitable. So too is the end of the world, which has come back, time and time again, in different universes and incarnations. Everything has its end at some point.

Corporations are evil: All of us poor saps who work for one know that, but Ford’s struggle with the publishers of the Guide sums up Adams belief in corporations, and it is amusing seeing how one man tries to bring them down…even if it is in little ways.

Every book sucks somewhere: I personally think most of this book sucks. The story is confusing, the whole ‘alternate planet’ aspect of it all was a bit pointless, and at the end of it all you feel that it was a bit hopeless, and sort of ‘what was the point’. I wasn’t sure I understood why Trillian was such an unfeeling bitch concerning her own daughter, who apparently she had some need to conceive artificially. And why dump her on poor Arthur, who had no decision in the baby-making process at all, (unlike most of these sorts of pregnancies). And then to end everything so completely like that, for no particular reason, it made one feel that Adams was sick with the series and wanted to end it than gave us, the reader, any sort of conclusion.

What did I like: I liked very little of this book. It really was a disappointment for me.

How would I rate this wormy book: As much as I love the other books, I rate this one as a MAGGOT, don’t even turn it up with a toe. I feel as if Adams gave into pressure to churn out another Hitchhiker book, and sort of spewed out something that neither he nor the fans liked much. It is a pity he passed away, (Creator rest his soul), before he could remedy the situation.