Copyright © 2009 Flaming Dog Media, LLC. All rights reserved.

The Spirit of Douglas Adams Lives

And Another Thing...
Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Part Six of Three

by Eion Colfer
Hyperion, 2009
cover design by Shubhani Sarkar

9 out of 10

Firstly, let’s address one little sniggling thing: everyone died at the end of the last Douglas Adams tome, right? But their deaths were not recorded. The last scenes involving our intrepid heroes show them in the bar accepting their untimely demise.

But we never see them die.

It’s a very big – mostly harmless – loophole that Eion Colfer uses to open up the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy saga. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Mark II creates entire lifetimes in the minds of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian Astra, and Random Dent. And when the Guide 2.0 runs low on battery power, the gang realizes life is still actually blowing up around them in the bar. So we pick up where we left off – and in typical Adams fashion, in a fit of improbability, Galactic President Zaphod Beeblebrox shows up to whisk them away on a new adventure in the Heart of Gold.

This review is going to be relatively spoiler free, even though there’s a good chance you’ve read the book by now. But for those who haven’t yet, you should.

Now with his second head plugged into the ship, Zaphod takes the group on a wild journey to find a purpose, and along the way they encounter Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, an immortal alien with a knack for insulting everyone he encounters. Wowbagger would like nothing more than to be mortal and die, so Zaphod seizes the opportunity and heads off to recruit Thor, figuring he can kill two birds with one stone: Get Wowbagger dead, and finally get Thor’s forgiveness for that awful on-line video…

And in the meantime, the Vogons have learned of an Earth colony, and make their way to the planet Nano, where Hillman Hunter is interviewing to hire a god for the colony (Cthulu even makes an appearance…).

In the tradition of Douglas Adams, Colfer weaves a fun, energetic story that takes us from Nano to Asgard and back, even to the depths of dark space. It’s a story populated by self-absorbed gods, self-righteous politicians, and a self-serving Galactic President who happens to get a few things right by accident.

When it was first announced that someone else would be playing in the Adams sand box, I know a lot of people felt a great deal of trepidation. Would it be up to snuff? Who could follow in the footsteps of Douglas Adams? But Eion Colfer does a great job staying in the style and tone of the previous Hitchhiker novels, while telling a fresh story that doesn’t feel forced. It doesn’t feel like Colfer’s imitating Adams . The book has a unique voice, but it’s very much related to the others. The only thing I wasn’t too keen on was the sub-plot with the Nanites (the people of the planet Nano, I mean). It almost seemed tacked on, and didn’t feel as fully developed as the rest of the story.

There may be a few too many Guide entries, but they fit the flow of the book, and don't distract too much from the overall pacing of the book. And the scenes with Thor show a history between him and Zaphod that clearly goes back a ways. Colfer adeptly integrates events of the day into the Hitchhiker's mythos - adding embarrassing on-line videos, the concept of the Internet in the form of the Sub-Etha, and the idea that most elected officials let the power go to their heads...

All in all, though, it’s a good book, and I heartily recommend it.