Mostly Harmless!

Mostly Harmless is the last Hitchhiker novel by Douglas Adams. (There is one more but I have little interest in right now.) And by all accounts, even that of Adams, it's the least of the batch. This one is one most structured like a traditional novel, evoking the classic Edgar Rice Burroughs technique of bouncing back and forth between characters chapter by chapter. I was most disappointed in this one because it fails to bring forth the character of Fenchurch, the love of Arthur Dent's life who he found int he previous book. Thanks to the wonder of multiple realities she is done away with in a sentence, an ignoble end to a character I found very charming. 

The plot is pretty simple really. Trisha McMillan regrets not going into space with Zaphod Beeblebrox. The Trillian of another universe did that. She's a reporter looking for scoop and finds one when a tenth planet named Rupert appears in the solar system. Meanwhile Arthur ends up on a primitive planet as the resident sandwich maker, a role he relishes, and he seems happy. That is until Trillian (of that other universe) shows up and presents him with a daughter named Random. He tries to make the best of being a dad, but it's made more difficult when Ford Prefect shows up after a escaping the clutches of the Vogons who have taken over the offices which produce the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's more complicated of course but by the end of the book everyone is back on an Earth just before it is once again destroyed. And weirdly the characters seem relatively fine with oblivion. Strange. 

I can see that Adams wanted to make this ending dovetail with the beginning of the first story. It created an elegant worm ourboros affair for the stories, not totally befitting the series, but I have to admit it is a downer. Adams was apparently going through some stuff, and it's reflected in the general grimness of this story. I didn't really detect anything new in this one, save for the section where Arthur is content. I'm glad he found that, at least for a time. I guess that some fans were disappointed we get no more of Zaphod in this one, but I actually pleased by that as he's my least favorite character. A better title for this one might've been "Mostly Pointless", which seems to me to be the main point of this final Adams Hitchhiker yarn. 

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