Douglas Adams

ust when you thought it was safe to go back to the bookstore, Douglas Adams presents The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
The Time: Infinity
The Place: The Universe
The Survivors: Arthur Dent (Earthling) - a mild-mannered, out-to-lunch space traveler, searching the cosmos for a decent cup of tea. Ford Prefect (alien) - unflappable researcher for the most successful and useful book, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Trillian (earthling) - sexy space cadet who gave Arthur the cold shoulder at a cocktail party; she is now the girl friend of Zaphod Beeblebrox (alien) - two headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe.

This fantastic foursome encounters paranoid androids, existential elevators, improbability drives, and kill-o-zap blasters on an interstellar romp that takes them from a thirty megaton rock concert on Kakrafoon to Milliways, the restaurant at the end of the Universe, where the main dish of the day introduces itself and the floor show is doomsday.

How will it all end? Will they discover the origin of the bathtub? Will they find the significance of gin and tonic? Will they find out the question to the answer 42? For the answers to theses and other cosmic questions, climb aboard and Douglas Adams's zany spaceship and get ready to blast off. Take an improbable ride; your table is ready at The Restaurant at the end of the Universe.

--jacket flap

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Following the smash-hit sci-fi comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe is the second part in Douglas Adams' multi-media phenomenon and cult classic series. This edition includes exclusive bonus material from the Douglas Adams archives, and an introduction by Monty Python star, Terry Jones. If you've done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe? Which is exactly what Arthur Dent and the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do. There's just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. And did anyone actually make a reservation? Follow Arthur Dent's galactic (mis)adventures in the rest of the trilogy with five parts: Life, the Universe and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless.

Not as engaging as The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but still an easy, entertaining read. The structure of the book felt a bit scattered, more like podcasts episodes 

Adams's beloved and enduring sci-fi/comedy classic is now available in this beautiful, clothbound, elegantly presented book, filled with never-before-published material, original scripts from the BBC radio series, and much more to please any fan.

Monicap

Very funny. More thoughts later (hopefully)

Spooky Clair

I did not like this one as much as I did the first. 

It's been many years since I originally read the series. I got about halfway through and started wondering when he was going to get on with it. I still chuckled out loud at some of the jokes, but this one didn't have the life of the original HG2G.

Too much random dialogue and shoegazing -- which is not to say that the rambling dialogue and shoegazing wasn't enjoyable, simply that there was too much of it. 

The best part of this book was Terry Jones' foreword. It really gives the reader a different platform from which to view this book and its flights of absurdity between short speculative sci-fi diary entries, like the neurotic elevator or the time-oscillating restaurant. Now they were dead cool. 

And as Terry Jones says: no one reads Doug for his characters. Has Trillian ever done anything at all yet?

Joe Ross

Maybe not as ruthlessly original as, well, the original, but better than a Vogon poem

Let the naysayers say their nays. Sure, it’s no Hitchikers, but nothing was before that book, and nothing will be again. Unless we’re all living in a loop. In that case, Hitchikers will, eventually, be Hitchikers, again, er, for the first time. 

I read it to my 1- and 3-year-old a little each day or so at bedtime. Maybe I changed some words and skipped a few bits, but they could tell it was pretty silly, for a more a grown-up book than they’re used to. 

Bottom line: It’s worth a read, which is a fair bit better than any of us should be saying about a lot of what’s written these days. 

Including book reviews. 🙃

Sarah Schumacher

This one is a bit hard to follow, but might have to do with the repetition of two chapters in different places in my book. Then again, it might have been on purpose. Time travel is confusing.

Thirty years of celebrating the comic genius of Douglas Adams… 

If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe? Which is exactly what the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do. There’s just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. 

And did anyone actually make a reservation?

--back cover

Wynter

- I'm still not into Adams's humour. The style reminds me of the time when me and my friends in junior high shared a notebook and wrote little humorous stories there. I would write a paragraph and pass it on to my friend, then she would right something and pass it on, and so on until it would just travel in circles, collecting wacky, inconsistent, slapstick-y ramblings of adolescent imaginations. Adams is of course a much better writer than I could ever dream of being, but half of the time I was just like, What's going on??? o_O

- Trillian, is that you? What happened, girl? I barely heard your presence in this book. Loved Zaphod's drunken shenanigans though!

- I got another animal cruelty shock! Last time it was a whale, now it's a cow. Stop killing talking animals in such weird ways, Douglas! 

- I definitely do not regret reading this series, but it's not something I see myself re-reading

In the beginning the universe was created...this made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move. 

You decide. 

Come along on a zany journey to the low-rent neighborhood of the Cosmos with earthling Arthur Dent, sexy space cadet Trillian, that imperturbable alien Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beebelbrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head Honcho of All Creation. 

Don't forget to bring a towel, but don't bother to pack a lunch. You'll be dining at... 

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

--back cover

Michael Springer

I was fifteen or so when I read the Hitchiker's Guide, and for some bizarre reason it took me this long to read the second volume in the series. And I have so many fond memories of Hitchiker's Guide. . . I have no idea why there was such a time lapse there. 

Restaurant at the End of the Universe continues the adventures of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Trillian. Oh, and their depressed robot, whose name I can't recall at the moment. Here is what is important to know about this book: there are several scenes in here that are so hilarious and bizarre that you will never forget them. It is a very readable and fun book. 

I doubt Douglas Adams would be overly concerned about my only complaint about the book, but I will file the complaint nonetheless. By the time this book was over, I was READY for it to be over. And, the book is only slightly over 200 pages. So, why was I ready for it to be over so soon? Because I wasn't getting a sense that the whole thing was going anywhere. There is really no character development in this book, and some of the main characters didn't do anything unique enough for me to develop a mental image of them in my mind. This sense that the characters aren't really going anywhere gives the reader the impression that the BOOK is going nowhere, even though in a literal sense, the book is going pretty much everywhere. Forward and backward through time, into the sun, to Earth and to some very not-Earth places, etc. 

But, it is very much worth reading 200-some pages for the moments of brilliance in this book, such as when they arrive at the restaurant at the end of the universe itself, and the hilarity of the opening scene.

Colleen

4 Stars
 
*A wacky, humorous ride across space and time*
 
Although this series is a bit silly, it is so much fun to read. I love Adams’ snarky sense of humor! Although some elements lean towards absurd, it totally works for the story. Everything is zany, and it makes for one hell of a ride.


  “Arthur Dent was grappling with his consciousness the way one grapples with a lost bar of soap in the bath.”

Adams was also such a creative genius. Perhaps that gets obscured sometimes by the silliness and the way the plot pingpongs around. But there were so many moments where I wondered how he came up with this stuff! And since he already established his universe in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so in the sequel he was able to explore even more.


  “It is worth repeating at this point the theories that Ford had come up with, on his first encounter with human beings, to account for their peculiar habit of continually stating and restating the very very obvious, as in "It's a nice day," or "You're very tall," or "So this is it, we're going to die."

His first theory was that if human beings didn't keep exercising their lips, their mouths probably shriveled up.

After a few months of observation he had come up with a second theory, which was this--"If human beings don't keep exercising their lips, their brains start working.” 

There is also some pointed satire beneath all that gallivanting across the universe. It all fits together into a unique and entertaining story. The only problem I had with this installment is the abrupt ending that sets up for the next book. So the ending was not satisfying. But I did enjoy The Restaurant at the end of the Universe overall.
 
And Don’t Panic; there are more books in the series.

P.S. I couldn't help but hear Marvin in Alan Rickman's voice which made me both happy and sad.

 
RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 4 Stars
Writing Style: 4 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 4 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 3 Stars
Level of Captivation: 4 Stars
Originality: 5 Stars

Nina

Slower than the first one. Still enjoyable but i didn’t have the feeling i was going towards something reading it. The ending did pursue me in reading the third book

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a craving for tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability--and desperately in search of a place to eat. Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a longtime friend and expert contributor to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMillan, a fellow Earth refugee who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, the moody android who suffers nothing and no one very gladly. Their destination? The ultimate hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself.Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that the Hitchhiker's Guide deleted the term "Future Perfect" from its pages, since it was discovered not to be!

Gillian Rose

3.5 stars

Not as good as the first. Amusing, but I also had a hard time figuring out what the actual plot was.

Ryan LaFerney

A sequel to Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe continues to revolve around the life of Arthur Dent, who has found himself in outer space, on The Heart of Gold, being hunted by Vogons, and earth less. Travelling with Ford, Zaphod and Trillian throughout space and time, two questions emerge: firstly, who is the ruler of the known universe? And foremost, where shall we have lunch?
Witty and smart, not to mention, just a bit zany, Adam's combines the improbable with the ordinary. It is an amazing concoction of humour, adventure and philosophy but with a storyline that zig-zags all over the place.
Despite being a fun read, its ideas don't quite live up to Adams' first book in this series. Therefore, I found his ambitions for this novel comparatively underwhelming. There's an exchange between Arthur and Zahpod that sort of sums up my general feeling about the second book
“Look Earthman,” he said angrily, “you’ve got a job to do, right? The Question to the Ultimate Answer, right?”
“What, that thing?” said Arthur. “I thought we’d forgotten about that.”
Martin Freeman narratives the audio book and I must say, it is well worth a listen. Just don't expect to make to much sense of the plot points - it’s the journey not the destination that’s fun here. It's a wacky story, that in the end, leaves our heroes stranded on a pre-historic earth.

In the beginning the universe was created...this made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.

You decide.

Come along on a zany journey to the low-rent neighborhood of the Cosmos with earthling Arthur Dent, sexy space cadet Trillian, that imperturbable alien Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beebelbrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head Honcho of All Creation.

Don't forget to bring a towel, but don't bother to pack a lunch. You'll be dining at...

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
--back cover

Kirsten Simkiss

Upon rereading this book after many years, I still find that this volume of the series is much less iconic than the first volume. However, it's still a very curious addition and certainly in keeping with the series. The book focuses more on Zaphod Beeblebrox than the other characters, though they are all there. It's clever and funny, though I thought the first book to be funnier personally. However, I appreciate how the universe is perceived in a way that it can take a laugh at itself.

This book will be make precisely no sense to you if you don't read the first book, so I highly encourage you to do that first.

Das Restaurant am Ende des Universums

Left Quark

Naja, also Marvin ist immer ein tolles Charakter, Zaphod hat seine Momente, und auch gab es einige lustige Beschreibungen vom Schriftsteller, aber außerdem ist es irgendwie meh 🤷🏾

Gulshan Hasanzada

Really enjoyed it) it's a good book to read , very funny if you have a strange sense of humor.
Don’t panic again and have fun!

Martin Freeman

Fraser Simons

Clever, witty, truly satirical. An absolute pleasure.

Noah Warner

The humor in this series is immaculate... another fine entry in the HHG series, we follow the confusing shenanigans of arthur dent as he travels through the galaxy looking for the meaning of life or something or other. I enjoyed this one about the same as the first book, maybe a little more because of the plot twists and things I picked up on and grinned about realizing what it actually meant.

Eva Korosec

I must say I've preferred the first book, but this one was still a hilarious delight!! Can't wait to read the rest :D

daisy sandon

Eleanor Luhar

This is the second instalment of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, which I'm absolutely in love with.

This novel begins with the Heart of Gold being attacked by the Vogons. You know, as you do. Obviously, nobody on board wants to die (apart from, perhaps, the Paranoid Android). They don't have much time, so Zaphod Beeblebrox does the first thing that comes to his mind; he summons the ghost of his great-grandfather, Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth. 

Zaphod suddenly finds himself in the lobby of the office blocks of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, upon the planet Ursor Minor Beta. To his unfortunate luck, he's accompanied by Marvin, the depressed robot.

Thanks to the locked-off part of his brain (and a few hints from his deceased relative), Zaphod is certain that the reason he is where he is is because he needs to see Zarniwoop - a guy who he is pretty certain he's never met before. Instead, an entire half of the office block is taken to Frostar World B, home of the Total Perspective Vortex. Being in this vortex is the worst fate anyone can suffer; being shown the true size of the Universe and feeling how very tiny you are to it in comparison.

Zaphod is led to the vortex by a disembodied mind, but surprisingly remains unaffected by what he sees. He then finds Zarniwoop on an abandoned airship, and is told that they are not, in fact, in the real world as such.

Anyway, Zaphod discovers that he has been carrying the Heart of Gold within his coat pocket, his friends safely on board. Zarniwoop revives it to its full size, and the crew ask the computer to send them to the nearest place to eat. It turns out that this would be Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. It's located on Frogstar Planet B, but a fair while into the future - at the exact time the universe ends, in fact.

Marvin, having been left alone in the past, finally calls to tell his friends that he has been waiting for them in the car park the whole time. No longer interested in the Heart of Gold or the mission he required it for, Zaphod decides to steal a jet-black ship parked beside the limoship of a famous band. (They happen to be famous not due to their talent, but due to the sheer volume of their concerts.) As luck would have it, this ship is actually the stunt ship used in the band's performances, and as its passengers their fate is to crash into the sun with it.

Using the unfinished transport device on board, the crew are sent safety. Trillian and Zaphod find themselves with Zarniwoop, on their way to interrogate the ruler of the Universe, who happens to live alone in a shack with a cat whom he has dubbed The Lord. Arthur and Ford, however, are aboard a ship full of frozen coffin-like items, which is fleeing a doomed planet and heading for a new home.

Upon this new planet, Ford and Arthur meet the ape-like beings who already live there. With the coming of the new people, these beings begin to die out. Much to Arthur's dismay, as this planet turns out to be Earth two million years before its destruction. And if these native creatures don't survive, then that means the human race is evolved from the idiots that crash landed there.

Desperate to help the natives along their revolutionary path, Arthur attempts to teach them the art of Scrabble. Sadly, this doesn't quite work. All this really achieves is them discovering the Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, which they already knew to be forty-two. What they really want to know is the original Question, which they are certain is not six multiplied by nine.

This sequel is just as fantastically crazy as the first, and I love it just as much! The characters are all very much the same, with their unique personalities and quirks. Arthur's love for tea also plays a huge part in this story...

It's clever in the most absurd way, and as subtly hilarious as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I love it so much, it's definitely in my favourites! Five stars for this book by Douglas Adams.

BookMarked

Alexia

Philosophically funny.
It was a bit slower than the first one, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Eugenia Andino

I'm so boring, I always give the same rating. This book is exactly in the same style as "the Hitchhiker's guide", but it makes the story a little bit clearer. And the dinner at the restaurant is just hilarious.

I loved this book the second time! I think it's actually one of my favorites in the series, because it is where you get the political commentary about ruling the universe. I love Zaphod's arc and the rulDr of the universe. If I'm correct in my recollections, things get crazier from here on out.

I always recommend these books to people and I always warn them that they are "out there" and to not ask continuity questions and just enjoy the ride.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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