Hitchhiker's Guide Discussion

Favorite Character: Marvin the Criminally Depressed Robot/Paranoid Android. 'Cuz I feel like him when faced with humanity.

He is absolutely a support character, and probably the best one in this context. I always thought he served to drive home the ultimate futility of existence in this universe to the main characters - whether or not that viewpoint is justified ;).

THHGTTG is one of my favourite series. But I don't see it as science fiction. I think it's a philosophy book set in a comic, cosmic adventure.
The topic is right there in the first paragraph:
"Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this, at a distance of roughly ninety million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet, whose ape descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. This planet has, or had, a problem, which was this. Most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small, green pieces of paper, which is odd, because on the whole, it wasn't the small, green pieces of paper which were unhappy. And so the problem remained, and lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches."
It's about the human condition and how to improve it. And Adams makes it clear that he doesn't think it will be a technical (material) solution.

And even so it isn't science fiction, it is philosophy fiction and deals with questions usually treated poorly in futurism.

The first few books are great and i loved em. But things get a bit too strange and random by about book 3. Marvin has a special leg which kinda makes him fairly important later on as is the heart of gold.

My first experience was with the BBC TV show. love it. I do like the latest movie version. Zaphod is my favourite character by far.

Best quote of the series concerning all versions. "Are you wearing my underwear? Because I'm wearing yours and it an't doing the trick" Zaphod.

Oh and the best idea ever! Get all the telephone cleaners etc on that generation ship stat!

My family watched the BBC series at night when I was little. It was a BIG deal in our house as my parents were BBC sci fi fans and fans of the book. So we watched it on PBS and it was funny to me, but I was too young to get it. I read it in high school and I loved it and my friends would quote it just like we quoted Monty Python.

But I have to be honest, my scientific education really did not begin until after I was in college. I really had no idea what quantum theory was back in the 90s at all. My curiosity just began later in life. So after I had learned as much as someone with a Calc 2 math limit could really go I listened to the books again on Audible. It was only then that I realized that all of this stuff was not just nonsense and funniness...A lot of the book was making fun of the madness that is how the universe works (to the best of our knowledge).

Perhaps I should follow suit then, as I didnt even start learning physics until after my college years. I would likely get more out of watching/reading it now than I have in the past. Thanks for the insight, headed to amazon now :)