The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Hi, today’s entry is going to talk about this course book called “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” published in 1979 by Douglass Adams. This book is literally a journey through space. The main character Arthur Dent escaped from the Earth with Ford Prefect (the actual writer for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy) because it was going to be destroyed. Arthur and Ford escaped on a Vogon ship (the ones who destroyed the Earth), but they were blasted into space and caught by another ship piloted by Zaphod Beeblebox, the king of the universe. That ship was both stolen and special because it has the “improbability drive” that literally functions as it sounds, with improbability. Thanks to that ship ability they arrived at a legend planet called Magrathea, where they found all the truth. That planet was the home of a computer built to find the answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Guess what? The answer is 42 and the Earth was another super-computer built to find the exact question to that answer.
To be honest, I didn’t like this book so much. It was like driving lost, I wasn’t sure about what to expect as I was reading each chapter. Also, I didn’t find any relationship with the course content. But the proposal that there might be both a question and answer to “everything” really surprised and disturbed me. I think that we, as humans, are always looking for answers to the mystery of life, but is this right? Maybe we just have to live our lives for the moment, because time is our most precious resource and why should we waste it in those things? Sometimes there could be meaningless answers like the one in the book, 42. How could 42 be the answer to life and everything?

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