Douglas Adams: The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Kartoniert / Broschiert

Beschreibung

At last in paperback in one complete volume, here are the five classic novels from Douglas Adams's beloved Hitchiker series.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide . Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Facing annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.
Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky - so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription conspires to thrust him back to reality. So to speak.
Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

Rezension

"WITH DROLL WIT, A KEEN EYE FOR DETAIL AND HEAVY DOSES OF INSIGHT . . . ADAMS MAKES US LAUGH UNTIL WE CRY."
- San Diego Union
"LIVELY, SHARPLY SATIRICAL, BRILLIANTLY WRITTEN . . . RANKS WITH THE BEST SET PIECES IN MARK TWAIN."
- The Atlantic

Klappentext

In one complete volume, here are the five classic novels from Douglas Adams's beloved Hitchhiker series.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read)
Seconds before the Earth is demolished for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is saved by Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised Guide. Together they stick out their thumbs to the stars and begin a wild journey through time and space.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
The moment before annihilation at the hands of warmongers is a curious time to crave tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his comrades as they hurtle across the galaxy in a desperate search for a place to eat.

Life, the Universe and Everything
The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky- so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals can avert Armageddon: mild-mannered Arthur Dent and his stalwart crew.

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
Back on Earth, Arthur Dent is ready to believe that the past eight years were all just a figment of his stressed-out imagination. But a gift-wrapped fishbowl with a cryptic inscription thrusts him back to reality. So to speak.

Mostly Harmless
Just when Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life, all hell breaks loose. Can he save the Earth from total obliteration? Can he save the Guide from a hostile alien takeover? Can he save his daughter from herself?

Includes the bonus story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe"

"With droll wit, a keen eye for detail and heavy doses of insight . . . Adams makes us laugh until we cry."-San Diego Union-Tribune

"Lively, sharply satirical, brilliantly written . . . ranks with the best set pieces in Mark Twain."-The Atlantic

Auszüge aus dem Buch

What Was He Like,
Douglas Adams?
He was tall, very tall. He had an air of cheerful diffidence. He
combined a razor-sharp intellect and understanding of what
he was doing with the puzzled look of someone who had
backed into a profession that surprised him in a world that
perplexed him. And he gave the impression that, all in all, he was rather
enjoying it.
He was a genius, of course. It's a word that gets tossed around a lot
these days, and it's used to mean pretty much anything. But Douglas was
a genius, because he saw the world differently, and more importantly, he
could communicate the world he saw. Also, once you'd seen it his way
you could never go back.
Douglas Noel Adams was born in 1952 in Cambridge, England (shortly
before the announcement of an even more influential DNA, deoxyribonucleic
acid). He was a self-described "strange child" who did not learn
to speak until he was four. He wanted to be a nuclear physicist ("I never
made it because my arithmetic was so bad"), then went to Cambridge to
study English, with ambitions that involved becoming part of the tradition
of British writer / performers (of which the members of Monty Python's
Flying Circus are the best-known example).
When he was eighteen, drunk in a field in Innsbruck, hitchhiking across
Europe, he looked up at the sky filled with stars and thought, "Somebody
ought to write the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." Then he went to
sleep and almost, but not quite, forgot all about it.
He left Cambridge in 1975 and went to London where his many writ-ing
and performing projects tended, in the main, not to happen. He
worked with former Python Graham Chapman writing scripts and sketches
for abortive projects (among them a show for Ringo Starr which contained
the germ of Starship Titanic) and with writer-producer John Lloyd
(they pitched a series called Snow Seven and the White Dwarfs, a comedy
about two astronomers in "an observatory on Mt. Everest - "The idea
for that was minimum casting, minimum set, and we'd just try to sell the
series on cheapness").
He liked science fiction, although he was never a fan. He supported
himself through this period with a variety of odd jobs: he was, for example,
a hired bodyguard for an oil-rich Arabian family, a job that entailed
wearing a suit and sitting in hotel corridors through the night listening to
the ding of passing elevators.
In 1977 BBC radio producer (and well-known mystery author) Simon
Brett commissioned him to write a science fiction comedy for BBC Radio
Four. Douglas originally imagined a series of six half-hour comedies
called The Ends of the Earth - funny stories which at the end of each, the
world would end. In the first episode, for example, the Earth would be
destroyed to make way for a cosmic freeway.
But, Douglas soon realized, if you are going to destroy the Earth, you
need someone to whom it matters. Someone like a reporter for, yes, the
Hitchchiker's Guide to the Galaxy . And someone else . . . a man who was
called Alaric B in Douglas's original proposal. At the last moment Douglas
crossed out Alaric B and wrote above it Arthur Dent. A normal name
for a normal man.
For those people listening to BBC Radio 4 in 1978 the show came as a
revelation. It was funny - genuinely witty, surreal, and smart. The series
was produced by Geoffrey Perkins, and the last two episodes of the first
series were co-written with John Lloyd.
(I was a kid who discovered the series - accidentally, as most listeners
did - with the second episode. I sat in the car in the driveway, getting
cold, listening to Vogon poetry, and then the ideal radio line "Ford,
you're turning into an infinit