When Aurthur Dent, hero of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, wakes up in Prehistoric England, announces to no one in particular that he intends to go mad and then finds himself, fifteen minutes later, riding a sofa across a
cricket pitch things may seem strange. But hey, that’s “Life, The
Universe and Everything.”This book actually
moves away from the strong themes of the first two
books. No one cares, at least for a while, that the Earth was blown up. Some of the characters shift around. Zaphod a staple of the earlier books moves almost completely aside while Slartibartfast, who seemed like a cameo in the first book is back for the duration.It seems that a bunch of very nice guys from a planet called Cricket got so upset that they were not the only life forms in the universe that they set out to destroy every living thing in the universe. The universe, after a very long and bloody war that inspired the
games Cricket and Brockian Ultra Cricket, finally locked the Cricketeers away in a slow time envelope to be set free after everyone else was dead.Unfortunately, a squad of Cricket Robot Soldiers has emerged from an eddy in time/
space and is reassembling the key to unlock the gate. The pieces are curiously well placed in the view of the narrative; one is Marvin Manically Depressed Robot’s false leg, one is the Heart of Gold space ship’s main drive.At the point of climax, the story lets down when Marvin, who saved the
day in both of the last two books, up and saves the day. It’s as if Adams wants us to know that while fun and games are fine, it is being bloody miserable that will keep you slogging through the day.
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