Five years after the events on The Restaurant at the End of the
Universe, we find Arthur living alone in prehistoric Earth.
Bored of his simple life, Arthur decides to go mad when Ford Perfect suddenly appears out of nowhere. Ford Perfect, who had also been mad for a while, tells Arthur that his reason for being there is that his Sens-O-Matic has found a feeble signal that he interprets as an Eddy, a pool of instability within the space-time continuum. This Eddy is a Cheshire sofa that transports Arthur and Ford Perfect to the future, two days before Earth is destroyed by Vogons. Here, they are meet by Slartibarfast who was hiding behind a Somebody Else’s Problem. Slartibarfast, who now works for the Real Time Campaign, has come to Earth to save the
universe from an ancient nightmare: the Krikkit War. According to what he tells Arthur and Ford Perfect, Krikkit were peaceful farmers that one day discovered that the Universe existed so they decided to
destroy it in order to be alone again. When the war finished, the government decided to put Krikkit in a Slo-Time that would open when the Universe had finished but a ship full of Krikkit robots disappeared and now are trying to get the Key that opens the Slo-Time. Slartibarfast's plan is to recover the parts of the Key and hide them into space and time, so the robots do not find them again. He enrols Arthur and Ford Perfect to help him and convinces them to accompany him to a strange flying party. Of course they arrive late, as the robots have already the piece of the Key; but fortunately they find Trillian who had left the Golden Heart tired of Zaphod Bebleebrox's moodiness.
Quickly, they travel to Krikkit and arrive just in time to see how the Slo-Time is opened by the robots. Desperate, Slartibarfast goes down to the planet, together with Arthur, Ford Perfect and Trillian, decided to destroy the Krikkit if necessary. It is Trillian's intuition that saves the day as she manages to convince the Krikkit to stop the war and go back to their families. It seems that Hactar, a gigantic computer that the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax consulted in order to have the most destructive weapon of the universe: the supernova bomb, had surrounded the Krikkit planet and convinced its inhabitants to destroy the Universe in order to revenge for the Silastic Armorfiends of Striterax destruction of her physical body. After talking with the computer, our heroes decide to destroy the computer completely by separating the ions that form part of her intelligence not knowing that Hactar has implanted the supernova bomb within Arthur. However, an absurd event saves both Arthur and the Universe from being destroyed.Even being as humorous and funny as the two first books, I found the ending of Life, the Universe and Everything disappointing. Apart from that fact, it is a good book to read, funny, sarcastic and not too long