Mostly Harmless
Encyclopedia
Mostly Harmless is a novel
by Douglas Adams
and the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It is described on the cover of the first editions as "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy". It was the last Hitchhiker's book to be written by Adams, before his death.
discovers that the entry for Earth
in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy consists, in its entirety, of the word "Harmless." His friend Ford Prefect
, a contributor to the Guide, assures him that the next edition will contain the article on Earth that Ford has spent the last 15 years researching—somewhat cut due to space restrictions, but still an improvement. The revised article, he eventually admits, will simply read "Mostly harmless." It later turns out that Ford had written a long essay on how to have fun on Earth, but the editors in the guide's main office building edited everything out. Later in the series, Ford is surprised to discover that all of his contribution had been edited back into the Guide, prompting his reunion with Arthur on the alternative Earth in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
.
, Arthur Dent
and his love interest Fenchurch attempt to sightsee across the Galaxy, but when Fenchurch disappears during a hyperspace jump due to being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy, Arthur becomes depressed and travels the Galaxy alone, raising money to pay his passage by donating his biological material to DNA banks (Mostly sperm, due to it having the highest payout.) He is aware that he cannot die until he visits Stavromula Beta, as was revealed in Life, the Universe and Everything
, by the insane Agrajag. During one journey, his ship crash lands on the planet Lamuella; Arthur survives and finds a simple life, becoming the sandwich maker for the local population.
Meanwhile, Ford Prefect
has returned to the offices of the Hitchhikers' Guide, and is annoyed to find out the original publishing company, Megadodo Publications, has been taken over by InfiniDim Enterprises. Ford discovers that Vogons are part of the Guide's employ, and attempts to escape the building. During this attempt, he finds the Hitchhiker's Guide Mk. II, which he steals and sends to Arthur for safekeeping. Arthur, as Ford had expected, stores the package away without even opening it and forgets about it.
One day, Trillian
arrives on Lamuella, and presents Arthur with Random Dent, a teenage girl she claims is his daughter, conceived by Trillian via artificial insemination using the only human sperm samples available, those given by Arthur to pay for his space travels. Trillian leaves Random with Arthur so that she can better pursue her new career as an intergalactic reporter. Random finds life on Lamuella boring and cannot get along with Arthur, and comes across the Guide Mk. II. With Random as its owner, the Guide helps her to escape the planet to find her mother. Ford appears shortly after, looking for the Guide. Together, Ford and Arthur manage to leave the planet and return to Earth, realizing that Random has also returned there. Ford also realizes that the Guide Mk. II, being capable of both time-travel and looking into alternate universes, is manipulating events in accordance with an unknown plan.
Meanwhile, on Earth, an alternative version of Trillian, reporter Tricia McMillan, who never was able to take Zaphod Beeblebrox
's offer to travel in space due to wanting to get her handbag, finds herself approached by an extraterrestrial
species calling themselves the Grebulons. They reveal that they have set up a base on Rupert (a tenth planet just beyond the orbit of Pluto
) after arriving in the Solar System and finding that their computer core and most of their memories had been damaged, and have been following the remaining portions of their mission statement to observe the most interesting things in the system. They have approached Tricia to help them adapt the astrology
charts to use Rupert as their base, offering to let her interview them on their base in exchange for the help. Tricia performs the interview but finds that the results look questionable. She is then called to report on a spaceship landing in the middle of London
.
Tricia finds Random leaving the ship, and the girl believes Tricia to be her mother, and starts yelling at her. Tricia, with the help of Arthur, Ford, and Trillian, manage to take Random to a bar (address number 42) to try to talk to her. However, she fires a weapon at Arthur; Arthur ducks and the shot kills a man behind him. Ford points out to Arthur that the name of the bar they're in is "Stavro Mueller's Beta", the man just killed being another form of Agrajag, and that Arthur's life is no longer safe, a point at which Arthur takes relief. Shortly afterward, the Grebulons, believing that it would be a positive action to improve their situation, fire upon and destroy the Earth.
It is revealed that the Guide Mk. II was created by the Vogons to complete the destruction of the Earth in every possible dimension, using reverse temporal engineering to bring Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Random together on Earth for its destruction by the Vogons. After the Earth is destroyed, the Guide collapses in on itself.
adapted the book as the "Quintessential Phase" of the radio series, and it was broadcast in June 2005. The radio version has an entirely new, upbeat ending, appended to the existing story.
In the alternate ending, after the destruction of Earth, the description of the Babel fish from the earlier series is replayed with an additional section, which states that dolphin
s and Babel fish are acquainted, and that the dolphins' ability to travel through possibility space (first mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
) is shared by the Babel fish as well. During the ending, Ford explains that the dolphins got taught this skill from the Babel fish in exchange for knowing a good place to have parties. All the major characters are carrying Babel fish in their ears, which rescue them at the moment of Earth's destruction by transporting them to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The characters are reunited with Marvin, and it is revealed that beyond the Restaurant (and beyond the car park in which Marvin works) lies an endless series of blue lagoons - the final destination of the dolphins. The series ends with Arthur asking Fenchurch, "Will you come flying with me?", and her reply, "Always."
The version released on CD contains an even longer set of alternate endings, including one set after the events of the twelfth radio episode (with Arthur Dent and Lintilla), and on an alternate Earth where Arthur Dent and Fenchurch engage in a stand-off against Mr Prosser, together.
, who had played Arthur Dent
in the 2005 movie, recorded a new edition of the audiobook. This is the only book in the five novel series not to have also had a prior, abridged edition read by Stephen Moore
.
, Adams expressed dissatisfaction with the "rather bleak" tone of this book: "People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number; six is a better kind of number."
For the downbeat tone of the novel, Adams blamed personal problems, saying "for all sorts of personal reasons I don't want to go into, I just had a thoroughly miserable year, and I was trying to write a book against that background. And, guess what, it was a rather bleak book!"
When Adams died on May 11, 2001, it seemed that Mostly Harmless would become the final book of what Adams called a "trilogy
". However, The Salmon of Doubt was published posthumously, containing, alongside numerous articles written by Adams, several chapters belonging to a new storyline for a third "Dirk Gently
" novel. In interviews that can be found in The Salmon of Doubt, Adams admitted that while he was planning on writing a third Dirk Gently book, the ideas he was having for it would have fit better into another Hitchhiker's book: "A lot of the stuff which was originally in The Salmon of Doubt really wasn't working", and he planned on "salvaging some of the ideas that I couldn't make work in a Dirk Gently framework and putting them in a Hitchhiker framework... and for old time's sake I may call it The Salmon of Doubt."
Although the complete destruction of every version of the Earth in every possible timeline, along with the death of nearly all the regular characters, would seem to make a continuation extremely unlikely, Adams had remarked that the afterlife-enhanced state of the regulars merely meant he would not have to waste time at the beginning of the next book gathering them together or explaining what they'd been up to in the intervening period.
On 16 September 2008, it was announced that a sixth book would be written, by Artemis Fowl
author Eoin Colfer
, with the full support of Adams's estate. And Another Thing...
was released on 12 October 2009 (the thirtieth anniversary of the first book) in hardback by Penguin Books
in the UK, and by Hyperion Books in the U.S.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
and the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It is described on the cover of the first editions as "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy". It was the last Hitchhiker's book to be written by Adams, before his death.
Title
The title derives from a joke early in the series, when Arthur DentArthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
discovers that the entry for Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy consists, in its entirety, of the word "Harmless." His friend Ford Prefect
Ford Prefect (character)
Ford Prefect is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. He is the only character other than the protagonist, Arthur Dent, to appear throughout the entire Hitchhiker's saga.-Name:Although Ford had taken great care to blend into Earth...
, a contributor to the Guide, assures him that the next edition will contain the article on Earth that Ford has spent the last 15 years researching—somewhat cut due to space restrictions, but still an improvement. The revised article, he eventually admits, will simply read "Mostly harmless." It later turns out that Ford had written a long essay on how to have fun on Earth, but the editors in the guide's main office building edited everything out. Later in the series, Ford is surprised to discover that all of his contribution had been edited back into the Guide, prompting his reunion with Arthur on the alternative Earth in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" written by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, as described in The...
.
Plot summary
After the events in So Long, and Thanks for All the FishSo Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" written by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, as described in The...
, Arthur Dent
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
and his love interest Fenchurch attempt to sightsee across the Galaxy, but when Fenchurch disappears during a hyperspace jump due to being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy, Arthur becomes depressed and travels the Galaxy alone, raising money to pay his passage by donating his biological material to DNA banks (Mostly sperm, due to it having the highest payout.) He is aware that he cannot die until he visits Stavromula Beta, as was revealed in Life, the Universe and Everything
Life, the Universe and Everything
Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book in the five-volume Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy science fiction series by British writer Douglas Adams...
, by the insane Agrajag. During one journey, his ship crash lands on the planet Lamuella; Arthur survives and finds a simple life, becoming the sandwich maker for the local population.
Meanwhile, Ford Prefect
Ford Prefect (character)
Ford Prefect is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. He is the only character other than the protagonist, Arthur Dent, to appear throughout the entire Hitchhiker's saga.-Name:Although Ford had taken great care to blend into Earth...
has returned to the offices of the Hitchhikers' Guide, and is annoyed to find out the original publishing company, Megadodo Publications, has been taken over by InfiniDim Enterprises. Ford discovers that Vogons are part of the Guide's employ, and attempts to escape the building. During this attempt, he finds the Hitchhiker's Guide Mk. II, which he steals and sends to Arthur for safekeeping. Arthur, as Ford had expected, stores the package away without even opening it and forgets about it.
One day, Trillian
Trillian (character)
Tricia McMillan, also known as Trillian Astra, is a fictional character from Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. She is most commonly referred to simply as "Trillian", a modification of her birth name, which she adopted because it sounded more "space-like". According to the...
arrives on Lamuella, and presents Arthur with Random Dent, a teenage girl she claims is his daughter, conceived by Trillian via artificial insemination using the only human sperm samples available, those given by Arthur to pay for his space travels. Trillian leaves Random with Arthur so that she can better pursue her new career as an intergalactic reporter. Random finds life on Lamuella boring and cannot get along with Arthur, and comes across the Guide Mk. II. With Random as its owner, the Guide helps her to escape the planet to find her mother. Ford appears shortly after, looking for the Guide. Together, Ford and Arthur manage to leave the planet and return to Earth, realizing that Random has also returned there. Ford also realizes that the Guide Mk. II, being capable of both time-travel and looking into alternate universes, is manipulating events in accordance with an unknown plan.
Meanwhile, on Earth, an alternative version of Trillian, reporter Tricia McMillan, who never was able to take Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams who based him on his Cambridge contemporary, Johnny Simpson....
's offer to travel in space due to wanting to get her handbag, finds herself approached by an extraterrestrial
Extraterrestrial life
Extraterrestrial life is defined as life that does not originate from Earth...
species calling themselves the Grebulons. They reveal that they have set up a base on Rupert (a tenth planet just beyond the orbit of Pluto
Pluto
Pluto, formal designation 134340 Pluto, is the second-most-massive known dwarf planet in the Solar System and the tenth-most-massive body observed directly orbiting the Sun...
) after arriving in the Solar System and finding that their computer core and most of their memories had been damaged, and have been following the remaining portions of their mission statement to observe the most interesting things in the system. They have approached Tricia to help them adapt the astrology
Astrology
Astrology consists of a number of belief systems which hold that there is a relationship between astronomical phenomena and events in the human world...
charts to use Rupert as their base, offering to let her interview them on their base in exchange for the help. Tricia performs the interview but finds that the results look questionable. She is then called to report on a spaceship landing in the middle of London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
.
Tricia finds Random leaving the ship, and the girl believes Tricia to be her mother, and starts yelling at her. Tricia, with the help of Arthur, Ford, and Trillian, manage to take Random to a bar (address number 42) to try to talk to her. However, she fires a weapon at Arthur; Arthur ducks and the shot kills a man behind him. Ford points out to Arthur that the name of the bar they're in is "Stavro Mueller's Beta", the man just killed being another form of Agrajag, and that Arthur's life is no longer safe, a point at which Arthur takes relief. Shortly afterward, the Grebulons, believing that it would be a positive action to improve their situation, fire upon and destroy the Earth.
It is revealed that the Guide Mk. II was created by the Vogons to complete the destruction of the Earth in every possible dimension, using reverse temporal engineering to bring Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Random together on Earth for its destruction by the Vogons. After the Earth is destroyed, the Guide collapses in on itself.
Radio
Dirk MaggsDirk Maggs
Dirk Maggs, a freelance writer and director working across all media, is principally known for his work in radio, where he evolved radio drama into "Audio Movies," a near-visual approach combining scripts, layered sound effects, cinematic music and cutting edge technology. He pioneered the use of...
adapted the book as the "Quintessential Phase" of the radio series, and it was broadcast in June 2005. The radio version has an entirely new, upbeat ending, appended to the existing story.
In the alternate ending, after the destruction of Earth, the description of the Babel fish from the earlier series is replayed with an additional section, which states that dolphin
Dolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...
s and Babel fish are acquainted, and that the dolphins' ability to travel through possibility space (first mentioned in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish is the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy" written by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, as described in The...
) is shared by the Babel fish as well. During the ending, Ford explains that the dolphins got taught this skill from the Babel fish in exchange for knowing a good place to have parties. All the major characters are carrying Babel fish in their ears, which rescue them at the moment of Earth's destruction by transporting them to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. The characters are reunited with Marvin, and it is revealed that beyond the Restaurant (and beyond the car park in which Marvin works) lies an endless series of blue lagoons - the final destination of the dolphins. The series ends with Arthur asking Fenchurch, "Will you come flying with me?", and her reply, "Always."
The version released on CD contains an even longer set of alternate endings, including one set after the events of the twelfth radio episode (with Arthur Dent and Lintilla), and on an alternate Earth where Arthur Dent and Fenchurch engage in a stand-off against Mr Prosser, together.
Audiobook
There have been two unabridged audiobook recordings of the novel. In 1992, Adams himself recorded an edition, later re-released by New Millennium Audio in the United States and available from BBC Audiobooks in the United Kingdom. In 2006, actor Martin FreemanMartin Freeman
Martin John C. Freeman is an English actor. He is known for his roles as John in Love Actually, Tim Canterbury in the BBC's Golden Globe-winning comedy The Office, Arthur Dent in the film adaptation of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Dr. John Watson in Sherlock and Mr. Madden...
, who had played Arthur Dent
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
in the 2005 movie, recorded a new edition of the audiobook. This is the only book in the five novel series not to have also had a prior, abridged edition read by Stephen Moore
Stephen Moore (actor)
Stephen Moore is an English actor, known for his work on British television since the 1980s. He is known for his appearances in Rock Follies and other TV series such as The Last Place on Earth, the children's series The Queen's Nose and the drama Mersey Beat and the British TV comedy series Solo,...
.
Continuation and sixth book
In an interview reprinted in The Salmon of DoubtThe Salmon of Doubt
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously published and unpublished material by Douglas Adams...
, Adams expressed dissatisfaction with the "rather bleak" tone of this book: "People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number; six is a better kind of number."
For the downbeat tone of the novel, Adams blamed personal problems, saying "for all sorts of personal reasons I don't want to go into, I just had a thoroughly miserable year, and I was trying to write a book against that background. And, guess what, it was a rather bleak book!"
When Adams died on May 11, 2001, it seemed that Mostly Harmless would become the final book of what Adams called a "trilogy
Trilogy
A trilogy is a set of three works of art that are connected, and that can be seen either as a single work or as three individual works. They are commonly found in literature, film, or video games...
". However, The Salmon of Doubt was published posthumously, containing, alongside numerous articles written by Adams, several chapters belonging to a new storyline for a third "Dirk Gently
Dirk Gently
Dirk Gently is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul...
" novel. In interviews that can be found in The Salmon of Doubt, Adams admitted that while he was planning on writing a third Dirk Gently book, the ideas he was having for it would have fit better into another Hitchhiker's book: "A lot of the stuff which was originally in The Salmon of Doubt really wasn't working", and he planned on "salvaging some of the ideas that I couldn't make work in a Dirk Gently framework and putting them in a Hitchhiker framework... and for old time's sake I may call it The Salmon of Doubt."
Although the complete destruction of every version of the Earth in every possible timeline, along with the death of nearly all the regular characters, would seem to make a continuation extremely unlikely, Adams had remarked that the afterlife-enhanced state of the regulars merely meant he would not have to waste time at the beginning of the next book gathering them together or explaining what they'd been up to in the intervening period.
On 16 September 2008, it was announced that a sixth book would be written, by Artemis Fowl
Artemis Fowl (series)
Artemis Fowl is a series of fantasy novels written by Irish author Eoin Colfer and all the books are best sellers, starring the teenage criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl II. The author summed up the series as: "Die Hard with fairies." There are seven novels in the series; the first was published in...
author Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer is an Irish author. He is most famous as the author of the Artemis Fowl series, but he has also written other successful books. His novels have been compared to the works of J. K. Rowling...
, with the full support of Adams's estate. And Another Thing...
And Another Thing... (novel)
And Another Thing… is the title of the sixth installment of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy". The book, written by Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series, was published on the thirtieth anniversary of the first book, 12 October 2009, in hardback. It was...
was released on 12 October 2009 (the thirtieth anniversary of the first book) in hardback by Penguin Books
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a publisher founded in 1935 by Sir Allen Lane and V.K. Krishna Menon. Penguin revolutionised publishing in the 1930s through its high quality, inexpensive paperbacks, sold through Woolworths and other high street stores for sixpence. Penguin's success demonstrated that large...
in the UK, and by Hyperion Books in the U.S.