The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams
Pan Books - January 1, 1980
208 pages

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons is a curious time to have a craving for tea. It could only happen to the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his curious comrades in arms as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability and desperately in search of a place to eat.
Among Arthur's motley shipmates are Ford Prefect, a longtime friend and expert contributor to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, two-headed ex-president of the galaxy; Tricia McMillan, a fellow Earth refugee who's gone native (her name is Trillian now); and Marvin, the moody android who suffers nothing and no one very gladly. Their destination? The ultimate hotspot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself.

This is the second book out of five in the Hitchhiker "trilogy" written by Adams himself. Fortunately, I liked it just as much as the first one. It starts with a laugh as the entire computer system on the ship shuts down because it needs to figure out how to make tea, or "the taste of dried leaves boiled in water with milk squirted out of a cow."

This one's plot was a little less coherent than its predecessors while it was going on, but I think that it tied together better at the end and more of an ending, which is more than I can say for the first book. However, that means that it wasn't set up particularly well for a third book, which is bad considering there are five books written by Adams and one more by Eoin Colfer.

This installment is less about Arthur and Ford than it is Zaphod and Marvin; while Zaphod wasn't exactly my favorite character in Hitchhiker's, Marvin was one of the greatest robots, if not one of the greatest speculative fiction characters, I have ever seen. Once again he uses his pessimism to kill off other technology, this time by angering a tank into shooting around the floor it's standing on and falling through to the ground, where it breaks.

Zaphod also comes more into his own in this part, although he's still not anywhere near being my favorite character. Here's to hoping Ford and Marvin go on an adventure in book 3!

Grade: A-