The first thing you would have to do is let me know what exactly you mean with that question. Because if I’m honest, I read this book’s title many years ago and was always sort of fascinated by the idea of a dingy diner that’s just at the very edge of civilization where the weirdest people would come to have one last bite before going off into unexplored territory, never to be seen again. But that’s not what we got in Douglas Adams Restaurant at the end of the universe. Instead we got a show that rivals the Oscars in glamour. We’re not at the edge of the civilized world, we’re at the end of time. And the end of time is a spectacle to behold.
When I speak about manga I usually recap most of the important events. I would consider doing the same for these books, as they’re rather thin, but I think it will be more fun to talk about one of the main morals of this book. So let’s leave the restaurant behind – it was overrated anyway – and instead go to a much more secluded area of the universe to find the most important man alive: The president of the galaxy.
We learn in the first volume that someone messed with Zaphod’s brain and that this person might have been Zaphod himself, removing his memories of the act in the process. He meets up with Zarniwoop in this volume who says he’s part of a big plot that involves Zaphod to find the president of the galaxy. To make a short story shorter, the gang ends up on a desolate planet in a tiny shack where the president of the universe and his cat live. Zarniwoop wants to get some real wisdom out of this powerful figure but what we end up learning is that to rule the universe you need to be someone who doesn’t make any assumptions and barely even believes their own senses. Or to be more specific, you need someone who is completely and utterly uninterested in the job or anyone talking to him about him. That’s how we find this figure, who doesn’t even know for sure if the people coming in from the rain are wet, as it’s not up to him to decide that.
We end up leaving Zarniwoop stranded on this planet, outside of the shack with the clearly crazy person that is in charge of the galaxy, with the rest of the gang hightailing it out of there, satisfied to know that the universe is in good hands. I found this entire interaction to be fascinating. The sort of humor that Douglas Adams fills these books with can be a bit vague and – I will freely admit – go over my head at times. I’m not that clever of a person and when the comedy gets too funky I lose interest. But what I do love is really dumb concepts that make you think, and these books are filled to the brim with those.
Having said all that, as much as I enjoyed the first two books in this series, I found the third one to be much more of a drag. The entire Krikkit war thing didn’t interest me. It’s hard to feel the weight of the stakes when you know that it eventually goes back to normal again without much value changing. And that’s exactly what happened. It was nice to see Marvin again and hear him depress the entire ground population of a murderous planet. I am going to read the fourth installment soon, and I hope it is more enjoyable than the third. I am usually a big fan of reading an entire series in one go, but I find that lately I get bored of a story after a while. That either means I haven’t found the right stories for me in a little while, or I need to change the way I read books. After this series I have a bunch of fantasy books lined up, which are generally more my speed. Either way, I’ve overall still very much enjoyed this series, with the first two books being great fun. Perhaps the remaining two can pull it back. Thanks for reading.
Opal Kaharis 