Book 4: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (2/5)
Landlubber Arthur Dent quits his time in space after eight subjective
years rabblerousing about the universe in time and space. Back in his country,
back in his town, back in his house, and back in his bed—dusty it may be but
damn it good to be home, but why exactly he is now the proud owned of a
fishbowl which reads “So Long, and Thanks—“ he has no idea. While hitchhiking
on the motorway with a duty-free bag from Alpha Centauri, Arthur is picked up
by a man in a Saab whose sister, a complete whack job the man conveys to
Arthur, is crumbled up in the backseat. The girl, Fenchurch, who Arthur
immediately falls in love with due to some mystic quality about her, is “merely
barking mad” (26) but she maintains that she witnessed the Earth get blown up.
Meanwhile, a lorry driver names Rob McKenna, later to be dubbed the
Rain God or a “Supernormal Incremental Precipitation Inducer” (141) with
“Spontaneous Para-Causal Meteorological Phenomenon” (140) to make it rain where
he goes, be it in Darlington, Scotland, Wales, Italy, Germany, Denmark or
Yugoslavia. With 231 different words to describe the type of rain he’s
experienced, he know a thing or two about the wet stuff that falls from the
sky.
Also meanwhile, Ford is knocking about the galaxy rigging a speaker
system that repeats the time in England
on a spaceship which houses a frozen alien. He intends for the alien to
eventually wake up and to know exactly what it is, even if that time happens to
be in England
and light-years away. Regardless, Ford realizes that his fifteen years spent on
Earth weren’t wasted at all when The Guide updates his old two word
entry of “Mostly harmless” to an entire library’s worth of information on the
planet Earth, its cities, its bars, and its beaches.
Arthur and Fenchurch eventually hit it off quite well and discover each
other’s uniqueness in defying gravity. Where Fenchurch could simply levitate,
Arthur had the power of flight since his time on Krikkit, which he teaches to
Fenchurch. However, the town senses something odd fluttering about the sky and
it suddenly becomes news… but the eight-year absence of dolphins from aquariums
and the seas has since become non-news, though Fenchurch and Arthur are dying
to understand their connection to the man in California who says he has the
answer to their disappearance.
Oh, a giant robot destroys billions of pounds worth of downtown London property, Marvin makes a desultory appearance, and
Ford, Arthur, Fenchurch, and the Paranoid Android all visit “Quentulus Quazgar
Mountains. Sevorbeupstry.
Planet of Preliumtarn. Sun Zarss. Galactic Sector QQ7 Active 7 Gamma” (142) to
gaze at God’s Final Message.
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The non-sequential return to a parallel Earth is a little jarring and
much too terrestrial to be considered part of the “trilogy.” It’s not as
hare-brained as the previous three novels and maintains a more traditional plot
flow while disregarding the wildly eccentric oddities sprinkled throughout
(i.e. the Rain God is disembodied from the general plot and Ford’s mucking
about is senseless in context). Zaphod? Trillian? Pshaw!
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