Read History

2026 | Score: 6.5

Outside of Ford having some funny lines this one just felt like a step down compared to the first couple of books.

Format: Book

Days: 3

Date: 10/7/2026 -> 10/10/2026

Summary (Spoilers)

Life, the Universe and Everything
Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy #3

Life, the Universe and Everything Summary

Arthur and Ford reunite after 5 years spent on prehistoric Earth. Ford’s Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic detected a disturbance in the space-time continuum, and when they see a random moving couch they run to catch it, and upon catching it are transported to modern Earth, 2 days before it will be destroyed, in the middle of a cricket match.

For spots an SEP (Somebody Else’s Problem). It turns out to be the spaceship of Slartibartfast, the world building guy from the first book. He has come to try and save the universe, but a bunch of white robots show up and steal the cricket match trophy, the ashes of a cricket stump. The three of them take off on Slartibartfast’s ship. It can travel at inconceivable speeds due to Bistromathics.

Marvin has been stranded on Sqornshellous Zeta for millions of years after being saved from flying into a star by a passing scrap merchant, and keeps getting talked to by optimistic mattresses endemic to the region. While being harassed by Zem the mattress, the white robots fly down in their ship, take his leg, and then take him prisoner to make use of his immense intellect.

Slartibartfast teaches Ford and Arthur about the Krikkit wars from 10 billion years ago. There was a planet called Krikkit that was completely surrounded by a dust cloud, so they had no idea a universe existed, when one day a spaceship crashed into their planet. They built their own spaceship in a year, flew into the sky, and upon seeing the galaxy decided it all had to go. They made massive war ships and began killing everyone in the galaxy. They were finally stopped by wrapping their planet in a Slo-Time Envelope that made it so their people could never leave the planet, and locked the envelope with a key which got blown into separate parts. The white robots, war robots of Krikkit, are retrieving the various parts of the key.

Zaphod is wandering about the Heart of Gold, bored and disconsolate. He was rude to Trillian so she left, and now he has nothing to do. Suddenly the ship of the white Krikkit robots phases into him and they break in and steal the gold heart of the Heart of Gold, because it is part of the key. Zaphod gets brought onto their ship.

Slartibartfast plans to bring them to a party to get the last piece of the key the Krikkit robots do not have yet, but when they teleport Arthur ends up somewhere completely different. He finds himself in a strange maze / cathedral of hate directed to himself. Apparently his entire life he has been killing the same reincarnated spirit in different forms (like swatting flies, stepping on ants, etc.). This being, Agrajag, finally has him captured and plans to get revenge. Arthur accidentally kills him again by tackling him to stop him blowing up where they are but he manages to press the button. Arthur runs away and is fleeing down a mountain as a landslide happens, but he falls, and mid-fall sees a bag he lost returning from a vacation to Greece on Earth years ago. He is so surprised he forgets to fall and begins flying. He survives the landslide due to flying, retrieves his bag, and is happily soaring through the sky when he hits a flying building.

This is the building of the longest party in the galaxy, which has been running for multiple generations. In the first generation some engineers made the building fly and equipped it with weapons so they could raid towns on their planet for food and drink to keep the party running. Ford and Slartibartfast are already here and together they all enter the party, where they find Trillian being hit on by Thor.

Arthur talks to a guy who won the award for “The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word ‘Belgium’ in a Serious Screenplay” but does not find him very interesting. However, that award happens to be part of the key to unlock Krikkit, and the white robots show up and take it before they can get it. They retrieve Trillian and head to Krikkit, but are too late to stop the Slo-Time Envelope being unlocked. They do see Zaphod come out of the ship with a gun but he gets hit on the head and does not do anything.

Krikkit gets unlocked, and they head down to the planet to continue trying to save the universe. They get surrounded by Krikkiter’s, but they are not sure they want to destroy everything, so Trillian asks to be taken to their leader to talk this out. Zaphod had planned to leave on the Heart of Gold but again gets bored and decides to go help and sneaks into a Krikkit war ship. He is sneaking about when he finds that Marvin has connected to the main computer and is making all the robots depressed so they don’t want to fight. Marvin puts up a screen showing Zaphod Trillian talking to the war leaders.

Trillian has deduced that the circumstances leading to Krikkit being xenophobic war-mongers was not natural and was contrived by something. She calls Hactar, a super computer destroyed by a warmongering race billions of years ago, except it was not actually destroyed, it was the dust cloud surrounding the planet of Krikkit. Hactar failed in its duty to make a universe destroying bomb once, so it made a scenario where it would be asked to do so again and it could succeed. It has now made the bomb for the Krikkiters, but when they try to activate the bomb, it fails. Trillian and crew use the Heart of Gold to disperse and actually kill Hactar.

Arthur, Ford, and Slartibartfast return to Earth to return the Ashes cricket trophy that was stolen. While there Arthur wants to bowl once on the Lord’s cricket green since he dreamed of doing it as a boy, and finds a random cricket ball in his bag. As he goes to bowl it he realizes this is the supernova bomb placed there by Hactar, and manages to stop himself by flying accidentally again and throwing the bomb away.

The gang then runs into a half-mad journalist from Arhabuthon, another planet the white robots visited, and learns that a man named Prak was given too much of a truth-telling drug and now is just speaking only the truth. They go to ask him some stuff but he has forgotten most of it, except stuff about frogs and laughs like crazy when he learns who Arthur is. Prak tells them he can’t say the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything since only the answer or question can be known in one universe and they already know the answer.

Arthur gets dropped off on Krikkit to live a happy retirement. THE END.