mass market paperback, 187 pages
English language
Published Dec. 13, 2005 by Pan Books.
When all questions of space, time, matter and the nature of being have been resolved, only one question remains — "Where shall we have dinner?" The Restaurant at the End of the Universe provides the ultimate gastronomic experience, and for once there is no morning after to worry about. VOLUME TWO IN THE TRILOGY OF FOUR --back cover
Continuación natural de La Guía del Autoestopista Galactico, mantiene el ritmo y la locura de su predecesor.
A lovely, lonely book, this.
As amazing as the prequel, my most favourite from this book include:
The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain - since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into …
As amazing as the prequel, my most favourite from this book include:
The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.
To explain - since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation - every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.
The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula - for that was his name - was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.
And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.
“Have some sense of proportion!” she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.
And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex - just to show her.
And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end, he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.
To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion.
Did you ever watch the sun go down over the burning trees and realise you know everything that's going to happen and don't care because you've seen the end and the beginning and enough of the in between?
Oh and you taught a spaceship how to make a proper cup of tea?
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe follows the adventures of Zaphod Beeblebrox, Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, Marvin after Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy ends. This book is still witty and fun sci-fi, but not quite as good as Hitchhikers was.
Another... very funny end ! "Six by nine. Forty-Two!". And Hitchhiker's Guide is gone ! I think I'm not gonna read the following ones (the next in order) from the series. At least, they say this a trilogy "with five book". I read the first two, I think now it is enough !
