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The Restaurant at the End of the Universe Paperback – June 23, 1997

by Douglas Adams (Author)

4.5 6,266 ratings

Book 2 of 6: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

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Now celebrating the 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, soon to be a Hulu original series!

“Douglas Adams is a terrific satirist.”—The Washington Post Book World

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons? Time for a cup of tea! Join the cosmically displaced Arthur Dent and his uncommon comrades in arms in their desperate search for a place to eat, as they hurtle across space powered by pure improbability.

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. Their destination? The ultimate hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food speaks for itself (literally).

Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that The Hitchhiker’s Guide deleted the term “Future Perfect” from its pages, since it was discovered not to be!

“What’s such fun is how amusing the galaxy looks through Adams’s sardonically silly eyes.”—Detroit Free Press

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Popular Highlights in this book

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In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
Highlighted by 1,597 Kindle readers
“The Guide is definitive. Reality is frequently inaccurate.”
Highlighted by 1,494 Kindle readers
“If I ever meet myself,” said Zaphod, “I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.”
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“If I ever meet myself,” said Zaphod, “I’ll hit myself so hard I won’t know what’s hit me.”
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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Douglas Adams is a terrific satirist.”—Washington Post Book World

“What’s such fun is how amusing the galaxy looks through Adams’s sardonically silly eyes.”—Detroit Free Press

From the Inside Flap

"DOUGLAS ADAMS IS A TERRIFIC SATIRIST."
--The Washington Post Book World
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 hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself.
Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that the Hitchhiker's Guide deleted the term "Future Perfect" from its pages, since it was discovered not to be!
"What's such fun is how amusing the galaxy looks through Adams' sardonically silly eyes."
--Detroit Free Press

From the Paperback edition.

From the Back Cover

"DOUGLAS ADAMS IS A TERRIFIC SATIRIST."
--The Washington Post Book World
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 hot spot for an evening of apocalyptic entertainment and fine dining, where the food (literally) speaks for itself.
Will they make it? The answer: hard to say. But bear in mind that the Hitchhiker's Guide deleted the term "Future Perfect" from its pages, since it was discovered not to be!
"What's such fun is how amusing the galaxy looks through Adams' sardonically silly eyes."
--Detroit Free Press

"From the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and created all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer games, stage adaptations, comic book, and bath towel. He was born in Cambridge and lived with his wife and daughter in Islington, London, before moving to Santa Barbara, California, where he died suddenly in 2001.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

The story so far:

In the beginning the Universe was created.

This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

Many races believe that it was created by some sort of god, though the Jatravartid people of Viltvodle VI believe that the entire Universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure.

The Jatravartids, who live in perpetual fear of the time they call the Coming of the Great White Handkerchief, are small blue creatures with more than fifty arms each, who are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented the aerosol deodorant before the wheel.

However, the Great Green Arkleseizure Theory is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI and so, the Universe being the puzzling place it is, other explanations are constantly being sought.

For instance, a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings once built themselves a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate once and for all the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything.

For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two—and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.

And this computer, which was called the Earth, was so large that it was frequently mistaken for a planet—especially by the strange apelike beings who roamed its surface, totally unaware that they were simply part of a gigantic computer program.

And this is very odd, because without that fairly simple and obvious piece of knowledge, nothing that ever happened on the Earth could possibly make the slightest bit of sense.

Sadly, however, just before the critical moment of read-out, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way—so they claimed—for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost for ever.

Or so it would seem.

Two of these strange, apelike creatures survived.

Arthur Dent escaped at the very last moment because an old friend of his, Ford Prefect, suddenly turned out to be from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he had hitherto claimed; and, more to the point, he knew how to hitch rides on flying saucers.

Tricia McMillan—or Trillian—had skipped the planet six months earlier with Zaphod Beeblebrox, the then President of the Galaxy.

Two survivors.

They are all that remains of the greatest experiment ever conducted—to find the Ultimate Question and the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything.

And, less than half a million miles from where their starship is drifting lazily through the inky blackness of space, a Vogon ship is moving slowly toward them.

Chapter 2

Like all Vogon ships it looked as if it had been not so much designed as congealed. The unpleasant yellow lumps and edifices which protruded from it at unsightly angles would have disfigured the looks of most ships, but in this case that was sadly impossible. Uglier things have been spotted in the skies, but not by reliable witnesses.

In fact to see anything much uglier than a Vogon ship you would have to go inside it and look at a Vogon. If you are wise, however, this is precisely what you will avoid doing because the average Vogon will not think twice before doing something so pointlessly hideous to you that you will wish you had never been born—or (if you are a clearer minded thinker) that the Vogon had never been born.

In fact, the average Vogon probably wouldn’t even think once. They are simple-minded, thick-willed, slug-brained creatures, and thinking is not really something they are cut out for. Anatomical analysis of the Vogon reveals that its brain was originally a badly deformed, misplaced and dyspeptic liver. The fairest thing you can say about them, then, is that they know what they like, and what they like generally involves hurting people and, wherever possible, getting very angry.

One thing they don’t like is leaving a job unfinished—particularly this Vogon, and particularly—for various reasons—this job.

This Vogon was Captain Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council, and he it was who had had the job of demolishing the so-called “planet” Earth.

He heaved his monumentally vile body round in his ill-fitting, slimy seat and stared at the monitor screen on which the starship Heart of Gold was being systematically scanned.

It mattered little to him that the Heart of Gold, with its Infinite Improbability Drive, was the most beautiful and revolutionary ship ever built. Aesthetics and technology were closed books to him and, had he had his way, burned and buried books as well.

It mattered even less to him that Zaphod Beeblebrox was aboard. Zaphod Beeblebrox was now the ex-President of the Galaxy, and though every police force in the Galaxy was currently pursuing both him and this ship he had stolen, the Vogon was not interested.

He had other fish to fry.

It has been said that Vogons are not above a little bribery and corruption in the same way that the sea is not above the clouds, and this was certainly true in his case. When he heard the words integrity or moral rectitude he reached for his dictionary, and when he heard the chink of ready money in large quantities he reached for the rule book and threw it away.

In seeking so implacably the destruction of the Earth and all that therein lay he was moving somewhat above and beyond the call of his professional duty. There was even some doubt as to whether the said bypass was actually going to be built, but the matter had been glossed over.

He grunted a repellent grunt of satisfaction.

“Computer,” he croaked, “get me my brain care specialist on the line.”

Within a few seconds the face of Gag Halfrunt appeared on the screen, smiling the smile of a man who knew he was ten light-years away from the Vogon face he was looking at. Mixed up somewhere in the smile was a glint of irony too. Though the Vogon persistently referred to him as “my private brain care specialist” there was not a lot of brain to take care of, and it was in fact Halfrunt who was employing the Vogon. He was paying him an awful lot of money to do some very dirty work. As one of the Galaxy’s most prominent and successful psychiatrists, he and a consortium of his colleagues were quite prepared to spend an awful lot of money when it seemed that the entire future of psychiatry might be at stake.

“Well,” he said, “hello my Captain of Vogons Prostetnic, and how are we feeling today?”

The Vogon Captain told him that in the last few hours he had wiped out nearly half his crew in a disciplinary exercise.

Halfrunt’s smile did not flicker for an instant.

“Well,” he said, “I think this is perfectly normal behavior for a Vogon, you know? The natural and healthy channeling of the aggressive instincts into acts of senseless violence.”

“That,” rumbled the Vogon, “is what you always say.”

“Well again,” said Halfrunt, “I think that this is perfectly normal behavior for a psychiatrist. Good. We are clearly both very well adjusted in our mental attitudes today. Now tell me, what news of the mission?”

“We have located the ship.”

“Wonderful,” said Halfrunt, “wonderful! And the occupants?”

“The Earthman is there.”

“Excellent! And …?”

“A female from the same planet. They are the last.”

“Good, good,” beamed Halfrunt. “Who else?”

“The man Prefect.”

“Yes?”

“And Zaphod Beeblebrox.”

For an instant Halfrunt’s smile flickered.

“Ah, yes,” he said, “I had been expecting this. It is most regrettable.”

“A personal friend?” inquired the Vogon, who had heard the expression somewhere once and decided to try it out.

“Ah, no,” said Halfrunt, “in my profession you know, we do not make personal friends.”

“Ah,” grunted the Vogon, “professional detachment.”

“No,” said Halfrunt cheerfully, “we just don’t have the knack.”

He paused. His mouth continued to smile, but his eyes frowned slightly.

“But Beeblebrox, you know,” he said, “he is one of my most profitable clients. He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.”

He toyed with this thought a little before reluctantly dismissing it.

“Still,” he said, “you are ready for your task?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Destroy the ship immediately.”

“What about Beeblebrox?”

“Well,” said Halfrunt brightly, “Zaphod’s just this guy, you know?”

He vanished from the screen.

The Vogon Captain pressed a communicator button which connected him with the remains of his crew.

“Attack,” he said.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Del Rey; Media tie-in edition (June 23, 1997)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 256 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0345418921
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0345418920
Lexile measure ‏ : ‎ 900L
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.46 x 0.6 x 8.16 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #1,428,249 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #2,059 in Humorous Science Fiction (Books)
- #10,774 in Humorous Fiction
- #24,317 in Science Fiction Adventures

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4.5 6,266 ratings

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Douglas Adams

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Douglas Adams (1952-2001) was the much-loved author of the Hitchhiker's Guides, all of which have sold more than 15 million copies worldwide.

Photo by michael hughes from berlin, germany (douglas adams Uploaded by Diaa_abdelmoneim) [CC BY-SA 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.

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Andrea Hall-Cuccia

Another Fun Romp in the Universe

Reviewed in the United States on May 8, 2024

Verified Purchase

This book continues to be rife with Douglas Adams' signature humor. The restaurant scenes are inventive, if a little disturbing. Marvin the Paranoid Android is back and has his moment in the sun. Ford and the others continue to romp across the universe having adventures. All in all, a fun continuation of the series.

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zpm

Maybe not as ruthlessly original as, well, the original, but better than a Vogon poem

Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2023

Verified Purchase

Let the naysayers say their nays. Sure, it’s no Hitchikers, but nothing was before that book, and nothing will be again. Unless we’re all living in a loop. In that case, Hitchikers will, eventually, be Hitchikers, again, er, for the first time.

I read it to my 1- and 3-year-old a little each day or so at bedtime. Maybe I changed some words and skipped a few bits, but they could tell it was pretty silly, for a more a grown-up book than they’re used to.

Bottom line: It’s worth a read, which is a fair bit better than any of us should be saying about a lot of what’s written these days.

Including book reviews. 🙃

2 people found this helpful

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Amanda Richards

How do you follow up a work of genius.....?

Reviewed in the United States on March 7, 2005

Verified Purchase

.... With more of the same.

While not so good as a stand alone (you'll be lost in time & space without the background of Book 1), this second in the umpteen-part, increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy tries even harder than the first to laser your funny bone.

Seems that the thing we call (ultimately to be used-to-call) Earth is really just a mighty big supercomputer, built to work out the ultimate question to the ultimate answer, 42. Like all expensive software however, just before it actually does whatever it's supposed to do, it crashes - in this case due to the hacker Vogons and their total annihilation programme. Unlike your regular hard drive, two bits escape to byte another day, and we continue their story.

In one of the many funny lines from the book, Zaphod Beeblebrox remarks, "I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis". This book is just as hip.

Our heroes are aboard their Improbability Driven spaceship, when Arthur Dent happens to tie up all the computer circuits just when the Vogons are launching an attack. Zaphod decides its time to see dead people, and with a strange twist, he and miserable Marvin, the depressed computer, disappear, while Arthur takes a tea break.

Zaphod materializes elsewhere and immediately starts looking for the man who rules the Universe, while Marvin continues to depress and be depressed. In my humble opinion, Marvin is the star of this book, but I digress.

After having his sense of perspective sorely tested, Zaphod improbably conjures a happy reunion, although this leaves him sadly out of pocket. Deciding that they should find the nearest place to eat, their ship's computer zaps them to Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

From this half-way point, the book takes off on a fresh tangent of humor, floor shows, loud rock bands, talking meat, and wicked vehicles - that is, until the universe ends.

Then the humor starts all over again.

A very worthy follow up to the famous first.

Amanda Richards, March 7, 2005

36 people found this helpful

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Elizabeth Cox

My review for The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Reviewed in the United States on June 24, 2023

Verified Purchase

I absolutely loved it! This is a brilliant series! I love these characters! This is a must read series! I can’t wait for the next book!

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Ricardo Jasso Moedano

stellar drollery

Reviewed in the United States on July 18, 2016

Verified Purchase

The very first paragraphs of this volume had me in stitches, but my tittilating state lasted only from chapters 1 to 6, and then I gasped in astonishment at how evanescent the jocularity of this book turned out. I trudged on til chapter 22, hankering for yet more batty occurrences, yet all that followed after the frogfighters bombing of the Guide tower lacked the sparkle of the beginning of the story. Or, perhaps, by now I wanted to tread along a coherent storyline, rather than just having various nonsensical contraptions described (like the glasses that went black before a sign of danger, in order to keep him who wore them from looking at anything that might scare him), as well as a series of glimpses of bizarre environments where the characters appear at, only to relate goofy anecdotes concerning alien species and their queer customs.

While I jumped off the vessel bound to clash with the sun, not caring a bit for what happened to the guys aboard (or even clear on who these were), I nevertheless enjoyed the tone of the novel, since its kind of humour is consonant with that of ALF (remember the furry bloke that crash-landed on the Tanner's house in the NBC show of the same name?). Indeed, all the tales ALF told about his previous life in Melmac, his native planet, which also exploded (due, however, to the unfortunate circumstance of everyone plugging their hair-driers in at the same time)... all his tales bear, so to speak, Douglas Adams' comedy seal. I seriously suspect the producers of ALF explored (and, it would seem, imported him from) the Hitchhiker's saga.

7 people found this helpful

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Teddy Kyle

A wonderful continuation to the journey started in "Hitchhiker"

Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2016

Verified Purchase

I'm going to assume that since you're reading this review, you've already read the previous volume in the series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This book is a continuation from the first, so if you're new to the series, go back and read Hitchhiker before reading this one.

This book follows the hapless, easily bewildered Arthur Dent and his wacky companions across the galaxy as they somehow manage to get themselves into an ever-increasing amount of trouble. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, like the first book, is full of twists and surprises. Douglas Adams never misses a chance to make playful, subtle jabs at art, music, politics, culture, entertainment, and... restaurants. The book is refreshingly lighthearted, brilliantly creative, wonderfully irreverent, and above all - tons of fun. The wit in this book frequently made me grin, and even made me laugh audibly a few times.

If you enjoyed Hitchhiker, you'll love this book.

One person found this helpful

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