Humour is not that rare a quality in science fiction, but Douglas Adams's contribution to future mock must surely be unique: he violates SF taboos while at the same time and quite obviously regarding them with deep affection: you only hurt the genre you love. He is a treasure and science fictioneers should place a preservation order upon him.

Life, The Universe and Everything …, his latest guide to such spatial hitch-hikers as everymanic Arthur Dent, the insufferable Ford Prefect, and guru Slartibartfast has them saving the Galaxy from the revived Krikkit robots and their kind. The game of flanneled fools, you will be interested to know, is a racial memory of a previous, horrendous galactic war. And that is the kind of joke—the combining of domestic detail with far-out concepts—that Mr Adams makes with such skill; his anti-climaxes scatter our preconceptions like so many stumps.

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