The novel “Life, the Universe and Everything” by Douglas Adams was published for the first time in 1982. It’s the third novel of the so-called trilogy of five books and follows “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe“.

Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are stranded on the prehistoric Earth until one day a space-time anomaly allows them to return almost to the point of their departure, two days before the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons. They arrive on a cricket pitch during a match, which is disturbed by a team of robots arrived on a spaceship.

Shortly after them, another ship arrives and Slartibartfast, its commander, enlists the help of Arthur and Ford against a terrible threat. There’s the risk that a horde of war robots built on the planet Krikkit in order to exterminate all life forms elsewhere in the universe is freed from the trap in which it was imprisoned.

In 1976, Douglas Adams proposed an idea for an adventure of the TV show “Doctor Who” titled “Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen” with the idea of ​​making a movie but this possibility was discarded. Adams used some elements of that idea in the “Doctor Who” season known as “The Key to Time“, in particular the concept of a key composed of parts scattered here and there in the universe that have the appearance of objects of different types. The basic plot of the story, however, was re-used to write “Life, the Universe and Everything”.

The first two novels of the so-called trilogy of five books were the adaptation of the radio series, which is why some parts were a summary of the original story and some had been cut altogether. “Life, the Universe and Everything” is instead a story written specifically from the start as a novel so the story is more consistent and the plot less chaotic.

If the genesis of “Life, the Universe and Everything” is different from the previous novels, the style remains is still typical of Douglas Adams. The novel begins with Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect who’ve beeing living on the prehistoric Earth for some years after they got stranded there. Wowbagger, the Infinitely Prolonged, one of the few immortal existent, spends his time insulting all the inhabitants of the universe one by one, finds Arthur and calls him a jerk.

In short, the beginning shows that Douglas Adams keeps on putting in his novels elements of pure craziness while showing that immortality can be a double edged sword. Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect however can travel back in time thanks to a space-time vortex and find themselves on a cricket pitch during a game.

Cricket is one of the basic themes of “Life, the Universe and Everything” and probably you can appreciated the novel even more if you know that sport. It’s no coincidence that a threat to the universe comes from a planet called Krikkit and in the novel there are many other references to cricket.

The inhabitants of the planet Krikkit didn’t know of the existence of other planets because their solar system is surrounded by a gas cloud. When they found out that there’s an entire universe, the shock caused in them an extreme xenophobia that led to the decision to exterminate all the other inhabitants of the universe. To this end, they built an army of war robots but get defeated and their solar system is locked up in a kind of bubble in which time is slowed down.

Reading “Life, the Universe and Everything”, fans of “Doctor Who” can see similarities between the Krikkit war robots and the Daleks. Douglas Adams adds his idea because for him the planet Krikkitmen are like people who flatly refuse to learn what science can tell us about the universe.

In “Life, the Universe and Everything” Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect try to be the unlikely heroes who save the universe from the threat of the Krikkit war robots. In this task they’re helped by Slartibartfast, who had already appeared in the novel “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” as a planet designer.

Of course, “Life, the Universe and Everything” there are again many more or less demented elements. For example, the episode regarding Agrajag, a creature who’s continually reincarnated and every time he’s killed by Arthur Dent. In fact, we discover that several living beings accidentally killed by Arthur in the two previous novels were Agrajag’s incarnations and he wants revenge.

“Life, the Universe and Everything” is a novel in many ways different from the previous ones, from which it’s a bit disconnected. At the end, however, there’s again the theme of the Question of Life, the Universe and Everything and its answer, of course, again in Douglas Adams’s style.

“Life, the Universe and Everything” is more plot-oriented than character-oriented. The other protagonists of the earlier novels reappear but they’re a bit sacrificed. These are some of the reasons why some of the fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series don’t like this novel. I think it’s definitely better to have a sequel that’s different than trying to lazily carry on a certain road and even with some flaws this novel shows Douglas Adams’s brilliance again. For this reason, I recommend reading it though the best thing is to read the entire series.