The novel “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” by Douglas Adams was published for the first time in 1984. It’s the fourth novel of the so-called trilogy of five books and follows “Life, the Universe and Everything“.

Arthur Dent has traveled across the galaxy hitchhiking until he finds himself on a planet that really looks like Earth. The matter is very mysterious because he saw his planet destroyed by the Vogons. In addition, he traveled for several years but it seems that on the Earth only a few months have passed after his departure.

Arthur meets Russell and his sister Fenchurch, Fenny for short, and discovers that the Earthlings think they had a mass hallucination when they saw the Vogon spaceships. The only thing really changed on Earth over the past months is that dolphins have disappeared shortly after this strange event. After returning to his house, that noone has demolished, Arthur finds a bowl, on which the phrase “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” is inscribed . What’s happened?

“Life, the Universe and Everything” was already partially detached from the original story of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”, in “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” it changes even more. The fourth novel in the trilogy in five books is basically the story of Arthur Dent. Of his old travel-mates who appear in it, Ford Prefect is a secondary character and Marvin appears only briefly.

The plot of “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” is mainly focused on Arthur Dent’s attempt to understand why the Earth has reappeared after it was demolished by the Vogons at the beginning of the Hitchhiker’s Guide series. The story is almost completely set on Earth, where Arthur arrives by chance hitchhiking and is obviously extremely surprised.

“So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” tells the love story that develops between Arthur Dent and Fenchurch, Fenny for short, who is apparently the only other person who remembers the destruction of the Earth. Together, they try to unravel the mystery, all in Douglas Adams’s style. In this novel there aren’t many journeys in space and time with weird aliens like in the previous novels but the author’s humor is still abundant.

The love story between Arthur Dent and Fenny can’t be but bizarre. For Arthur, it’s love at first sight, though in their first meeting Fenny is in a state of unconsciousness. Their first real encounter is accidental and despite Arthur’s carelessness the two of them seem destined to be together.

Among the evidence on which Arthur and Fenny may investigate there’s the disappearance of the dolphins and the bowls on which the phrase “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” is inscribed. In fact, Arthur isn’t the only one who found one. The dolphins, one of the Earth’s species more intelligent than humans, knew that the Earth was about to be demolished and tried to warn humans without being understood. The last message left by the dolphins before leaving the Earth was exactly “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish” and of course that wasn’t understood either.

That phrase has become one of the many quotes from the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, which is used as a joking way to say goodbye. It was even used at CERN in the announcement of the end of operations for 2012 of the Large Hadron Collider (see screenshot).

This is one of the elements that show how this novel, though very different from the previous ones, is still strongly connected to them. Another one concerns Ford Prefect, who discovers that during an update of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy his laconic comment on Earth has been replaced by a much longer text.

Douglas Adams wasn’t entirely satisfied with “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”. The novel was completed beyond the deadline originally agreed with his publisher. Just to be able to complete it, Sonny Mehta, Adams’s editor, moved in with him for some time and some bits of the novel are his doing.

In my opinion, the result is still very good with many brilliant moments and probably it will be especially appreciated by romantic readers so I recommend reading “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”. The best thing, however, is still to read the entire series of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.