The Bizarre Ordinariness of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy uses normal everyday human events, and blows them up to a galactic scale to the point of ridiculous parody. Even in the opening pages this idea is embodied, as a man who is stubbornly refusing to move out of his house so the government can build a highway through it, witnesses the destruction of Earth so the intergalactic government can build a highway through it. It asks hard-hitting questions such as, if AI gained sentience, could it also develop depression? If you asked a calculator what the meaning of life is, what would it respond with? Even in a highly advanced society, brimming with technological achievements that we couldn’t even dream of, would the government still be as superficial and corrupt as it is now? The answer to all of these questions is yes, probably, and certainly, all at once.


The hilarity of Hitchhiker’s Guide stems from how completely absurd so many of these situations may seem, despite them making perfect sense in the strange world they inhabit. We would like to believe that the more advanced a civilization becomes, the more they shed the trappings of animalistic and immoral behavior. It’s nice to think that humanity will eventually become enlightened the more technological progress we make, and that many of our current problems will be ‘solved’ in due time. However, Hitchhiker’s Guide recognizes that while we may evolve in some ways, we will forever remain shackled to error, laziness, greed, envy, and all the other imperfect things that make us humans, and make aliens also humans, but in a funny rubber suit.

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