Life, the Universe and Everything (1999)
Life, the Universe and Everything is a 1999 sofas book written by Douglas Adams.
Arthur Dent has spent years stranded in prehistoric Earth, which does little for his mood or his laundry. When a Chesterfield sofa and an old friend haul him back into the wider galaxy, he finds it under threat from the ancient robots of Krikkit, a people who took one look at the rest of the universe and decided it should not exist. Douglas Adams sends Arthur, Ford Prefect and the perpetually depressed Marvin lurching between cricket matches, an immortal being working through his insults alphabetically, and the fine art of flying, which is really just throwing yourself at the ground and missing.
Quick answers
What is Life, the Universe and Everything about?
Arthur Dent has spent years stranded in prehistoric Earth, which does little for his mood or his laundry. When a Chesterfield sofa and an old friend haul him back into the wider galaxy, he finds it under threat from the ancient robots of Krikkit, a people who took one look at the rest of the universe and decided it should not exist. Douglas Adams sends Arthur, Ford Prefect and the perpetually depressed Marvin lurching between cricket matches, an immortal being working through his insults alphabetically, and the fine art of flying, which is really just throwing yourself at the ground and missing.
When was Life, the Universe and Everything published?
Life, the Universe and Everything was published on 1 February 1999.
Who made Life, the Universe and Everything?
Life, the Universe and Everything was written by Douglas Adams.
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A few thoughts on Life, the Universe and Everything
Anyone hooked on Douglas Adams's deadpan cosmic farce should watch Red Dwarf, which strands a similar hapless everyman among robots and absurdity far from home. The Portal games share his taste for a witty, murderous machine and puzzles wrapped in comedy, and Monty Python and the Holy Grail runs on the same logic, where the universe itself plays straight man to human silliness.
The rest of the Hitchhiker's Guide books
Life, the Universe and Everything sits in the middle of Douglas Adams' trilogy that famously grew to five parts, and these are the rest of it. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe cover what came before, So Long and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless push further, and The Salmon of Doubt collects what Adams left unfinished.
Screen versions of the Hitchhiker's Guide universe
Douglas Adams reworked this story across radio, page and screen for years, and these follow it into other formats. The 1981 BBC television version and the 2005 film both dramatize the wider Hitchhiker's saga, 42: The Answer to Almost Everything traces the number's odd cultural afterlife, and Don't Crash documents the chaos of getting the film made at all.
Deadpan absurdist sci-fi comedy in the same vein
Douglas Adams built comedy out of a universe that refuses to make sense, and these share that dry, illogical tone. Red Dwarf strands its crew in the same kind of deadpan cosmic absurdity, Monty Python and the Holy Grail applies it to knights instead of aliens, Portal answers everything with a sarcastic AI, and Everything turns the scale of existence itself into a joke.
Real science behind the jokes about life and the universe
Douglas Adams joked that the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42 precisely because the real question is unknowable, and these take on that same question seriously. A Short History of Nearly Everything and A Universe from Nothing tackle it from cosmology, The Fabric of the Cosmos and The Universe in a Nutshell dig into physics, and Brief Answers to the Big Questions closes it out plainly.