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So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 Ballantine Books, Paperback, 1999. |
|
| Author | Douglas Adams |
|---|---|
| Cover artist | Peter Cross, U.S. hardcover |
| Country | United Kingdom and United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy |
| Genre(s) | Science fiction novel |
| Publisher | Pan Books, UK; Harmony Books, U.S. |
| Released | 1984 |
| Media type | Paperback and hardcover |
| Pages | 192, UK paperback; 224, U.S. paperback |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-330-28700-1 |
| Preceded by | Life, the Universe and Everything |
| Followed by | Mostly Harmless |
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984, ISBN 0-345-39183-7) is the fourth book of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series written by Douglas Adams. Its title is the message left by the dolphins when they departed Planet Earth just before it was demolished to make way for a hyperspatial express route, as described in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The phrase has since been adopted by some science fiction fans as a humorous way to say "goodbye".
Contents |
The book begins with Arthur Dent, hitch-hiking randomly through the galaxy, arriving at (as the book's blurb describes it) "the last place in the Universe in which he would expect to find anything at all, but which 3,976,000,000 people will find oddly familiar" - namely Earth, continuing on exactly the same as before it was destroyed, except that the dolphins are gone.
After getting dropped off on the planet by a spaceship, Arthur Dent walks along a road in the rain. Dent is probably already aware Earth exists again considering that the UFO that brought him delivered him within spitting distance of his former/not-so-former house; probably not a coincidence. Dent is then surprised by a Porsche driving by because it is the same model of Porsche as driven by a friend of his, as well as having the same bumper sticker. This may be a foreshadowing of the paradox that eight years have passed for him while only two months have passed on this Earth. After walking for awhile, he successfully hitchhikes in a car driven by Russell. In the backseat with him is Russell's sister, a beautiful woman who is unconscious. Arthur learns that this woman goes by the name "Fenny" even though her real name is Fenchurch (though Arthur doesn't learn her full name until much later in the novel). Not able to stay in the car much longer (the brother acts unpleasant), Arthur is dropped off at a pub, a pub which he knows pretty well.
At the pub he hears the voices of an obnoxiously annoying man, and his familiar dog. After this event, Arthur knows for sure he is on Earth, and ventures to find his home and see what had happened to it.
Returning to his miraculously undemolished home, Arthur finds that in his absence he has received an enormous pile of junk mail and a decorative fishbowl inscribed with the words "So Long, and Thanks." He wonders why the planet he is standing on still exists, seeing how it was blown up by the Vogons. Also for some reason only a few months have passed on Earth, even though he has been travelling for the equivalent of eight years. After cleaning himself up and shaving off his beard, Arthur returns to the village pub, and explains his absence of the last several months by having been away in California, and his haggard appearance as having had a 'face-lowering'.
Arthur feels a strange connection with Fenchurch and tries to track her down through calling various hospitals (as she was obviously sick), but has no luck.
Later Arthur sees Fenchurch hitchhiking and picks her up. He offers to drive her to London but instead she makes him take her only to the nearby train station. He convinces her to talk with him in a pub in the station, and they talk uncomfortably, with bumbling Arthur unable to explain how he knows her already or why he wants to see her again. He is forced to buy charity raffle tickets from a woman who keeps interrupting their conversation, but in the end gets Fenchurch's phone number on the ticket before she leaves. He later realises that this was the winning ticket and so by giving it up in return for a very lame prize of a record of bagpipe music, he has lost the number. He falls into depression at having lost contact with Fenchurch again.
In the previous book, Life, the Universe and Everything, Arthur Dent found himself living in a cave for five years while marooned on prehistoric Earth. Because he doesn't have much else to do, he decides to try and find the exact coordinates of that cave. He buys a computer in Exeter, and without much skill guesses and articulates a set of coordinates which he thought might have been correct based on the view of the stars from the cave. The narrative informs us that as it happens the guess was exactly correct.
When Arthur goes to the coordinates, in modern day Islington, he "knocked on the appropriate door," and is astonished to see Fenchurch standing before him. Fenchurch admonishes Arthur for not having phoned first, but invites him in and a relationship begins between the two.
In their conversations, they seem to notice that there is something weird about one another. They enjoy each other's company, and talk about their confusion about the world and their experiences. Arthur learns that Fenchurch also seems to think that the Earth had exploded. He also learns from her that all the dolphins in the world disappeared a few months previously.
After realizing that Fenchurch's feet do not actually touch the ground, Arthur shows her his ability to fly by diving out of her loft apartment. (In the previous book, he learned that he could defy the laws of physics by throwing oneself at the ground and missing. The trick is that as the person is ABOUT to hit the ground, the person must be absolutely and perfectly preoccupied with something else other than the ground, and the pain of hitting it. This way, physics will look the other way, and the person will float.) He helps Fenchurch fly as well and together they float over parts of London.
Arthur learns that Fenchurch, like him, has one of the engraved fishbowls, as does a man called Wonko the Sane, who long ago decided that the world had gone mad and built a wall around it with nothing 'outside' except himself and a particularly nice beach in California. They discover this after they visit Wonko the Sane because he seems to be the only man on earth who can explain the absence of the dolphins.
Meanwhile, Ford Prefect has discovered that his entry on "Earth" for the Hitchhiker's Guide has mysteriously re-appeared and sets off for the Planet. Ford then decides to use the inexplicable opportunity to (1) play an elaborate practical joke on a salesperson for the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation and (2) get some Earth movies which he hadn't seen the endings to because the planet was demolished.
Arthur and Fenchurch together find out how the Earth came back by holding their fishbowls to their ear. It turns out that this new Earth is a "shadow" Earth, quite probably an Earth from an alternate timeline, brought into this universe by the dolphins' "Campaign to Save the Humans".
In the end Arthur leaves Earth again, this time accompanied by Fenchurch, and goes in search of God's Final Message to His Creation, the address of which he was given in the previous book in the series by Prak. When they arrive, they meet a dying Marvin (who, because of his extensive and usually unwilling time travel, is about 37 times older than the universe itself) and help him to read the message, which turns out to be "WE APOLOGIZE FOR THE INCONVENIENCE". Marvin actually likes it, and then dies happily.
The novel has a very different tone to the previous books in the series. Partly this is because it is a romance, and partly because the book jumps in time more than usual. Douglas Adams even humorously puts a side-story in it. Perhaps most notably, there is very little space-travel in the entire book, with Arthur only leaving the new Earth in the final chapters. Adams' editor Sonny Mehta moved in with the author to ensure that the book met its (extended) deadline. As a result, Adams later stated that he was not entirely happy with the book, which includes several jarring authorial intrusions, which fellow author Neil Gaiman described as "patronising and unfair".
The book also reflects a significant shift in Adams' view of computers. In the previous books, computers had been portrayed quite negatively, reflecting Adams' then views on the subject. However, between the writing of Life, The Universe and Everything and So Long and Thanks for all the Fish, his attitude toward technology changed considerably. Having been taken along to a computer fair, he became enamoured with the first model of the Apple Macintosh, the start of a long love-affair with the brand (he claimed to have bought the second Apple Macintosh in the UK - the first being bought by his friend Stephen Fry). In SLATFATF, Arthur Dent purchases a computer for the purpose of star mapping; Adams makes only one disparaging comment about this decision.
- Chapter 21 is a comedic digression on journalism, cultural progress and sexuality. In it, Adams uses the example of Brequinda on the Forth of Avalars, home to the mythical Fuolornis Fire Dragon.
- During the book, Arthur Dent recounts a story of something that once happened to him at a train station. He bought a packet of biscuits and sat down to wait for the train. Then a man, who was already sitting there at the opposite side of the table, opened the packet, took one biscuit and ate it. So Arthur took one, saying nothing, and they went through the whole packet like that. After the man had left, Arthur looked under his newspaper and discovered his packet of biscuits. Douglas Adams claimed this story actually happened to him, although a similar urban legend had been in circulation for years before the book was published. Adams' version of the tale is recounted in its original context in The Salmon of Doubt. The story was cut, because of length, from original radio transmissions of the fourth radio series, but can be heard on the "extended version" CDs.
- In May 2005, an adaptation of the book, called The Quandary Phase was broadcast as part of The Hitchhiker's Guide radio series.
- A song entitled "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish" was written for the 2005 film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and is performed twice in the film -- during the opening credits by a chorus of dolphins and during the closing credits by Neil Hannon. A sing-along version of the full song can be heard on the official movie website [1]. A flash animation of the song is available at [2].
- If you include the prologue and epilogue, the book has 42 chapters.
There have been three audiobook recordings of the novel. The first was an abridged edition, recorded in the mid-1980s by Stephen Moore, best known for playing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android in the radio series, LP adaptations and in the TV series. In 1990, Adams himself recorded an unabridged edition, later re-released by New Millennium Audio in the United States and available from BBC Audiobooks in the United Kingdom. In 2006, actor Martin Freeman, who had played Arthur Dent in the 2005 movie, recorded a new unabridged edition of the audiobook.
