I read Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series a few years ago. I found it hilariously funny overall, but by the time I got all the way to the end of the so-called “5-volume trilogy” it had become quite clear to me that Adams’ worldview is fundamentally nihilistic. In other words, existence is utterly pointless and absurd. Perhaps the most well-known and obvious piece of evidence for this is the obviously silly claim repeated throughout that the answer to the question of the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything is ’42’. Another strong piece of evidence (without revealing any spoilers) is how the final novel comes full-circle back to where the first one starts–we go through 5 books only to find that absolutely no meaningful progess is made.
I could go on, but what I’ll say instead is that once I realized the nihilist undertones of the series, it actually detracted from the humor for me. What is the sense of laughter–that is to say, real hearty laughter, the kind that flows from what C. S. Lewis called “joy”–if life, the universe, and everything is meaningless? Why not weep instead? As T. S. Eliot put it: “This is the way the world ends; not with a bang, but a whimper.”
But nihilism is a non-starter as a worldview–if it’s true, there can be no good reason to believe it, and hence no good reason not to believe something else, because the very notion of a “good” reason is rendered vacuous given nihilism. So count me a metaphysical optimist. Life matters. Our choices matter. To quote the movie Gladiator, I believe that “what you do now will echo in eternity.”
While I reject the worldview of the Hitchhiker novels, if I set the nihilism aside, they are funny. Here’s one of my favorite passages (It’s best read aloud in a projecting voice):
Far back in the mists of ancient time, in the great and glorious days of the former Galactic Empire, life was wild, rich and largely tax free. Mightly starships plied their way between exotic suns, seeking adventure and reward among the farthest reaches of Galactic space. In those days spirits were brave, the stakes were high, men were real men, women were real women and small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before–and thus was the Empire forged.
Could I challenge you on a different point here, as to whether this actually is funny?
Why is it funny?
Why do I find it funny? I guess it has to do with the fact that it expresses a kind of clever silliness in a serious tone. The part about boldly splitting infinitives, for example, is poking fun at Gene Roddenberry of Star Trek fame who initially received a lot of flak from grammarians for his opening infinitive-splitting line: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”
There's lots of material in my book *Philosophy and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy* (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) that amounts to a contestation of the view that Hitchhiker's is nihilistic.
As to whether Hitchhiker's is funny – well, if someone cannot see that it is funny, I fear that there is no helping that person! But the aforementioned book contains some analysis of the humour. (For instance, the character 'Wonko the Sane' is funny because, in part, his strange house inverts our normal notion of sanity. .)