So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Arthur Dent: An ape-descendant life form living on a planet called Earth.
• Ford Prefect: Traveling researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• Marvin: The ever-pessimistic robot who now claims to have aged 37 times the age of the universe and is not too happy about it.
• Fenchurch: Arthur Dent's girlfriend, so to speak, who knows that she is looking for some kind of message but has no idea what it is. Also called Fenny.
• John Watson aka Wonko the Sane: The guy who knows more about the dolphins and their disappearance than anyone else.
• Russell: Fenchurch's brother, who, to her annoyance, calls her "Fenny."
• Rob McKenna aka Rain God: A truck-driver who claims that it always rains wherever he goes. He has kept a diary chronicling this fact, and has come up with 231 types of rain.

Quotes edit see section history

• “The door had to be forced open because of the astonishing accumulation of junk mail on the doormat. It jammed itself stuck on what he would later discover were fourteen identical, personally addressed invitations to apply for a credit card he already had, seventeen identical threatening letters for nonpayment of bills on a credit card he didn't have, thirty-three identical letters saying he personally had been specially selected as a man of taste and discrimination who knew what he wanted and where he was going in today's sophisticated jet-setting world and would he therefore like to buy some grotty wallet.”

• “Arthur reached out for the light, not expecting it to come on. To his surprise it did. This appealed to Arthur's sense of logic. Since the Electricity Board had cut him off without fail every time he paid his bill, it seemed only reasonable that they should leave him connected when he had not. Sending them money obviously only drew attention to himself.”

• “One so often hurts the one one loves, especially if one is a Fuolornis Fire Dragon with breath like a rocket booster and teeth like a park fence.”

• “Deep in his greasy, smelly bunk, fashioned out of a maintenance hatchway, Ford Perfect slept among his towels, dreaming of old haunts. He dreamed at one point in his slumbers of New York. In his dreams he was walking late at night along the East Side, beside the river which had become so extravagantly polluted that new life forms were now emerging from it spontaneously, demanding welfare and voting rights.”

• “Physics shook its head and, looking the other way, concentrated on keeping the cars going along the Euston Road and out toward the Westway flyover, on keeping the street lights lit and on making sure that when somebody in Baker Street dropped a cheeseburger it went splat upon the ground.”

• “It seemed to me that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for the use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

• “Let's be straight here. If we find something we can't understand we like to call it something you can't understand, or indeed pronounce. I mean if we just let you go around calling him a Rain God, then that suggests that you know something we don't, and I'm afraid we couldn't have that.”

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• “It seemed to me,” said Wonko the Sane, “that any civilization that had so far lost its head as to need to include a set of detailed instructions for use in a package of toothpicks, was no longer a civilization in which I could live and stay sane.”

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• founded—their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.”

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• She was mostly immensely relieved to think that virtually everything that anybody had ever told her was wrong.

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• “Life,” he said, “is like a grapefruit.” “Er, how so?” “Well, it’s sort of orangy-yellow and dimpled on the outside, wet and squidgy in the middle. It’s got pips inside, too. Oh, and some people have half a one for breakfast.”

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• He almost danced to the fridge, found the three least hairy things in it, put them on a plate and watched them intently for two minutes. Since they made no attempt to move within that time he called them breakfast and ate them. Between them they killed a virulent space disease he’d picked up without knowing it in the Flargathon Gas Swamps a few days earlier, which otherwise would have killed off half the population of the Western Hemisphere, blinded the other half, and driven everyone else psychotic and sterile, so the Earth was lucky there.

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• There is a feeling which persists in England that making a sandwich interesting, attractive, or in any way pleasant to eat is something sinful that only foreigners do.

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• as stunned as a man might be who, having believed himself to be totally blind for five years, suddenly discovers that he had merely been wearing too large a hat.

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• The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying “And another thing …” twenty minutes after admitting he’d lost the argument.

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• This man is the bee’s knees, Arthur, he is the wasp’s nipples. He is, I would go so far as to say, the entire set of erogenous zones of every major flying insect of the Western world.

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• f you took a couple of David Bowies and stuck one of the David Bowies on the top of the other David Bowie, then attached another David Bowie to the end of each of the arms of the upper of the first two David Bowies and wrapped the whole business up in a dirty beach robe you would then have something which didn’t exactly look like John Watson, but which those who knew him would find hauntingly familiar.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Earth: Earth is Earth, somewhat as we know it. It mysteriously reappeared, the inhabitants saying that the aliens had all been a drug-induced hallucination. Only a few months have passed.
• London
• Brequinda
• Los Angeles
• Bournemouth
• Islington
• California
• Taunton

First Sentence edit see section history

Table of Contents edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Preceded by Life, the Universe and Everything, and followed by Mostly Harmless.

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Douglas Adams (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
• Dewey: 828'.914

Notes for Parents edit see section history

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Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Science Fiction › Adventure
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Action & Adventure
• Books › Science Fiction & Fantasy › Fantasy

More Books Like This edit see section history

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