I have long been a fan of the Hitchhikers series as they are comic genius. The book Mostly Harmless, however, should never have come about. It is frustration at its peak. After reading this book I vowed to never read another Douglas Adams book again (not as though he got around to writing any more). This book contains nothing that resembles a story line and never gets past the character development stage. I happened to go to a talk he gave at the University of Texas a few years ago and he was asked about the ending of the Mostly Harmless and his excuse was that the hardest part of writing a new book is getting everyone back together after you scatter them to the ends of the universe in the previous book so this was his answer. If you ask me he wrote this book to pay off his new Porsche and cheat his fans. Go ahead and read the first 4 as they make up a great story by themselves but don't waste your time reading this drivel.