The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams

Genre: Science Fiction...sort of.  Think of this as a science fiction spoof.

Age:  Upper high school and over.  You definitely need to have a pretty good backgound in science fiction tropes to understand some of the humor here, and even then, I think you need to be British to get some of the jokes.

Review: I absolutely love this book.  When I first read it, I had been reading (and watching) a lot of science fiction and found the humor both refreshing and absolutely histerical.  The story begins with the impending destruction of the home of Arthur Dent to make room for a bypass.  Arthur's dispute with the wrecking crew is interupted when his friend Ford Prefect shows up to inform him that Ford is really an alien and that the earth is about to be destroyed to make room for a galactic bypass.  The story only gets better as Ford and Arthur hitch a few intersteller rides to escape vaporization, eventually ending up on a stolen spaceship.  Anyway, I won't give away the ending, but it is a definite must read for those familiar with sci.fi.

Multimedia: I think this book actually started out as a radio series, or else it was made into one shortly after publication.  Later, it was made into a TV miniseries that is now available on DVD.  While I love the book, I do have some serious reservations about the film--it is very '80's and very low budget, which sometimes adds to the humor...but not usually.

Christian Perspectives: The book does not really deal with religious issues.  The only objectionable things I can remember is the "borrowed" spaceship and quite a bit of alcohol consumption.