Hitch Hiking to Alpha Centauri

"It wasn't infinity in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity - distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very big, so that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself."
-The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy

For me, this has got to be the best paragraph, and in bold, the best sentence, off the book.

You will definitely relate to The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy better if you like Physics or recognize the Physics terms used. But you don't have to be a Physics nut to enjoy it.

It's a highly enjoyable book with a good combination of imagination, creativity, sarcasm, comedy, philosophy and an immense dose of role-reversals and probabilities - and improbabilities. It's actually fun trying to test and figure the the possibility of scenarios involving various Physics ideas and theories (that includes the speed of light, relativity, wormholes, hyperspace, time travel, etc.)

What makes it equally enjoyable for the non-Physics person is that the philosophies and different ideas tackled are engaging. The story goes on in an easy pace and easy narration, wherein the author seems to be just talking casually to you. No complicated technical blabber (except for, of course, things that need explaining such as things that the author invented specifically for the novel.) What I'm saying is that you won't find 3 long paragraphs dedicated to explaining the special theory of relativity in text-book style.

It's not overly factual and heavy on the Physics concepts and theories because after all, it's still a piece of fiction. It's not dragging and not very sci-fi either, although that's what it's most probably is. I don't find it as boring, hi-tech-obsessed and future-obsessed as, say, the sci-fi novel Dune. (I never got the hang of sci-fi novels, sorry.) So I still stick to saying it's more of plain fiction.

If you enjoy pondering "Where did life come from?" this would be a fun read, proposing an alternative theory, for you too.

I don't know if my Physics teacher (Sir Coronado) has already read this book but I'm definitely suggesting it to him since he'll get a kick out of reading it. And he'd probably be able to appreciate it better than me since, well, he's an Einstein nut, and of course has read a lot more about relativity and knows a whole lot about Physics.

Ayisse, you should read it. Since you're such a Physics and fantasy person. Check your gmail account, I'm sending you the ebook there.

If anybody else wants to read it, either comment leaving your e-mail ad or e-mail me directly at amlcortez[at]gmail[dot]com.

And I leave you with other quotes from the book:

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"I am Majikthise!" announced the older one.

"And I demand that I am Vroomfondel!" shouted the younger one.

Majikthise turned on Vroomfondel. "It's alright," he explained angrily, "you don't need to demand that."

"Alright!" bawled Vroomfondel banging on an nearby desk. "I am Vroomfondel, and that is not a demand, that is a solid fact! What we demand is solid facts!"

"No we don't!" exclaimed Majikthise in irritation. "That is precisely what we don't demand!"

Scarcely pausing for breath, Vroomfondel shouted, "We don't demand solid facts! What we demand is a total absence of solid facts. I demand that I may or may not be Vroomfondel!"

"But who the devil are you?" exclaimed an outraged Fook.

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"You know," said Arthur thoughtfully, "all this explains a lot of things. All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was."

"No," said the old man, "that's just perfectly normal paranoia. Everyone in the Universe has that."

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...but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth, it's that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs.

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Aaaaand... chapter 34 is the best chapter. Ever. By the way. ;) Don't read it first, definitely, or you'll spoil part of the story. Come on. Let me e-mail you an ebook copy. (Yeah, talking to no one in particular here.) It can easily be finished in one day.