Talk:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

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What about 6 x 9 to the base 13?

trilogy? -- Zoe

Absolutely. -- JohnOwens

Adams intended to stop after the third book in the series, and even after he continued it kept being referred to as a trilogy. Mostly Harmless was billed as "the fifth in the increasingly inaccurately-named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy"; one of the omnibus editions is called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A trilogy in five parts; and so on.

That said, I think I'll change "trilogy" to "series" in the article anyway.

-- Paul A 03:46 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

I thought about doing that, but left it.  :) -- Zoe

I always just thought that Adams had "weird" ideas, so a "trilogy" with more than three books would make sense to him. -- RTC 03:52 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

We call The Lord of the Rings a trilogy, don't we? -- JohnOwens

Tolkien never intended to have it published that way and did not write it that way. It was entirely the publisher's decision to package LoTR as three books. Adams always called his story a trilogy. -- RTC 04:13 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

I'm just making the point that something written in more than three parts can still be called a trilogy, I didn't mean to compare author's wishes vs. publisher's intent vs. public's perception. So I think we're agreeing on this point, in different ways. ;) -- JohnOwens

Probably :-) I suspect Tolkien wrote LoTR in six books, each about the size of The Hobbit, expecting the publisher to print it as a series of sequels while hoping it could get published as one. I suspect Adams just wanted to be "weird" while hoping readers would see that as part of the "fun" of the series. -- RTC 04:40 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

I think Adams simply wanted to end the series on the third book, but decided to continue to the fourth and fifth books thanks to the popularity of earlier books. -- Ra

I wonder what you would call a story in six books... a hexlogy? :-) -- RTC 05:02 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

"Hexalogy" is usual, I understand. -- Paul A 08:46 Mar 28, 2003 (UTC)

Check page 353 of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, or somewhere during chapter 7 of Life, the Universe, and Everything if you own them separately. It is known how Marvin is rescued. He tells a mattress that he was a celebrity in another area of the swamp because of his narrow escape from crashing into the sun, and that he was rescued by a scrap metal merchant.

I don't believe that's mentioned in the Tertiary Phase of the radio series, though, which is what the author of this article was talking about. In other words, the plot of the radio series isn't consistent taken by itself. -- 19 Jun 2005

Could the Restaurant, and therefore the radio scripts and eponymous book, have been inspired by Jules Verne's last work, "The Lighthouse at the End of the World" as a nod to the great science fiction pioneer?

[edit] spoiler

I removed a bit at the end because it is entirely superfluous information about one of the characters and something that occurs in the next book in the triology. Yes, I know the "spoilers" tag was up, but I figured I would be impervious to any such spoiling as I've read the book, but spoilers from another book (about which this article is not) should not be here. JesseRafe 15:52, 25 August 2006 (UTC)