Picking up almost right after the events of the first book, the novel, which is as insanely funny and bitingly clever as its predecessor, takes aim at the prevailing inclination of people, not just on Earth but throughout the galaxy, to limit their view of the world around quite spectacularly. In fact the only Oglaroons who ever leave their tree are those who are hurled out of it for the heinous crime of wondering whether any of the other trees might be capable of supporting life at all, or indeed whether the other trees are anything other than illusions brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.” (PP. In which tree they are born, live, fall in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible tree branches. “The Universe, as has been observed before, is an unsettlingly big place, a fact which for the sake of a quiet life most people tend to ignore …įor instance, in one corner of the Eastern Galactic Arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire ‘intelligent’ population of which lives permanently in one fairly small and crowded nut tree.

One person who obviously gave the conundrum quite a bit of thought was Douglas Adams, the celebrated writer of the always iconic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, originally published in 1979 following the massive success of the BBC4 radio series a year earlier, who spends a great deal of time in the second book in his “trilogy”, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) musing on and mercilessly parodying humanity inability to see often beyond its own navel. We are, in other words, creatures of habit, and whether it’s a result of evolution, great big existential ruts or simply a staggering lack of imagination, the fact is that people by and large tend to keep making the same mistakes over and over again.

This oft-repeated and frankly rather over-used phrase, which simultaneously sounds both very wise and extraordinarily obvious, is proof positive that humanity has a predilection for repeating its errant behaviour over and over again, no matter how disastrous or comically awful the results may be. The more things, the more they stay the same. (cover image courtesy Pan Macmillan Australia)

Restaurant in the end of universe