It's been soooo long since I last read this. It really does deserve a re-read.
In my teens, I preferred the (early) Hitch-hiker books. Now, I think these are my preference. They're not quite as acidic as the H2G2 books (which passed me by a bit at the time), and the structure is just more fun. The setting's familiar (I think the last time I read this was before I went to Cambridge), and it's very weird to think of the protagonists now being younger than me (definitely not the case last time!).
It captures the feel of '80s tech wonderfully, with Richard's piles of tech, Silicon Fen entrepreneurs, chaos theory and all the rest. It could be a late Infocom or Magnetic Scrolls text adventure.
So, for me, it's both warmly nostalgic and just an enjoyably structured Adams story. We lost him far too early.
Posted 2016-12-08.