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Adams's satire is not bitter. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is mostly about fun—fun with words, fun with genre, fun with television, and fun with human nature.
A great deal of Adams's humor depends on the unexpected. The coveted Heart of Gold spaceship is shaped like a running shoe. Nuclear warheads, attacking the space ship, unexpectedly turn into a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale. Adams's satire pokes fun at Scripture as well as the notion that monkeys left with a typewriter will eventually pound out a Shakespeare play.
Adams frequently employs the technique of flashback. As Arthur knows nothing of events in space, filling him in on past events provides the reader with similar information. Adams accomplishes this with a variety of vehicles, including footnotes and narration. Entries in the electronic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy tell Arthur about Magrathea, and Slartibartfast explains the creation of Deep Thought and its mission to arrive at Life's Ultimate Answer.