<P> Ford Prefect discovers that the Hitchhiker's Guide entry for Earth consists of the volumes of text he originally wrote, instead of the previous truncated entry, "Mostly harmless". Curious, Ford hitchhikes across the galaxy to reach Earth . Eventually he uses the ship of a giant robot to land in the centre of London, causing a panic . In the chaos, Ford reunites with Arthur and Fenchurch, and they commandeer the robot's ship . Arthur takes Fenchurch to the planet where God's Final Message to His Creation is written, where they discover Marvin . Due to previous events, Marvin is now approximately 37 times older than the known age of the universe and is barely functional . With Arthur and Fenchurch's help, Marvin reads the Message ("We apologise for the inconvenience"), smiles, utters the final words "I think...I feel good about it", and dies happily . </P> <P> The novel has a very different tone from the previous books in the series . This is partly because it is a romance, and partly because the book bounces around in time more erratically than its predecessors . Adams even injects a humorous sub-plot . There is less outer - space time than in the previous books; Arthur leaves the new Earth only in the final chapters . The different tone also reflects the rushed nature of the writing; Adams' editor Sonny Mehta moved in with the author to ensure that the book met its (extended) deadline . As a result, Adams later stated that he was not entirely happy with the book, which includes several jarring authorial intrusions, which fellow author and Adams' biographer Neil Gaiman described as "patronising and unfair". </P> <P> The book also reflects a significant shift in Adams's view of computers . In the previous books, computers had been portrayed quite negatively, reflecting Adams' views on the subject at the time . However, between the writing of Life, the Universe and Everything and So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, his attitude toward technology changed considerably . Having been taken along to a computer fair, he became enamored of the first model of the Macintosh, the start of a long love affair with the brand (he claimed to have bought two of the first three Macs in the UK--the other was bought by his friend Stephen Fry). In So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Arthur Dent purchases an Apple computer for the purpose of star mapping in order to pinpoint the location of the cave he lived in on prehistoric Earth, and although Adams briefly mocks Arthur's methodology (noting that Arthur really has no idea how to go about such a task), the computer itself is not disparaged, and even somehow produces the correct result . In a later essay, Adams noted that some people had accused him of being a "turncoat" because of this change in his attitudes . </P> <P> In 1993 the Library Journal said that So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish was "filled with loopy humor and pretzel logic that makes Adams' writing so delightful". </P>

So long and thanks for all the fish hitchhikers