Douglas Adams

[FizbansTalking_Hat]

Considering the amount of science fiction and fantasy I've read, its surprising that I have always overlooked these books, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", so I finally went out and bought a nice omnibus edition.

What are your thoughts, good, bad, crap, no spoilers; just picked it up and it looks amusing, some form of satire and knock on other science fiction books. Cheers.

[dANdeLION]

Like you, I've read much sci-fi, but I always pass on these books, probably because of their rap as being less than serious. Frankly, I doubt I have the time to read all the work that DA 'knocks", so part of the humour is already lost on me.

[I'm Murrin]

Loved (most of) these books. Hilarious.

First two books are great, third isn't as good, fourth is good (but slightly different style), and the fifth I don't like (partly because of the unexplained removal of a character I'd liked, who hadn't really had a chance to develop in the short time he/she had been in HHGG).
First time I read the part talking about the worst poetry in the universe (in the first book), I couldn't stop laughing out loud. Unfortunately, I read that book in a public library.

(dAN - If there are any references to other things, I must have missed every one of them, but I still found this stuff funny)


Edit - Oh, and I've also read those two novels about the detective (can't remember the names) - very good stuff.

[Lord Callindrill]

The good news is that you don't have to be terribly familiar with any other SF titles to really appreciate Adams' humor. I first read the books when I was in my early teenage years and couldn't stop laughing. I still enjoy them and, like you, purchased the omnibus edition. If you're someone who can readily appreciate that off-beat brand of British humor, you'll howl with laughter all the way through them.

BTW, the BBC did a TV movie version of the first two books back in the early '80s. Although flawed in certain aspects, it's nontheless quite a hilarious adaptation and is currently out on DVD. You might consider renting it sometime.

[[Syl]]

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is as essential to any true geek's repertoire as Monty Python and the Holy Grail (and if you think you're not a true geek, realize that by being on a F/SF author's fansite you might as well be a card carrying member). Funny, funny stuff.

I never really looked into it, but The Guide seems more satirical of SF as a genre and society in general. The latter more than the former, and it's not the derisive kind.

The Dirk Gently books are pretty good, too.

Chances are if you like Pratchett, you'll like The Hitchhiker's Guide books, and if you don't, you won't.

[CovenantJr]

Ah, the Guide... I largely agree with Murrin on this one (I can't get used to Nirrum ). The first two books are excellent, the third is ok. I always found the fourth pretty confusing. The whole Fenchurch thing baffled the hell out of me. Oh well, it's been a long time, maybe I should go back and see if my brain can comprehend this time. The fifth book is atrocious, and an insult to the rest of the series. Ugh. Definitely, definitely read the first two if nothing else.

The Dirk Gently books are also good. Quite different to the Guide, IMO. For the information of anyone who might be curious, they are Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long, Dark Teatime of the Soul. Shame he never finished the third one.

[Myste]

HHGG is probably one of my favorite series. It's wickedly funny, and very sharp, but also occasionally very gentle. The first book is the best, the fifth makes no sense at all, and everything in between is plain wacky. It's great!

There was a terrific Infocom text adventure (you wanna talk geek, you gotta talk Infocom--remember Zork?) based on it, that was virtually impossible to get through. You can download it, with translators for pc or mac. Or you can play online, but since it's in java, you can't save. I recommend the download:
www.latz.org/games/list.shtml
The online version is here, for anyone who's interested:
www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html

If you like HHGG, Fiz, you should try Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books. The first one is The Eyre Affair--Jane Eyre gets kidnapped out of her book, and Mr. Rochester approaches Literary Detective Thursday Next to help find her. They're a riot, especially if you're one of those people (I suspect everyone here probably is) who reads too much.

[Variol Farseer]

I loved the Hitchhiker's books as a kid, but I find that they date rather badly. Adams spent rather too much of his time taking potshots at very topical and local targets, like telephone sanitizers and yuppie joggers. This gives his work a definite period feel; too many of the jokes are 20 years out of date. Part of the trouble is that his work is really straight comedy, with only a veneer of science-fiction shtick. Futurama is much better SF than HHGG, because it sends up the tropes and assumptions of SF; HHGG only uses SF as a tool for sending up the tropes and assumptions of comfortable middle-class Englishmen of the 1980s. It does this by depicting a Galaxy-wide civilization filled with weird aliens, incredible technologies, and miraculous inventions, in which everybody is exactly as stupid as a particularly stupid modern British suburbanite, and stupid in exactly the same ways.

That said, there's a lot of killingly funny stuff in the first book, and a good deal in the second. Here's a bit from the fourth that I've always loved. (There are no spoilers in this, because like most of Adams' best jokes, it's a throwaway that has nothing to do with the plot.)

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in a moment of reasoned lucidity which is almost unique among its current tally of 5,975,509 pages, says of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation products that 'it is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all.

'In other words — and this is the rock-solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxywide success is founded — their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.'

At the time when this was written, it was a fairly obvious jab at IBM, but it is even more true of Microsoft today. The early books are filled with these kinds of asides, which is what makes them fun to read even now that half the jokes have gone stale. The third and fourth books have a weird charm of their own but are not, on the whole, as good.

However, Mostly Harmless, the fifth book, is an utter waste of space. Adams wrote it after listening to his fans whine for a sequel for ten solid years. He hated writing it — I'm told he hated writing in general by then — hated the characters, and hated having his fans tell him what to do. The one thing it did was to make it completely impossible for anyone ever to write another sequel, because

Spoiler

at the end of the book, all the characters are killed in all possible parallel universes simultaneously.

Talk about overkill!

[I'm Murrin]

However, Mostly Harmless, the fifth book, is an utter waste of space. Adams wrote it after listening to his fans whine for a sequel for ten solid years. He hated writing it — I'm told he hated writing in general by then — hated the characters, and hated having his fans tell him what to do. The one thing it did was to make it completely impossible for anyone ever to write another sequel, because

Spoiler

at the end of the book, all the characters are killed in all possible parallel universes simultaneously.

Talk about overkill!

But he still supposedly started planning the next in the series before he died....

[danlo]

So what happened in The Salmon of Doubt? They all came back to life?

[I'm Murrin]

I dunno. I suppose that Fenchurch may still be lost somewhere in the multiverse... Maybe there's info on it somewhere else online - I haven't looked.

[Variol Farseer]

So what happened in The Salmon of Doubt? They all came back to life?

What happened is that Adams started to write another Dirk Gently book, but when he died leaving it unfinished, his publishers stuck together all his unpublished drafts and unused notes and a few essays, and in a blatant attempt to cash in on his one big commercial property, subtitled the resulting mess 'Hitchhiking the Galaxy One More Time'. It isn't a Hitchhiker's book at all.

[danlo]

hmmm...Is glad hasn't bothered to read yet...

[Myste]

There's actually a lot of interesting stuff in Salmon...the pasted-together bits of the novel are only about a quarter of the book. It also contains some interesting interviews & essays Adams wrote for newspapers & magazines. I thought the novel part was the least interesting part of the book; the rest of it I enjoyed quite a bit. Don't give up on it completely, danlo! Just ignore the novelette.

[Bucky OHare]

this bbc site is quite good for matters pertaining to HHGG

www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/

also, they're actually writing a proper hitchikers guide.

www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/

[CovenantJr]

I tried re-reading So long and thanks for all the fish a couple of weeks ago, and I still don't understand why Fenchurch floats. I get that it's to do with her recollection of the earth's destruction - but why? Why does she remember that? And why does that memory result in her hovering?

I then moved on to Mostly Harmless, out of completeness, and I didn't find it as bad as I remembered. Random in particular was far less annoying this time, and I was actually a little disappointed that I didn't get to read more about her. I thought she had potential. Oh well.

[I'm Murrin]

Fenhurch:

Spoiler

Fenchurch was actually the person who became the outlet for the Ultimate Question in the last moments before earth was destroyed. When that earth was replaced by it's parallel universe counterpart, something about the knowledge she had gained and lost made her reject this replacement world, she didn't fit - and thats why she floated. I think.

[CovenantJr]

Spoiler

I didn't think she was anything to do with the Question. The knowledge she acquired and lost in those few moments in the cafe was God's Final Message To His Creation - "We apologise for the inconvenience", no less

But thanks for answering

[MsMary]

I love the Hitchhikers Guide. It's hilarious!!

I basically agree with what Murrin and Covenant Jr about the books.

The last book, Mostly Harmless was a bit disappointing, overall, but it does have some good jokes in it.

Definitely worth your time.

[Nav]

I only actually read HHGTG a couple of years ago, and I didn't have any trouble following Adams' 'period' jokes, and the sci-fi jokes are aimed at the genre in general rather than any specific works. It is a very easy read indeed, and seasoned readers will fly through it, so don't worry about it taking up a lot of time (it took me less than a week, whereas I spent nearly seven months on the second chronicles).

The first three books are classics (although things get a bit weird in the third). I think I actually preferred Mostly Harmless to So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, which I thought was a bit anti-climactic. I really enjoyed Arthur's new 'occupation' after the crash, and Ford's adventure in the Guide's headquarters. I don't remember too much from So Long..., except the bit about the Rain God.

I really wouldn't avoid The Salmon of Doubt either. It has some tremendous insights into Adams' life and other projects he was involved with. I found the unfunished Dirk Gently book a bit frustrating, but only because I'll never know what was going to happen. Adams actually said that one of the reasons the book was taking so long was that he suddenly realised that he was trying to write Hitchhiker's ideas into a Dirk Gently novel, and that maybe it would be better to turn it into a new Hithhiker book instead.