New Hitchhiker's Guide Book "Not Very Funny" 410
daria42 writes "An early review of part of the Eoin Colfer-penned sequel to Douglas Adams's Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy series has panned the book as not being very funny. If you read Hitchhiker to have a good laugh, maybe you're going to be disappointed," wrote Nicolas Botti, on his Douglas Adams fan site earlier this month."
meh (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I always found humor in literature overrated.
Just because everyone praises the Emporer's new clothes, it doesn't mean he's wearing any.
Also, the new /. appearance is very confusing. Why would you put a separation line *before* the link to the comments?
Re:meh (Score:5, Funny)
On the plus side, Eoin Colfer has won the Ambiguously Pronounced Name Award!
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Really,
What was left unsaid, unexplored, unpadded, etc. in the original Doug Adams volumes? As a series, they were one book too long as it stood, really.
The creme was in the two BBC radio series, and the material was presented it its most delightful and appealing way in this format.
The books were little more than these programmes, padded with the narrative required to contextualize in written form. It's my belief that they suffered under this treatment. Certainly, they labored the humor - without the excellent timing and auditory cues, which were integral.
So. A good author now contributes a mediocre and unnecessary addition to an entertaining body of work, derived with some encumbrance from a superior and lively original radio play. To reiterate my original question, what had not yet been mined from that vein? What had not yet been wrung and worried from that corpus?
Oh, yes. More publishing revenues.
I think the Python's were quite good at satirizing this sort of thing - and Adams would have a good turn at it, himself: "The Contractual Obligation Beyond the Reasonable End of the Universe", or so.
Re: (Score:3)
I agree that the radio series is the best format of taking in the books. I even tried watching the TV series which has pretty much the same crew, and I just couldn't stand it. The books are great, the radio series is simply awesome.
Re:meh (Score:5, Funny)
I am a book, "Contractual Obligation to end 5 book trilogy", Mark 2. I have been activated. I will explode into outlet bookstores and recycling programs in 7 days. 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 45 seconds. 6 days, 23 hours, 59 minutes, 30 seconds. 6 days...
"Oh, Dear." uttered the ghost of Douglas. The ghosts of the other authors twittered behind him. "We told you this would happen" spat Tolkien, who had assumed a rather ungainly set of almost holographic elven ears...
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Well maybe in your universe
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The first series (aka. The Primary Phase) was first, followed shortly after by the first book. Both The second series (The Secondary Phase) and and the second book were released in 1980, though I think the radio series predated by the book by a few months. The subsequent series from the Tertiary through Quintessential phases weren't recorded from 2003 onwards, well after books 3 to 5.
Personally, I like the radio series and the TV series better than the books. Though, I really hate the 2005 film, I saw it on
Re: (Score:2)
We could do this for hours!
Re:meh (Score:5, Funny)
Eoin is a perfectly standard spelling in Gaelic, we tend to use too many vowels, a friend of mine, Aoife (pronounced eefa) has great fun in other English speaking countries. Now try Aodhan, ;)
How about you quit hogging all those vowels and share some with those poor Welsh?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Absolutely. Everyone's crazy except you.
Re:meh (Score:5, Funny)
I always found spinach in food overrated. A few tasty bits in any dish is fine, but to eat an entire dish that was suppose to be spinach. I dunno I can't see myself enjoying it that much. Even if the spinach was quality and well prepared.
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the best spinach i ever ate turned out be be fennel...
Re:meh (Score:5, Funny)
Tell me about it, I hate when I read a really good book that keeps me entertained for hours.
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I enjoy listening to reruns of classic "My Word" episodes; laughing an=t the verbal antics of Denis Norden and Frank Muir, while punctuating the pauses in in banter by loudly breaking wind.
But I wouldn't want to do so for very long at a time. Surely the weekend is sufficient for this!
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
You didn't read Discworld, then?
Depends which ones: The first couple of Discworld books were very much a series of set-piece jokes tied together by a loose plot - very much like the Hitch-Hikers Guide but with wizzards and dragons instead of robots and space ships... However, as the books went on the emphasis shifted from comedy towards plot and character.
The recent City Watch books are more hard-boiled detective and social commentary. Pratchett's most recent book, "Nation" was decidedly not a comedy.
Mind you, I get the distinct impress
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Hmm. I'd say they started that way - Colour Of Magic and Light Fantastic were clearly just parodies of "high fantasy" - but the order changed over time. I think he started focussing on Humour after about the 4th book, which contained a healthy dose of misanthropically insightful philosophy (since this is the source of most of his humour.) Eventually he seemed to move on to using humour to tell us things about the world, with fantasy being just a backdrop.
Compare the focus of Colour Of Magic with something
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Hmm. I'd say they started that way - Colour Of Magic and Light Fantastic were clearly just parodies of "high fantasy" - but the order changed over time. I think he started focussing on Humour after about the 4th book, which contained a healthy dose of misanthropically insightful philosophy (since this is the source of most of his humour.) Eventually he seemed to move on to using humour to tell us things about the world, with fantasy being just a backdrop.
It's become less satire of existing fantasy, and more insights about our own world, culture and history, but it's still fantasy. It's just not fantasy about fantasy anymore, it's now fantasy about our own world. The humour was already there in the first books. It's a less sophisticated humour, but it's definitely intentionally funny.
But even later books occasionally satirized fiction rather than reality. Many of the Witches books are about fairy tales, for example. It's just not about Fritz Leiber, Anne McC
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
> A few funny bits in any book is fine, but to read an entire book that was suppose to be funny. I dunno I can't see myself enjoying it that much. Even if the jokes were intelligent and witty.
Normally I would agree with you, except Douglas Adams was the guy who introduced me to the pleasure of laughing. After all, he was the guy who figured out humour for the geek.
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Douglas Adams was the guy who introduced me to the pleasure of laughing.
My endocrinologist performed that function for me. Turned out I had an inflamed spleen, and once that was treated it no longer hurt to laugh.
Re:meh (Score:5, Interesting)
A few funny bits in any book is fine, but to read an entire book that was suppose to be funny.
I'm not sure how we're supposed to take your opinion on literature seriously, after you wrote that sentence.
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
I always found humor in literature overrated. A few funny bits in any book is fine, but to read an entire book that was suppose to be funny. I dunno I can't see myself enjoying it that much. Even if the jokes were intelligent and witty.
Humor in literature is in fact vastly underrated because a lot of insecure people have the primitive feeling that if it is fun, then it can only be inferior art. Humorous books aren't wall-to-wall jokes, but often subtle literary works employing a wide array of literary devices to convey the authors intentions. Joseph Heller's "Catch 22", Cervantes' "Don Quixote", Jaroslav Hasek's "The Good Soldier Svejk", Franz Kafka's "The Castle", Mark Twain's "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" are all humorous works of the highest literary grade.
Try a funny book someday, you may like it.
--
Regards
Mark Twain (Score:5, Insightful)
A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Funny, geeky, fantasy.
He told me he was a page. "Go on," I said, "You ain't no more than a paragraph!"
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Humor in literature is in fact vastly underrated because a lot of insecure people have the primitive feeling that if it is fun, then it can only be inferior art.
Cue the Calvin and Hobbes comic contrasting 'high art' and 'low art':
Calvin: A painting. Moving. Spiritually enriching. Sublime. "High" art!
Calvin: The comic strip. Vapid. Juvenile. Commercial hack work. "Low" art.
Calvin: A painting of a comic strip panel. Sophisticated irony. Philosophically challenging. "High" art.
Hobbes: Suppose I draw a cartoon of a painting of a comic strip?
Calvin: Sophomoric, intellectually sterile. "Low" art.
Re:meh (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:meh Not a troll, a valid point of view (Score:2)
This is no troll. Humour in books doesn't work as well as it does on film, TV or live.
There are few books I've found to be really funny, and I read 30+ books a year. Douglas Adams' books along with say Catch-22 and maybe Running with Scissors are about the only ones that come to mind.
Humour works better when you can have the jokes delivered with timing. I've found audio books make some books much funnier when it's done well.
Even film has it's weaknesses for humour. Film tends to want a narrative to drive th
Wait! (Score:3, Funny)
The Hitchhiker's Guide was meant to be funny? No one told me that all those decades ago. I read it like any good student - as if it were a history book!!
Next thing, you'll be telling me that L. Ron Hubbard made up his religion.
Man, you slashdotters have a lot of nerve......
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Oh, come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
They said the same thing about the Hollywood movie, and look how that turned...
Oh, CRAP!
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Informative)
However, all the major changes in the movie script were penned by Adams himself.
The radio, book and movie versions of HHGTTG were all supposed to be different in their own way.
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
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But it was still funny and entertaining in the same way that I expected a Douglass Adams work to be.
It was funny and entertaining in the same way I expected a movie version of a book to be.
Much of the fun in the books come from the unique descriptions Mr. Adams used. Trying to preserve those on screen felt forced at best, and broke the film into small pieces connected with long pauses. Not good.
Also, I found the Vogons to be more pathetic than ugly and scary.
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Much of the fun in the books come from the unique descriptions Mr. Adams used.
Exactly. How do you film a spaceship that hangs in the sky in much the same way that a brick doesn't?
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Correct me if I'm wrong here but I also remember Adams saying that he never thought the HHGTTG could really work in anything but print. And because of a lack of trying on his part either. Just that whenever he worked at trying to make the whole idea behind HHGTTG in another medium even he thought it was lacking.
Even when I was watching the movie I tried to keep an open mind because I knew it could not be the same as the book(s). But even with me trying to accept it on that different format and what I tho
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Informative)
The problem with this theory is that HHGTTG didn't start its life in print. It was originally a radio play. And he was more than happy to try it out in other media formats.
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That would seem like an odd thing for him to have said, since the book came AFTER the radio series.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy [wikipedia.org]
And, let's not forget about the text adventure game! Possibly one of my favourite ways to enjoy the story, and you can play online too:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml [bbc.co.uk]
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
I liked the movie actually.
It wasn't really the guide, though what the guide is is a little bit fluid, there's the tv mini series, the two different radio series, the books in print, the books on tape read by Adam's himself, as well as the movie. They're all very different, and all funny in their own way. A bit like Monty Python in a sense, the best sketches were done so many times and always involved at least some improvisation so those lines embedded in your brain may not actually be in the version you read/watch.
It was however, at least I thought, in the spirit of the guide. It's a little less bitter and twisted than the originals were, but if Douglas Adams himself was a lot less cynical and bitter towards the end so that's not really all that surprising. My understanding is that the whole thing started because Douglas Adams used to make a tv show where the world exploded at the end of every episode and he wondered what it would be like to start a story with the world exploding instead. The Douglas Adams of later years was not that same person.
The biggest problem with the movie was that most people seem to only believe that one of the many formats is the true guide. Some people don't even know there was a radio drama, or a tv mini series, and they don't realize that the universe was different every single time, and so they expect the movie to be the books, but on film, which it wasn't and wasn't supposed to be. The fact that Douglas Adams died before the movie was released, just adds to things because those same people can blame Hollywood for ruining the story, when the reality is that Douglas Adams was heavily involved with the process and the result would likely have been very similar had he survived.
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:4, Interesting)
For all the criticisms I've heard about the film - some of them justifiable, some just uninformed fan-boy ranting - there is one aspect in which the film excelled: The Book.
Perfectly quirky, simple-looking, clean animation, a "please remain calm" backing track, and the narration masterfully voiced by a calm, eloquent Stephen Fry. Just about the only person who could've done it better than the two radio-series narrators. I feel confident in saying it will never be done better.
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>The radio, book and movie versions of HHGTTG were all supposed to be different in their own way.
Mission accomplished.
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However, all the major changes in the movie script were penned by Adams himself.
The problem is that it was the minor changes (ie. removing all the funny bits) that made it unwatchable.
The radio, book and movie versions of HHGTTG were all supposed to be different in their own way.
So you're trying to tell me that Adams decided that he didn't want the movie to be funny?
I suppose it could be some last practical joke of his, but somehow, I doubt it.
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it's more pertinent to point out that one person has said that he didn't find it funny. Now, call me old-fashioned, but since when did it warrant an entire Slashdot story based on one person's opinion of a book that hasn't even been released yet? Maybe I'm not with the times.
So, in a bit of an experiment, I did try and tell the BBC that I watched a pre-release version of 'Avatar' and I thought it was average, but oddly enough they didn't want to screen my interview...
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Funny)
Except that isn't what this is. What it is, is a link to a story which links to a review.
It's 2 orders of stupidity away from actually reviewing a book - if you spoke to a friend of yours, and they said "Oh yeah, I know this guy who knows this other guy who's read the book and he totally says it's boring and stuff", you'd laugh at them and possibly break their ankles for wasting your time.
Re:Oh, come on... (Score:5, Interesting)
They said the same thing about the Hollywood movie, and look how that turned...
You know, the movie is definitely not as _funny_ as the books, but I think they definitely made the main characters more _likeable_, especially Arthur. If you paid attention, they showed Ford using a towel in many of the appropriate ways, they just didn't call attention to it, which, to me, wasted a great opportunity.
For me, the funniest parts of the books are the excerpts from the Guide (especially the part about how the Babel Fish has been used for the non-existence of God). If they had added just a couple of minutes to put those into the movie, I think I would've liked it much, much more.
I love how they slipped the Marvin costume from the old tv show into the scene where there're a lot of people standing in line. Plus you've got to admit Alan Rickman *IS* Marvin. Who knew Marvin and Professor Snape had so much in common?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but I specifically remember excerpts from the book being presented in the movie. Didn't they have a voice over by Stephen Fry?
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You know, the movie is definitely not as _funny_ as the books, but I think they definitely made the main characters more _likeable_, especially Arthur.
The movie not being "as funny" is an understatement among the lines of "you know, being hit in the balls with a 5 pound sledge hammer is definitely not as _pleasant_ as a blowjob, but it's easier to get."
Yes, the characters were more likeable. Unfortunately, they did it at the expense of making the movie as a whole unlikable. They could have made the characters more sympathetic without removing the humor, instead they chose to do both, to the detriment of all.
I borrowed the movie from my local library. I
it doesn't matter (Score:5, Insightful)
No matter what author at any level of talent that had picked up the books and decided to continue them would be met with heresy or at very least a review of "not as good as the original".
As a writer I know how to mimic the words of others, but it doesn't mean that a person with a significant and highly educated fan base wouldn't pick up on the subtle differences, because no matter how good someone try's to imitate another person, in writing, it's just not the same.
Besides the fact that the expectations, especially those of slashdot's community, are so high you have little chance of being honored with anyone other than "mainstream" media who may have water on the brain, but enough money to throw at people to make them happy, even if slashdot or many fans don't approve.
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I was also not a fan of Mostly Harmless; wikipedia says Adams said that he was disappointed with the bleak nature of the book, and would have written the 6th more upbeat; it's quite possible that this would have improved it.
(Incidentally, anyone think that the reviewer missed the perfect opportunity to call the new book "mostly unfunny", or "almost but not quite entirely unlike humor"?)
stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Adams was a genius and having someone else pick up where he left off with anything makes no sense. If they are that good - they should be writing their own stuff.
I'll never forget the night I was baby-sitting some neighbor kids. They were in bed and I was watching PBS. A show came on and it was hilarious - that's how I found out about HHG - and once I got the books it was all over - I loved reading everything he wrote, even the unedited bits published after his death.
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Agreed. Douglas Adams was a very unique writer, in terms of his sense of humor. It's an insanely difficult act to follow.
And to be honest, I'm not sure I really want to read any attempts to do so. Why can't they just let a great series be a great series, instead of trying to extend it?
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If that thought were applied to movies, we'd have never had DS9 or the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie. Why is it OK for TV and movies but not novels? It's a common thought and I don't get it.
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Perhaps it would have been for the best had we not had the JJ Abrams Star Trek movie.
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The movie was terribly crafted. The only part of it that was at all well done was the fact that there was no sound in space, but other than that the movie had holes you could drive a tractor-trailer through- plot holes so large they actually detracted from the enjoyment of the movie, by making one seriously consider the writer's sanity.
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The movie was terribly crafted. The only part of it that was at all well done was the fact that there was no sound in space, but other than that the movie had holes you could drive a tractor-trailer through- plot holes so large they actually detracted from the enjoyment of the movie, by making one seriously consider the writer's sanity.
Agreed. But I liked a lot about it, too. I think they developed Kirk and Pike quite well. Also, those two actors really did a good job in their roles. That's a lot more than I'd come to expect from other Trek movies.
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I admit that by the end of his tenure, I was sure William Shatner was playing the role for laughs more than anything else.
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Who said it was ok for TV and Movies? Few sequels in those media are any good. As your examples prove.
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Adams' gift (or one of them) was the unexpected. I think anyone trying to write "as" Adams will inevitably fail because no matter how good a writer they are in their own right if they try write as they 'expect' Adams to write then it will be expected by the reader too.
If case any one reading this likes HHGTG and hasn't read Adam's Dirk Gently novels I can only recommend to get them and read them.
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The weird thing is that Adams himself said he spent the early part of his life trying to be John Cleese, until he realized that John Cleese was John Cleese, and that Adams should try being himself.
Someone literally stole my copy of Salmon of Doubt from a coffee shop before I could finish reading it. I am a little curious. This new book, is it a continuation of what he started there, or something completely else?
I'm also not sure the series needs continuation. The plot was never good. Adams never wanted more
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly. I'm going to record the next Jimi Hendrix album AND paint the next Picasso.
The reason these guys are so successful is that their views of the world are so skewed from everyone else's and we love them for it.
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Hey, just because *you're* not as good as Jimi Hendrix or Picasso doesn't mean that there is NOBODY in a planet with approx 6 Billion people that could make music in the same style as Jimi Hendrix, and do a good job of it. Or paint in a similar style to Picasso and be brilliant at it.
The difference here is that, with music, there's no point is calling your album the "next Jimi Hendrix" album (unless you just want to be ridiculed by people), because music is essentially stand-alone. With fiction, you can ce
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I hear there are some pretty good Star Wars books that weren't written by George Lucas. I also hear there are some good Star Trek books which weren't written by Gene Roddenberry. Go to any bookstore, and you will find a whole shelf full of Forgotten Realms books, by a cadre of different authors, and they seems to be, for the most part, well received by fans of Forgotten Realms.
There weren't any good Star Wars books written by George Lucas, nor Star Trek books by Gene Roddenberry. As for Forgotten Realms, as novels they were conceived as a sort of shared world. I'm not a Douglas Adams fan, but none of the Star Wars, Star Trek or Forgotten Realms books are in the same class as The Hitchhikers' Guide series.
Re:stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:stupid (Score:4, Funny)
I expect that there may be a few people in the world better at telling a consistent and coherent story than George Lucas.
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You MORON. Star Wars is THE example of a series that got BETTER when someone else did the story!
Knights of the old republic was superior to even the first three movies!
Though it's a shit-fest now, Star Wars Galaxies, prior to the introduction of Jedi as an unlockable class, was the best MMO of its time, a wonderful game, and quite possibly the best MMO to date.
Even the 5-minute completely fan-driven and made "Troops" which was purely a comedy sketch, was fantastic.
Star wars becomes a bigger, bette
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For me, Adams is similar. I used to be a Radio 4 fan far earlier than was probably good for me and used to listen to it as a matter
The ending? (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't understand what drives people so crazy about the ending of Mostly Harmless. Even Adams said he didn't like the bleak ending. Am I alone in thinking this was the best ending of a book I have ever read?
Sure it's bleak. I don't care. Nearly every other novel I've read that I enjoyed the ending always has seemed abrupt. I get attached to the characters and now the story just 'ends'. Mostly Harmless fixed that. Their dead. The Earth is gone. All of them. There are no 'what now?' questions left. The end of Mostly Harmless had closure - somthing I have failed to find in any story since.
Now comes this crap, off to ruin it.
Re:The ending? (Score:4, Interesting)
Orson Scott Card said he battled with this when he finished the Ender's Game quartet. People wanted more sequels. He killed the main character, but others felt he still left a door open. Orson Scott Card said in future series he would have to make sure the door was firmly closed shut when he ended something so that people knew it was over.
Not Surprised (Score:3, Insightful)
The originals were funny? (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize there is plenty of dry and black humor, in the most British sense of the words, but the triumph, in my opinion, was that he told a compelling story in spite of that, not because of it. Obviously if you found them humorous as well, then that probably lent something to the subjective quality of the novels. But the HHGTTG series had a much wider audience than British comedy does, so clearly it wasn't the humor alone that drove the popularity, and I think that focusing on that alone is missing the appeal of the books. It's missing the forest for the trees, the way George Lucas did with his prequels, assuming that the popularity of the series had something to do with the special effects, when they were really just a footnote in a story and universe (ok, galaxy) that we loved.
Sorry, but the LAST book wasn't that funny, either (Score:5, Interesting)
Sorry, but the LAST HHGTTG book, "Mostly Harmless", wasn't all that funny, either - and that WAS written by Douglas himself.
Considering that it ended with the destruction of pretty much EVERYTHING, I don't see how the new book could even BE - let alone BE FUNNY, unless the do a complete reboot of the HHGTTG universe.
("...with younger, edgier characters!")
Maybe it's a different type of humor (Score:4, Interesting)
Maybe the reviewer didn't appreciate the type of humor in the book. I read Hitchhikers' Guide to the Galaxy years ago and didn't find it to be very funny, so maybe I will find this one funny instead.
Bad title... (Score:2)
Like 4 and 5 (Score:2, Interesting)
If you read Hitchhiker to have a good laugh, maybe you're going to be disappointed,"
So its like books 4 and 5 then. I thought book 4 was the best in the series, though I think I'm in the minority since lots of people didn't like it because it didn't have a laugh a sentence.
I disliked the 5th book so much I seem to have successfully suppressed it in my memory to the point where I don't even remember what it was about. Perhaps there wasn't even a 5th book and I'm just confused.
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The first few books were so happenstance that I honestly wonder if Douglas Adams had any idea of what was going to happen next. He said when writing the radio show, he had no major thought towards the direction of the show. I think in books 4 and 5, he did seem to have more plot in mind. The books move with more of a purpose. It is entirely possible that people prefered the madcap style of the first 3.
Read Dirk Gently if you want more Adam (Score:5, Insightful)
Seriously, if you want more Adams humor, and haven't done so already, go read "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and the sequel "The Long, Dark, Tea-time of the Soul". H2G2 isn't the only great series Adams made.
They are great books, and probably way better than anything in this new book.
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I think Gently's humour is a bit less accessible - I've had both series since my childhood and only recently did I really start to like Gently. Adams' writing for Dr Who was even more subtly funny.
Re:Read Dirk Gently if you want more Adam (Score:5, Interesting)
dig out a copy of last chance to see. that has some of adam's best work...
Sleeping in Labuan Bajo, however, is something of an endurance test.
Being woken at dawn by the cockerels is not in itself a problem. The problem arises when the cockerels get confused as to when dawn actually is. They suddenly explode into life squawking and screaming at about one o'clock in the morning. At about one-thirty they eventually realise their mistake and shut up, just as the major dog-fights of the evening are getting under way. These usually start with a few minor bouts between the more enthusiastic youngsters, and then the full chorus of heavyweights weighs in with a fine impression of what it might be like to fall into the pit of hell with the London Symphony Orchestra.
It is then quite an education to learn that two cats fighting can make easily as much noise as forty dogs. It is a pity to have to learn this at two-fifteen in the morning, but then the cats have a lot to complain about in Labuan Bajo. They all have their tails docked at birth, which is supposed to bring good luck, though presumably not to the cats.
Once the cats have concluded their reflections on this, the cockerels suddenly get the idea that it's dawn again and let rip. It isn't, of course. Dawn is still two hours away, and you still have the delivery van horn-blowing competition to get through to the accompaniment of the major divorce proceedings that have suddenly erupted in the room next door.
At last things calm down and your eyelids begin to slide thankfully together in the blessed predawn hush, and then, about five minutes later, the cockerels finally get it right.
I'd file it under (Score:5, Funny)
Mostly Humorless.
B*lgium (Score:2)
So it's the novelization of the movie? nt (Score:2)
nt
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No harm.. (Score:2)
We all define our own notion of the canon - we may orbit around the publisher or primary author, but we're not limited to that. I don't consider any Dr Who after the 7th Doctor to be canon, some of my friends consider everything but the movie to be canon, and there is disagreement about the books as well. People don't hold the same canon on Zelazny, Lovecraft, and plenty of others. I'm sure it'll be likewise with HHGTtG and this book. I don't think we should become too upset over new content unless we reall
Prolific? (Score:4, Insightful)
Prolific British writer and comedian Adams
Is this the same Douglas Adams we're talking about?
So long (Score:5, Funny)
so long and thanks for all the fiction.
done with hitchhiker (Score:5, Interesting)
I think Mostly Harmless made it pretty clear that Douglas Adams was more than done with the series. If any further proof was necessary, I had an opportunity to talk with Adams shortly before his death, and got the same impression -- he was sick of the series, and wrote Mostly Harmless because he had to.
I would much rather have read a third Dirk Gentley novel than a half-hearted Hitchhiker novel, and might have but for rabid Hitchhiker fans. Not that I'm bitter.
It doesn't really matter what the new novel is like. I'm done with that.
Re: (Score:2)
Just let yourself relax a while and get back into it. Mostly Harmless was fantastic up until he decided "Hey, let's go ahead and kill off all the characters everybody loves."
It was a douche move, and I still don't like it. It's like getting a birthday cake and then a punch to the face. Why forgive that?
Series was NEVER that funny (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, when I was 12 (in 1984), I though the first 2 books were funny. The third wasn't. The fourth was terrible. I didn't bother with the rest.
And you know what? Not even the first 2 books are funny anymore. They haven't held up. At the time of their publication, they were fairly ground-breaking, but that style of humor just hasn't aged well at all (which tends to happen to all kinds of humor). It's juvenile and obvious, really. Nothing wrong with that, but it means the books have a shelf-life, and the HHGTTG books are about 20 years past their expiration date. They are cultural artifacts, not "classics".
The man himself said it best (Score:3, Insightful)
To quote the man himself,
"This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If you think Eoin Colfer isn't a comedy writer, then you've clearly never read any of his stuff.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Insightful)
I only found the first two books funny. The rest... not so much.
Third was pretty good. Not as good as the first two, but pretty good (in my opinion).
The fourth was OK. Definitely a "OK, here's your damn book, get off my back." The best parts seemed self-referential - the supposedly final book is "so long, and thanks for all the fish?" Cute move.
The fifth was hilarious in a way because it seemed to be a genial "fuck you" to forces that insisted on a new book. He closed the book in a very clever way that resulted in the main character being killed off.
Then of course he died himself, which if he could have written it would have been hilarious. I mean no disrespect, but I think he'd have appreciated the symmetry.
Re:Surprise? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm totally blowing my ability to mod because of this, but I hated the ending of the last book for the longest time. Now I think it's kinda funny, like some kind of uber-joke you might not "get" for a while but keeps growing on you. It was a completely appropriate way to end the series.
It matches extremely well with someone's explanation of where "42" actually came from - they said it's binary.
Hold your hands up to your face, palms facing you, thumbs in.
Now, assume each digit of "42" represents one hand - i.e. 4 is left hand 2 is right hand.
Now, what's 4 in binary? 0100
And what's 2 in binary? 0010
Match your fingers with the digits, and you get a glorious double-middle-finger flipping off everyone, kinda like the ending of the 5th book.
My favorite joke in the book, though, was the running "flowerpot that says 'oh no not again'" joke. That and flying. And crickett. Top 3, ok?
Re: (Score:2)
Doesn't hurt Adams' (Score:3, Insightful)
People get all bent out of shape about other authors stepping in and writing works in a dead (or sometimes living) authors 'universe', but I don't understand how the Colfer guy writing a book makes Adams's books any less good than they already were? Nothing this guy can do can hurt Adams's legacy, so just go sit down, and maybe take some valium or prozac or something.
Re: (Score:2)
"I am having terrible difficulty with my lifestyle."
Irony (Score:3, Insightful)
Disclaimer, I gfot an A in an English exam on the book of Hitchhikers, the question on the peper was write about someone who finds himself in events over which he has no control, goodbye Huck Finn, hello Arthur Dent
Irony - Stating one's success in an English exam within a sentence containing several spelling errors.
Re: (Score:2)
Here's a hint: wait until you actually read it, or at least until you see more than one person's opinion.