So, how are we this fine evening…
Anyway. I have been re-reading the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Yes, it rocked, but IMHO, the radio series rocked the most. You had to love Arthur Dent. I mean, his house gets demolished, then his planet gets demolished, and his best friend turns out to be from Betelgeuse, and then he meets Zaphod Beeblebrox, and all that stuff with Trillian didn’t get anywhere…
Never mind. The books and the TV show rocked too. I was delighted when Arthur got to live happily ever after with Fenchurch.
So what the hell was going in Mostly Harmless? Was I the only one who got lost a couple of pages in and never fully recovered?
You seem to have forgotten the bit in “Mostly Harmless” in which Fenchurch disappears out of existence while on a hyperspace flight with Arthur, never to be seen by him again. At the “complaints” counter, Arthur rails about the disappearance of his girlfriend, only to be chewed out for not reading the fine print on the tickets: Humans are at risk of disappearance during hyperflight and assume all liability.
At any rate, given how “Mostly Harmless” concluded, Arthur and Fenchurch wouldn’t have lived happily ever after any way.
I can understand you not getting through the last book. It was not very funny (except for "Tricia/ Trillian’s meeting with the Plutonians), had no coherent plot and showed just how sick and tired Douglas Adams was of writing about these characters. It was a thoroughly depressing end to the series.
Mostly Harmless is pretty wandering and odd. It doesn’t really have the bite of the earlier books. That said, there are some really underrated bits in it. Adams was clearly tired of writing Hitchhikers material, and wanted to remove all possibility of yet another book.
More recent, however, is The Salmon Of Doubt, and it is amazing. Part of it is a section of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel. Mostly, however, it is stuff that is editor found on his computer after he died. Journal entries, letters, speeches, reviews, story ideas, the works. It is touching, hilarious, insightful, and deeply, deeply sad.
I’m not sure what the print run was, but it’s already hard to find. The search is worth it, though.
–
Justin
I HATED MOSTLY HARMLESS!!
Really, it was incredibly depressing. Adams didn’t have to end it that way. If he didn’t want to write any more Hitchhikers books, he could have just stopped.
I was saddened by his death, and have yet to read Salmon of Doubt, though I will. I felt like there was a lot he could have done.
Wow. Surprised at the vitriol for MH. It’s my favourite of the series, mostly because it fits in well with my own philosophy the most of the five and the bit with the primitive society with Arthur as the Sandwich maker had me in stitches. I never saw the ending as depressing; in fact I found it a rather neat way to wrap things up and found myself chuckling at it. When I re-read the series not too long ago, I was actually surprised at how tough the first book was to get through – it was far too random for me, like a Monty Python sketch that went on too long.
I also strongly defend MH. It is different from the others but “different good”. The stuff about the Sandwich Maker and The King. (Which King? The King.) Great stuff.
Salmon of Doubt is already hard to find? Really? Even right when it came out, I had to ask the clerk at BN to hunt around in the back to find one.
My biggest concern right now is for the movie. In developmental hell for years, they appear closer than ever to actually getting it rolling, with Jay Roach directing. I’m really afraid that they will try to dumb it down or Americanize it to bring it to a wider audience. If you get past the low-budget effects, the BBC tv version is really pretty good. I expect that the movie would be half the length and probably deviate a good bit from the book, though.
And yeah, I didn’t really get Mostly Harmless either. Heck, even “So Long and Thanks For All The Fish” had trouble holding my attention. Of course, we were warned (“Those who aren’t interested might want to skip to the last chapter, which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.”).
I read somewhere that DNA had “Paperback Writer” played at his memorial service (he was an atheist and huge Beatles fan). Now there was a frood who really knew where his towel was.
You might want to put a f**king spoiler warning next time.
God I’m an idiot, nevermind. It’s late. That’s it.
This thread prompted me to finally go out and buy it and it wasn’t hard to find at all. It was right there in the first store I looked in, Hardcover Fiction, 5 or 6 copies of it and a couple more in Sci-Fi.
I’m just reading it for the first time, so I haven’t read any posts yet, I just wanted to say I can’t believe I never got around to this book. It’s hilarious.
I couldn’t stand Mostly Harmless. It’s the only one of Douglas Adams’s books I refuse to buy (I read it from the library).]
It just doesn’t read like he wanted to write it. It read like he wanted to never deal with the characters again, and this was his grudging way of publicly washing his hands of them. It left a sour taste in my mouth.