If Terry Pratchett isn’t modern, this guy won’t be either … but John Sladek is amazing.
This sounds something like the Laundry Files series (Charles Stross). Eldritch extradimensional horrors - check. Held at bay by a bizarre combination of high tech and medieval magic run out of “The Laundry” - a secret agency so secret that if you ever find out it exists you get … well, a permanent job with a nice salary, an NDA to make your hair curl, and the prospect of having your brains sucked out with a straw if you fail to pay appropriate attention. Somewhat darker than Pratchett, but full of sardonic humour
Oh my yes, I love this book and have read it to shreds–Haviland Tuf is one of the all time best deadpan hilarious characters ever written. Most of Martin’s SF work is much more grim but this foray into the lighter side of things is amazing.
Martinez: Gil’s All-Fright Diner, A Nameless Witch, The Last Adventure of Constance Verity
Holt:. Expecting Someone Taller and Life Liberty and the Pursuit of Sausages
All of this, but the tone is much, much darker than Adams. Gives Gaiman a run for his money. A lot of IT in-jokes, and sly references to other subject matter. Stross is an old D&D maven (Liked the Githyanki or Slaads? They’re his creations.) So there’s a bit of gamer and RPG humor too. Less appealing now that the End Times are approaching, and his characters are running the bureaucracy rather than hapless minions of it, but still a solid recommend. Usually a lot of ideas to play with in Stross’s work.
Portuguese Irregular Verbs was funny. And British. I have not read any of the sequels yet, so do not know how well they hold up.
I had thoroughly enjoyed Johannes Cabal the Necromancer by Jonathan L Howard.
Oh my gosh, I completely forgot about one of the funniest modern SF books around: The Rook, by Daniel O’Malley. The protagonist is an amnesiac who works for Britain’s top-secret anti-eldritch-horrors agency, so, similar in some ways to the Laundry Files (of which I’ve only read one–somehow it didn’t click for me). The secret agency–well, it won’t renew your faith in governmental competence.
It’s funny throughout, but the Duck of Prophecy is one of my all-time favorite moments in modern fantasy.
I came in here to say Christopher Moore! But I’ve been beaten to it, multiple times.
As a fan of DA, some great food for thought here.
@Dark_Sponge - You beat me to it. Loved the “John Dies” series.
@Dead_Cat - Beat to that one too. I just read a few in the spring. I loved the humour and style, but I thought plot-wise they were a little too simplistic. Basically the TV shows as a book. I guess I was expecting more from a novel or novella.
I’ve had the opportunity to meet Christopher Moore a couple of times, and I’m happy to say he’s a nice man who cares about his fans. Last time I met him, I was a volunteer at a book festival where he was presenting. Afterwards, there was a line of about 150 for a book signing. The whole process took longer than his reading - about two hours. I commented at the end that it was nice of him to stay until he’d signed everyone’s books, and he said, “Well, it’s my job.” So I’m a fan of him as a person.
As a writer, though, he’s hit or miss. Loved The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove, but was terribly disappointed by Island of the Sequined Love Nun. He’s capable of digging deep into a subject, and producing a well-researched, informative, and interesting story that can still produce belly laughs - e.g., Lamb, one of the best tellings of the Gospel story I know. But he can turn out a stinker, too - I was an advanced reader for The Stupidest Angel, and it turned me off him for a couple of years. The last thing of his I read all the way through was Sacre Bleu. Started the second Pocket book, but I just couldn’t make it.
Yeah, the TV shows came first so that’s fair comment - a 6x28min series is bound to make a pretty thin book. What I liked about them was they were able to do more in terms of both scene-setting and exploring the mindset of each of the characters, while retaining the humour (and adding some humorous asides). It’s worth remembering that the HHGG evolved in a similar way - started with short radio series (which, to my shame, I have still not listened through properly), the books came after.
Thank you to all who recommended Christopher Moore. I’ve just finished Shakespeare for Squirrels and loved it, and look forward to reading the rest of his works!
I would have put in a vote for Christopher Moore. Since we are looking for more ‘modern’ authors than some have mentioned, I’ll throw an odd one - Yahtzee Crenshaw. He’s semi infamous for his hilarious column on gaming for Escapist Magazine, by the name of Extra Punctuation.
He has written several novels however, including Mogworld, which actually has a lot to say about gaming culture while sending it up. I don’t honestly put him on the same level as Moore or Adams, but if you want modern and absurdist, he does it well.
Connie Willis has written some funny books, for example “To Say Nothing of the Dog”
Alexander McCall Smith is enjoyable in a mundane, lighthearted way … but I would not put his work in a category anywhere near Douglas Adams, and also his writing is a completely different genre.
I would definitely recommend the Red Dwarf novels. Comedy science fiction that was surely influenced by Adams. And also made into a cult BBC sitcom. The books have some wonderful ideas in them - especially the early ones written under the authors name of Doug Naylor.
Looking back over some much older humorous science fiction, I strongly recommend the following (just be advised that they turned out serious stuff, as well, and some downright scary things):
Fredric Brown – the master of the short short. He also wrote great mysteries and fantasies. But he had a weird streak of humor that shows up in stories like Martian Go Home (ignore the really bad movie of the same name it inspired), The Angelic Angleworm, Too Far (a story about a were-buck filled with atrocious puns), Nothing Sirius (That’s what they decide to name a planet found orbiting within the orbital radius of Sirius 1. ), and others.
Theodore Coggswell – writer of short, pinchy sf stories in the 1950s. Some of them have wonderfully bizarre humor. Others are twist-ending Teilight Zone-type stories.
Henry Kuttner and Catherine L. Moore – They wrote a lot of serious stuff and scary stuff. Adaptations of their stories that get turned into movies invariably have the endings changed to be more upbeat. But they wrote some funny fantasy and science fiction. Especially notable is the collection Robots Have no Tails (published under their pen name Lewis Padgett), which involves an inventor named Gallegher (although his name changes sometimes) who only invents and creates when he’s drunk, and when he sobers up he can’t remember exactly what he did. In the first story of the series, The Proud Robot, his robot creation refuses to do any mundane tasks, and claims he both smarter and more capable than his creator, who desperately needs him to somehow perform the task he created the robot for so he can complete his contract and get paid. When the robot admires his own gear trains, Gallegher counters with “You’ve got worms.”
**John M. Ford’**s Star Trek novel How Much for Just the Planet was pretty good; I’m not familiar enough with his work to know if he had other comedic entries.
Agreed… Start with “The Reproductive System” which is, I think, his most approachable book. Then, if that appeals, go on to “The Mueller-Fokker Effect.”
The two mysteries, “Black Aura” and “Invisible Green” are also fun, with lovely social satire (although terribly dated. Still debunking mystics never wholly goes out of fashion.)
Nitpick: It’s Cogswell, not Coggswell.