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New Hitchhiker's Guide Book "Not Very Funny"
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."
They said the same thing about the Hollywood movie, and look how that turned...
Oh, CRAP!
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.
Ave Molech Setting
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.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
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.
On the plus side, Eoin Colfer has won the Ambiguously Pronounced Name Award!
Tell me about it, I hate when I read a really good book that keeps me entertained for hours.
You didn't read Discworld, then? Is not that the entire books means to be funny, but have a lot of good laughs, and that in a story interesting enough that have a bit of everything. When i have to classify the secondary genre of those books, i doubt between fantasy, terror, sci-fi, philosophy and others, but the first one is humor definately.
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.
If you think Eoin Colfer isn't a comedy writer, then you've clearly never read any of his stuff.
> 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.
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.
... and then they built the supercollider.
While I am a huge Artemis Fowl fan, I'm not surprised that Colfer isn't able to pull off the Hitchhiker's universe as well. Adams and Colfer just have a completely different style of writing, and Colfer's does not fit the Hitchhiker's universe.
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.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
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!")
www.eFax.com are spammers
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
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.
Cory Doctorow talking about cloud computing makes as much sense as George W Bush talking about electrical engineering.
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.
Mostly Humorless.
I have...which leaves me even more baffled. That was comedy?
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.
"Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
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!"
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.
Prolific British writer and comedian Adams
Is this the same Douglas Adams we're talking about?
so long and thanks for all the fiction.
rewriting history since 2109
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.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
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".
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.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
I have never said this before but...Boy I wish I had mod points. (I might have but I don't think so). Calvin and Hobbes is by far one of the most insightful things I have ever read. Yet to most people it is still 'low art' and the same goes for the Guide. It is smart, funny, and so obviously about humanity that if the Vogans showed had little tags that read 'post office' or 'DMV' it would go quickly from funny to sadly real. Anyway, +5 insightful
We are the Borg...
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?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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...
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?