fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3987 ]

[ SECRET POST #3987 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3987 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Yuri on Ice]

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[Book Series: The Temeraire Novels by Naomi Novik]

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[Orphan Black]

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[South Park]

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[Stranger Things]

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[Smallville]

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[Iron Fist, Joy/Danny]

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Posting my thoughts in a reply. Please post yours, any questions you may have, etc. :)

I would pretty much characterize this book as “whimsical”, “silly” and “sometimes funny”. There wasn’t a whole lot else to it, to me. I think this book falls pretty solidly in the category of “things I would have liked a lot better if I’d read them ten years ago”.

Part of my reaction to it is that I’ve read a lot of sci-fi lately, and I’m incapable of not taking things at least somewhat seriously. So some of the really of-the-wall mechanics of the universe presented were just weird to me instead of funny.

The only character I really liked was Ford, honestly. Arthur was just so...flat. Trillian was ok but kind of one-dimensional. Zaphod was just irritating. Ok, I lied a little, I also liked Marvin, especially when he accidentally killed the spaceship and saved the others’ asses towards the end.

Part of my reaction, too, stems from already having heard the big reveal/meme from the story from like...two decades ago lol. (the 42 thing)

Also, I thought the ending was very bizarre. There wasn’t much in the way of an anti-climax, it just very suddenly ended. I mean I know it’s an ongoing series, like a big epic space drama, and I know it started as a radio show, but I’m still a bit surprised they didn’t try to at least wrap it up a bit more neatly.

Also, there was a character mentioned on the back cover as part of the main story who never actually showed up except he was mentioned once or twice. I guess he probably shows up later on in the series and the editors somehow missed that he was being advertised as part of the wrong book. That might be an edition-specific nitpick though.

I’m really curious to see others’ reactions since I know this book is sort of considered a classic (not really, but it’s a popular favorite) and some people here really like it. What did you love about it? Anything you didn’t like? Have you heard the radio show or seen the movie or musical adaptations? Did you like those better or worse and why? How would you compare this to other sci-fi you like, or is it too different to compare at all? Let us know what you think!

Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is really weird. I totally get why it's a classic, I absolutely loved it when I was a kid and first read it, and I still like a lot of things about it. A lot of the ideas in it are genuinely off-the-wall and cool - the scale and the scope of things like the Earth being a supercomputer, and the Infinite Impossibility Drive, and the idea of Magrathea being a place that can build planets, and having this impossibly old history of Earth and humanity - that's all genuinely really cool stuff. And the oddball humor that suffuses the whole thing is funny and charming, even if I don't find it as funny as I maybe used to.

At the same time, though, as a novel, it's entirely unsatisfactory. The characters are mostly pretty unlikable and uninteresting - Ford is OK, and Arthur and Marvin are mildly funny even though they also kind of suck; everyone else sucks and is also not very funny. And the plot is just totally unsatisfying. Obviously, in this book, it just sort of limply trails off. It doesn't satisfactorily fit any of the big cool ideas or emotional storylines into a meaningful whole or a satisfying conclusion. And from what I can remember from the rest of the series, there isn't actually any point at which it does do so. It just sort of... goes on and on. So that's just sort of frustrating. I mean, just, why even bother to gesture at these big conspiracy theories and ideas? If all you want to do is have wry jokes, you can do that much more satisfactorily without that stuff.

Either way, it's obviously a classic, Douglas Adams is a legend, etc. But as an actual narrative story, there are a lot of things that I dislike about it.

I think you just articulated really well why I never got into it either. Like you said, I recognize that it's a classic and why, but I just didn't love it, particularly

Edited 2017-12-03 22:20 (UTC)

I pretty much agree with this comment. This is a good comment and a good assessment.

Except I liked Marvin a little more than Arthur, I guess. Even though he was obnoxious.

I did like the bit with the mice. That was pretty funny.

Edited 2017-12-03 22:22 (UTC)

Also, mice are very cute, so that helps a lot there.

It was ground-breaking when it came out, and it's still pretty ground-breaking today, though now I can see where its roots are in classic Doctor Who, dialled up to 11.

But what made me go "wtf" all the way through is that there's only one speaking female character - in fact, I think Trillian is the only female character on-stage. I should have picked up on that all those years ago. I didn't because I was young and that was the way things were.

But Douglas Adams wasn't young, and he was a good deal brighter than me - as he says in his bio, he went to Cambridge! So my main impression this time around is, "Badly done, Douglas."

>:(

Fair points IMO.

I do think the Doctor Who stuff is interesting but it also kind of feels like a Doctor Who episode without, like, an editor or someone to put a plot in.

I was glad she was intelligent and not super stereotypical though it definitely bugged me that she was the only one. :(

There is a certain cynicism to the whole series, but the first book has enough new ideas in it to be fun. I am fond of the whimsy of it: towels, bugblatter beasts, spaceman slang, and mice with bad math. (The fifth book is the truly bleak one, although bleakness runs through much of the series as subtext.)

I like the cover's image of a green planet with its tongue sticking out for some reason.

Cynicism is definitely a good word to use here.

Exhaustingly cynical.

I did really like the mice. They were better executed than some of the other humorous aspects.

I didn't get around to re-reading this, but I have read it before (although it's been years) and I do remember loving it. I think the the style of the humor - while not completely foreign to me from having watched Monty Python and old Doctor Who, including Douglas Adams episodes of the latter - felt pretty novel to me at the time. This would have been in the mid-90s when a lot of the scifi I consumed was pretty serious, or at least trying to be.

I remember trying to read more books in the series but being really disappointed because even though the jokes were of the same style, they all fell flat. I didn't find them funny at all, I didn't even finish the second one - I dropped it partway through and skipped to the third, then gave up entirely a few pages in.

Yeah, if you were into sci-fi at the time I can see how the contrast could be very appealing. I was still a kid in the 90s, so I didn't read it then, heh.

Sorry the rest of the series wasn't as fun for you :(

I love Monty Python, but I don't think I'd enjoy it as much now as I did when I first watched The Holy Grail and some of the skits. I think maybe I'm pulling away a little from some of that kind of wacky humor. (But I still make Monty Python jokes with my family and love the memes.)

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[ SECRET POST #3987 ]

Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Oh! Yes, this book.

Re: Oh! Yes, this book.

Re: Oh! Yes, this book.

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Re: Book club - November discussion: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy