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So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

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Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#11

Post by RGX9 »

stevage wrote: post #10

I always kind of wish HHGttG was as good as the geekdom's fondness of it suggests. I read it, I enjoyed it, but really, it is such a depressing series. And there is very little that's particularly funny or interesting after the first book and a half. So many dull and drawn out scenes of characters in miserable situations. And that whole tortured Krikkit gag trying to explain the origins of cricket. Sigh.

I completely agree, it's one of those works where the pop culture lens filters a lot of things. I think Adam Douglas himself mentions in an interview that the later HHGttG books reflect his personal depression, and the enormous time pressure they were written in. Probably the whole series should have been one book, but it also makes it feel a bit human - here's this really smart guy with a lot of brilliant ideas, he just didn't manage to fully finish everything before it's shipped.

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#13

Post by mattkevan »

zabzonk wrote: post #4

[flagged]

In Adams’ universe people realised early-on that under no circumstances should anyone capable of having themselves elected president actually be allowed to do the job. Presidents had too much fun being president to notice they didn’t have anyp power.

Zaphod even gave himself a lobotomy to become stupid enough to be president, unlike the current lot who don’t even have that going for them.

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#14

Post by thom »

stevage wrote: post #10

I always kind of wish HHGttG was as good as the geekdom's fondness of it suggests. I read it, I enjoyed it, but really, it is such a depressing series. And there is very little that's particularly funny or interesting after the first book and a half. So many dull and drawn out scenes of characters in miserable situations. And that whole tortured Krikkit gag trying to explain the origins of cricket. Sigh.

I consider myself an enormous Douglas Adam’s fan, but I only really enjoy the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so I don’t think I can get too uppity about your comment. I’m not sure I’d call it depressing though, if anything it’s absurd in the tradition of Camus, and lit up my world during some bleak periods in my youth. The cultural impact of those early works is still enormous, at least in the UK, so I can’t begrudge the later works, and I still find the end of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish quite moving.

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#15

Post by cjs_ac »

stevage wrote: post #10

I always kind of wish HHGttG was as good as the geekdom's fondness of it suggests. I read it, I enjoyed it, but really, it is such a depressing series. And there is very little that's particularly funny or interesting after the first book and a half. So many dull and drawn out scenes of characters in miserable situations. And that whole tortured Krikkit gag trying to explain the origins of cricket. Sigh.

I think it's a lot like a lot of the Monty Python stuff: a lot of it is reflecting on a social order that was particular to Britain and no longer exists in quite the same way, so a lot of the satire doesn't land any more. The offbeat quirkiness has also become mainstream in British comedy, and so has also lost its edge. I think the fandom remains stronger in the US because American comedy still feels industrially mass-produced, and so the absurdism is still a bit novel there.

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#16

Post by stevage »

RGX9 wrote: post #11
stevage wrote: post #10

I always kind of wish HHGttG was as good as the geekdom's fondness of it suggests. I read it, I enjoyed it, but really, it is such a depressing series. And there is very little that's particularly funny or interesting after the first book and a half. So many dull and drawn out scenes of characters in miserable situations. And that whole tortured Krikkit gag trying to explain the origins of cricket. Sigh.

I completely agree, it's one of those works where the pop culture lens filters a lot of things. I think Adam Douglas himself mentions in an interview that the later HHGttG books reflect his personal depression, and the enormous time pressure they were written in. Probably the whole series should have been one book, but it also makes it feel a bit human - here's this really smart guy with a lot of brilliant ideas, he…

Ah, they were written under time pressure? That actually explains a lot.

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#17

Post by BLKNSLVR »

RGX9 wrote: post #9

There's "The Salmon of Doubt", an excellent collection of misc essays and writings of Douglas Adams published after his death, and it contains his last unfinished Dirk Gently novel. It's about one third finished, and it's really just wild: There's one narrative strand about Dirk Gently, a private detective, receiving mysterious anonymous payments and deciding to follow random strangers, one about a paragliding genius…

There were four episodes of a Dirk Gently TV series done by the BBC which I really found both clever and charming in just the right way for Dirk Gently. Some of it grated, but in a way that I feel it was correctly intended to. It's a shame it was cancelled before it could do a bit more exploration. They seemed to be onto a good thing.

The US TV Series I also enjoyed, but it's much more of a radical departure from the books than the British TV show is. But it's chaotic, it has interesting characters, and the whole crazily chaotic storyline is choreographed well and ties together cleverly.

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#18

Post by 6forward »

keepamovin wrote: post #7

Multiverse Employee Handbook is like something from the Time Variance Authority , the Adjustment Bureau , or Everything Everywhere All at Once - with a few shades of Severance I like these themes about the seeming absurdness and banal transcendence of capitalist systems and work today. Fight Club also echoes.

The TVA comparison is spot-on, bureaucracy across realities is universally soul-crushing. Severance's work/life divide feels like our quantum break room that exists in multiple states (you never know what you’ll find in the fridge). And yes, Everything Everywhere captures that cosmic-meets-mundane vibe I'm after. Corporate structures and cosmic physics share an absurd truth: both function through rules nobody fully understands but everyone pretends to follow

Re: So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams

#20

Post by jvm___ »

cjs_ac wrote: post #15
stevage wrote: post #10

I always kind of wish HHGttG was as good as the geekdom's fondness of it suggests. I read it, I enjoyed it, but really, it is such a depressing series. And there is very little that's particularly funny or interesting after the first book and a half. So many dull and drawn out scenes of characters in miserable situations. And that whole tortured Krikkit gag trying to explain the origins of cricket. Sigh.

I think it's a lot like a lot of the Monty Python stuff: a lot of it is reflecting on a social order that was particular to Britain and no longer exists in quite the same way, so a lot of the satire doesn't land any more. The offbeat quirkiness has also become mainstream in British comedy, and so has also lost its edge. I think the fandom remains stronger in the US because American comedy still feels industrially mas…

Animaniacs has the same problem, they mock politicians and celebrities from the early 90's, but the person their making fun of is just a drawn version of themselves so you're assumed to know who they are and why their being made fun of.
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