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Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy

I don't think Pratchett quite measures up and Gaiman is sort of in a different league entirely. But I'll check out Fford. (I prefer Ddodge and VvW, actually)

Adams seems to be one of those guys like Brautigan: so odd nobody can follow.
 
I have read the all the Hitch-hiker books more than once. In facxt I have read all of Douglas Adams books except for Salmon of Doubt. That books sits on my bookshelf and I cannot bring mmyself to read it because after that there is no more left to read.

I which Adams had been more prolific.
 
Eoin Colfer: And Another Thing...

The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy - the encyclopedia, not the novel - has a lot of information on sequels. For instance, we can read about an expert on robot construction on the planet DNA Prime, who gained fame for a series of five robots often considered the best in their class. They could do tricks, tell jokes, spin absolutely insane stories that still somehow seemed to be about regular people, and were generally just really great to hang out with. (Even if some people claimed that the last robot was pretty depressing, and not in a fun way.)

Sadly, the famous robot builder died before he could build a sixth robot to repair the fifth one, so after a suitable time, his widow hired a successful builder of toy robots from the planet Eringo Beta to build it instead. He quickly dug up the blueprints for the first five and got on it.

After several months of hard work, he presented the result to an excited crowd. At first, many remained cautiously optimistic; sure, the bodywork was patched together from parts that he'd copied from the five original robots without adding anything new, but they were sure that once he switched the robot on, it was bound to do something entertaining.

He hit the switch.

"Fffffffffroody," said the robot and moved its left knee a bit. (The knee had been a small detail on the third robot, added mostly as a joke, but was now supposed to carry the whole construction.) "Frood. Froooody." It paused long enough for the more fanatical audience members to remember that one of the old robots had indeed used the word "frood" at one point, though it now seemed to make up the new robot's entire vocabulary. "Frood," it added as if to underline this, as a small plume of smoke started rising from its head. (The head, which had been many people's favourite detail in the first five robots, didn't do much at all apart from this, except have a cup of tea now and then.)

The robot builder was, understandably, starting to panic. None of the parts he'd copied from the old robots seemed to be hooked up to the motherboard as they didn't actually do anything, and it was becoming clear that building the entire frame from little throwaway details with no strong structure of his own was a Very Bad Idea. "Uh... um... hang on," he called and ran into his workshop to retrieve an extra part (made from open source technology that everyone already knew) which he attached to the robot's back. The robot, which had only been balanced to stand perfectly still and impress with its mere existence and official Sequel status, immediately tipped onto said back with a hollow "bong" and lay there perfectly still, frooding quietly to itself, while a part from the fifth robot which had never worked right in the first place made a high-pitched whining noise.

One by one, the audience filed out. In the paper the next day, the new robot builder was dismissed as an "epp", which is Betelgeuse slang for "probably a great guy if you buy him a pint, but who doesn't seem to have any clue about building this kind of robot and should probably have let us keep our memories of the old ones intact."

And if you think that joke is old, stay the hell away from And Another Thing... .

:star1:
 
I don't want to offend anyone... I'm just curious. I tried to watch the movie... And it was so stupid that I did not finish it. Is the book better? Because most of the time they are I was debating on whether tor not to read it.
 
I don't want to offend anyone... I'm just curious. I tried to watch the movie... And it was so stupid that I did not finish it. Is the book better? Because most of the time they are I was debating on whether tor not to read it.

It is one of my all-time favorite book series but I had no desire to see the movie. It just doesn't seem like the kind of thing that translates to the big screen.

I never judge a book by any movie based on said book.
 
I don't want to offend anyone... I'm just curious. I tried to watch the movie... And it was so stupid that I did not finish it. Is the book better? Because most of the time they are I was debating on whether tor not to read it.

The book(s) is (are) infinitely better than the movie.
 
I stumbled across a page from the infancy of the web and thought I'd better c&p it here just for the record.

As we all know, Earth is actually a giant computer built to come up with the question to the answer "42". As such, it makes sense that "42" turns up a lot in Earth's code, especially in these, the last days leading up to our untimely destruction by the Vogons.

And so, I give you: The 42 Page, collecting all significant sightings of the number 42 as of... um... 1996 or so. Some examples:

2 Kings 2:23-24 (23) And he [Elisha] went up from thence unto Bethel: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him, and said unto him, Go up, thou bald head; go up, thou bald head. 24 And he turned back, and looked on them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she bears out of the wood, and tare _forty and two_ children of them.
The Earth is 42 orders of magnitude (based on powers of ten) larger than the Planck Length
42 is the natural vibration frequency of human DNA
42 is the natural vibration frequency of white mouse DNA
If you drilled a hole through the Earth from one point to another, and that hole was frictionless, it would take 42 minutes for gravity to move you from you side of the tunnel to the other.
In the "Tree Information" sketch for Monty Python, the Larch (the one they show over and over again) is tree number 42.
Lewis Carroll's 'magic number' was 42
Elvis Presley died at the age of 42 (according to some)
424242 as a hexidecimal backcolour in html is a very depressing grey
A new species of fish was discovered in Fiordland, New Zealand and named Fiordichthys slartibartfasti. The paper was accepted for publication by Journal of Natural History on 11 March 1994 - Douglas Adams' 42nd birthday.
This sentence is forty two characters long
Case closed.​
 
This is one of the few books I didn't finish reading because I got bored. I was mildly amusing, but I just couldn't get into it. *shrug*
 
Have you read The Hitch Hickers Guide to the Galaxy? If not, they why not??? It's damn great and it's damn funny!

You can read it for free here Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy GO!!! It's only the first book, i think, so now you know its really great you can go out and buy ALL OF IT!! :)

Regards
SillyWabbit

Yes, read the whole series and love them. I'm still so sad Douglas Adams has passed. I met him once at a signing and he was very friendly and kind. MISS HIM.
 
This is one of the few books I didn't finish reading because I got bored. I was mildly amusing, but I just couldn't get into it. *shrug*

I didn't finish the book either... It was funny, but not so funny that I could forget how useless Arthur was, or what a jackass Zaphod was... Ford was a real charmer though :).
 
It is definitely an acquired sense of humour and more subtle than your average sitcom / slapstick type humour.

If you like Monty Python and the Goon Show then you will probably like Hitchhikers, but if not ...
 
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