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The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Trillian:
Well that is actually what I preferred about the way Adams approached Hitchhiker's Guide. It is a bit wacky, but it is endearing and often does have a point. I think that Adams just enjoyed laughing at what he found to be ridiculous, and I think he found life and people in general to be rather ridiculous. I would tend to agree with him most of the time.
I do love Terry Pratchett as well, but I don't think that I would compare the two as novelists. I appreciate the two for entirely different reasons so depending on what I am looking for in a novel I will choose one author over the other.
I also wanted to point out that the motion picture released in 2005 was only one of the many adaptations of those books--the books themselves are actually an adaptation of the original radio series. Adams did write the majority of the screenplay, and it was then finished by Garth Jennings after his death. So it might be safe to assume that the movie went in the general direction that Adams foresaw, though it would be impossible to know what Jennings changed. I enjoyed the movie. I don't think it really did the books justice, but it took the funny bits and smooshed them all together so that the general public could enjoy a wacky movie without having to read the novels. Although I will say that the casting of Zaphod bothered me, and his heads were less awesome than I had hoped.
Jackie Blue:
I'm not saying I dislike the Hitchhiker's books - they were probably my favorite things in the world when I was 12-14 - I'm just saying that I don't really get a lot out of them, and always sort of roll my eyes any time someone older than 20 goes on about how genius they are. I think it's a bit of rose-colored-glasses mentality. Hell, even into my early 20s I would fondly remember the books. Then I went back and re-read them, and I was kind of like... Oh. Yeah, this is pretty good, I guess. But by then I had moved on and was more interested in things that were either more funny (Pratchett), more serious (Irvine Welsh), or both at once (Pratchett again, or Stephenson, or Robert Anton Wilson).
In fact, RAW is a pretty good comparison in what I've perceived as fanbase and trajectory. Adams seems to me to be held up and beloved by, for lack of a better term, geeks. Not in a bad way, just... you look at the Illuminatus! trilogy, and there is a series of books which Hitchhiker's in many ways paralleled (Hagbard Celine and his golden submarine are almost directly analagous to Zaphod and the Heart of Gold, a main character who is clueless and ripped from "the normal world" into a completely zany and unbelievable adventure, etc. - no idea if Adams read the Illuminatus! or not, but the parallels are there). But you look at the core fanbase, and from what I've seen, the core Douglas Adams fanbase are people who are slightly "wacky" but tend to be in bed by 11 and would have a nervous breakdown if they went to Burning Man, whereas the core RAW fanbase are people who take drugs and get into entirely outrageous situations on sheer whim and with frightening regularity, often with tragicomic results, but still.
Basically, correctly or not, I tend to think of adults who are die-hard Hitchhiker's fans as being a convention hall away from Trekkies, and usually when I meet such people I really think they ought to loosen up, go wild, really live the dream.
tommydski:
--- Quote from: zerodrone on 02 Feb 2008, 11:45 ---Not only that, but Mostly Harmless was an absolutely dreadful, depressing piece of business.
--- End quote ---
I thought it was a really clever book. The way it pulls all the strands from all the other books together towards the end is quite impressive. I didn't find it depressing at all. I thought the humour was darker but still ever-present. I'm actually glad it ended how it did.
The film was dogshit. I couldn't believe fans would make something like this. They totally missed the point.
muteKi:
I actually liked the film. Particularly because we already have a book and TV series. If it was too much of the same, I would have not liked it anywhere near as much. I thought a fair amount was clever, though I thought the POV Gun was a bit dull.
Jimmy the Squid:
The movie was alright, not amazing but it wasn't the worst thing I have ever seen. The BBC production was pretty fucking awesome, though it was very 80s. The books of course were really well done. Sure there are probably better books (I, for one, do not like Pratchett) but that doesn't lessen the quality of Adams' works. I suppose the books hold a special place in my memory as my dad used to read them to me as bed time stories when I was little.
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