...And Another Thing - posthumous HItch-Hiker's sequel

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

When I heard that there had been a 6th Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy book written by someone other than Douglas Adams (Eoin Colfer, as it happens), I thought it sounded like a bad idea. But I thought it only fair to give it a go, and I read it. Turns out that my initial instincts were correct. It's awful. Truly, mind-bogglingly awful.

It's got none of the wit, satire or intelligence of Adams' work, for a start. Where Adams would take a trend or piece of science and extrapolate it up to ludicrous proportions, Colfer just seems to say random things in the hope that people will think it's funny. So where you've got the Infinite Improbability Drive from Adams, taking an aspect of quantum mechanics and probability to silly extremes, Colfer has, for example, Thor seeing things with God-O-Vision. That's not clever, it's not satire, it's not witty, it's not something that says anything about anything, it's just a silly name that he hopes people will find funny.

And he seems to think that if something was funny once, then it'll be funny a hundred times more. Almost every page contains a reference to something mentioned in a previous book, seemingly as if he's terrified that the readers won't recognise this as the same universe in which the previous books were set. Eccentrica Gallumbits is mentioned more times in this book than she was in all the previous books combined. As are Pan-Galactic Gargleblasters, the word "froody", and a million other things. And it's not just that, he comes up with his own things that he seems to think will become funny by repetition - like the insult "promwrangler", which almost every character calls every other character repeatedly.

So let's talk about the characters. These people share the names of previous characters, but they certainly don't talk like them. Has anybody in any of the previous books ever used the word "mate"? Well, everybody calls everybody else it in this. Arthur's foot is in the way of an intelligent rat, so he says "oh, sorry, mate" to the rat. Did Arthur become cockney between books? Did Zaphod? Is it in character for Ford to, completely unprompted, call Arthur an "********"? When Random says to Arthur "don't patronise me" is it in character for him to sarcastically say "sorry, sweetie" back? I don't recognise these people at all.

And they aren't actually people any longer. One thing you can't say about Adams' writing is that he was ever big on writing complex, layered characters. But his characters are practically real people compared to the characters in this book. In Mostly Harmless Random was a displaced, confused girl who had anger issues because she'd been abandoned her entire life. Her characterisation was neither deep nor subtle, but there was a sense of her being a real person who reacted to things as you'd expect a human being who had had the experiences she'd had to react to things. In this book she's a shallow sulky teenager, reacting to things sulkily because she's a teenager and teenagers are sulky. And that's it. There's not even the slightest attempt to make her, or anybody else, anything other than their surface characteristics.

And then there's the plot. Of which there is very little. Sure, not all the Hitch-Hiker's are burdened with an over-abundance of plot, but there was at least reason and rhyme to them. In this book things seem to happen because they happen. Ford, Arthur, Trillian and Random are put inside virtual lives by the Guide Mk. II when the Earth is destroyed because they are. Nothing of consequence happens in those virtual lives and they have no impact on the story and, indeed, they exit those lives 2 seconds after they entered them in exactly the same predicament they entered them in. The Guide Mk. II then spontaneously dies because it'd ruin the plot. Then Zaphod turns up to rescue everybody because he does. It's not a plot, it's just stuff happening, one after another.

And people's motivations for doing things only fit whatever the plot requires. So Zaphod rescues everybody because he's somehow heard of Earth being destroyed again and somehow know's Ford's on the Earth and has decided that this time he's going to save Ford. He's also saved a whole other bunch of Earthlings, even getting them a planet from Magrathea, because he has. Trillian falls for Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged because she needs to pair up with someone. And so on. Again, it's just stuff happening because it's happening, rather than there being any actual design or reason for it.

Now, I'm not against the idea of a 6th Hitch-Hiker's book. Adams himself had said that he was thinking about writing a sixth, as he wanted a more upbeat ending to the saga and couldn't make the plot for the third Dirk Gently work as a Dirk Gently, but it might work as a Hitch-Hiker's. I personally like the bleak ending of Mostly Harmless, but I have no objection to it not being the end of the trilogy. I also have no objection to someone other than Adams writing another Hitch-Hiker's book. There are plenty of good writers out there, and the universe Adams created is rich for exploration. But there should be a point to the book. It should have something to say about something, even if all that something is is "aren't there a lot of shoe shops around at the moment?" It should feature characters that are recognisably the same people as in the previous 5 books. And it should actually be funny. This book fills none of those criteria.

What a shame.

 

[JohnG]

I gave up about halfway through the book. It was just too tedious, tonally off and the general plot itself, which dealt more about mythology than scifi tropes, felt more appropriate to a Dirk Gently novel than it did to the H2G2 universe. There were some clever ideas and lines here and there but ultimately I was disappointed. Maybe someday I'll give it another shot and finish reading it. Maybe.

But don't mind me, I'm one of those sad Hitchhiker fans who thinks it peaked with the first seven episodes of the original radio series.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The radio series was definitely the best (love al the Lintillas and Allitnils), but I after many years of reading them many times, I think I've ended up liking the more serious tone of the latter three novels. I think Life, The Universe, And Everything probably ends up being my favourite.

 

[DallasDad]

When I heard that Eoin Colfer was going to write the book, I had my doubts. Although his own stuff is mildly entertaining from time to time, it's neither clever or very funny. The terms "derivative" and "one-trick pony" come to mind. (Man, that sounds harsher than I mean it -- Colfer's own books don't pretend to be literature; they are YA or middle-grade romps.)

I bought Colfer's H2G2 book anyway, thinking that perhaps Adams had left notes or even a manuscript that just needed tidying up. Alas, no; the flavor of the book is entirely Colfer, and misses H2G2 by miles. I forced myself to finish reading it, but probably shouldn't have wasted the time.

Douglas is gone.

 

[JohnG]

The radio series was definitely the best (love al the Lintillas and Allitnils), but I after many years of reading them many times, I think I've ended up liking the more serious tone of the latter three novels. I think Life, The Universe, And Everything probably ends up being my favourite.

I much prefer the breakneck Pythonesque comedy of ideas in the first couple of novels to the the more thoughtful character-based stuff in the later novels. It's not that I necessarily value one mode of storytelling over the other but what does put me off are changes in tone in a series. A few examples in Hitchhikers and elsewhere:

Making Arthur, Trillian et al marginally more nuanced and human ironically makes them less sympathetic to me, not more. For example, Trillian in the first novel or two never seems the slightest bit upset that the Earth was destroyed. In fact it's not clear that she's even aware that it was destroyed. That works perfectly fine in a farce, where the conventions of the genre require most, if not all of the characters to be amusing, albeit shallow, stereotypes. However, once you take those same characters and put them into situations where they are expected to show at least a semi-realistic reaction to the various conflicts and tragedies surrounding them, it can be jarring. If Arthur and Trillian can show affection and concern for their daughter, it makes them seem a little odd and creepy for not showing much concern for the fact that their home planet was destroyed. It's probably not much of a coincidence that the change in tone in the H2G2 series aligns to the fact that Adams was now a responsible family man; that his opinions of family, comedy, art and politics were changing and that frankly he was getting bored with the Hitchhikers universe (he said as much at the time).

To me it feels as wrong as John Cleese writing a new series of Fawlty Towers only this time the bulk of the series is given over to a more sombre, less farcical tone, with Basil taking care of Sybil as she slowly withers away from a fatal disease. Yes, I suppose that could be made to be both funny and perhaps even moving, but we are now in another universe that bears little resemblance to the brilliant farce of the first two series. This is not what anyone wants or needs from Fawlty Towers. Fry and Laurie made a similar misstep in their series when they introduced a note of genuine pathos into an otherwise silly and playful recurring sketch about two overly polite secret service employees. I have similar feelings about the evolution(?) of the T.V. series M*A*S*H that I wrote about in another thread.

Lest you think I'm some shallow soul who values superficial laughs above all else, I get equally annoyed when a movie/TV/book series starts with relatively realistic, grounded, sympathetic characters who get progressively stereotypical and or bizarre for "funny for funny's sake" purposes as the series progresses. One recent example of this for me is the T.V. sitcom Community. It was never what you call a "realistic" show in terms of its premise or characters, but in the first two years of the show the characters felt more real, more sympathetic, more grounded than they've become in subsequent seasons. It has since degenerated to the point that they'll have any character do or say anything as long as it elicits some high concept laugh, even if it runs totally counter to what the show established about the character in earlier episodes.

Anyway, I guess that's my long-winded way of saying that a certain aesthetic consistency is important in art.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

When I heard that Eoin Colfer was going to write the book, I had my doubts. Although his own stuff is mildly entertaining from time to time, it's neither clever or very funny. The terms "derivative" and "one-trick pony" come to mind. (Man, that sounds harsher than I mean it -- Colfer's own books don't pretend to be literature; they are YA or middle-grade romps.)

I'd heard of him, but never heard anything about him. The name "Artemis Fowl" was more known to me but, again, I didn't really know who or what he was, other than a literary character. This book hasn't made me want to check any of his others out.

I bought Colfer's H2G2 book anyway, thinking that perhaps Adams had left notes or even a manuscript that just needed tidying up.

Well, the thing is that what Adams was going to re-work into the 6th book had already been posthumously published in The Salmon Of Doubt. It's been a long time since I read it (I bought it, read it, then my step-sister snaffled it and I've never seen it again), but IIRC there's also a brief bit of story which involves Zaphod. Whether it's actually a short story or just something that was going to be a part of a story I don't remember.

Either way, though, what Adams intended the 6th book to be had already been published, so perhaps Colfer didn't feel re-working it was the right thing to do.

Still, what could be more Adamsian than adapting something already published into a later work? Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is basically 2 Doctor Who stories married with a shotgun, and he adapted The Hitch-Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy to every medium imaginable.

Douglas is gone.

True, but I don't think that it would have been impossible for a good 6th book to exist. It just needed a better writer. You could see someone like Stephen Fry writing something that was witty, intelligent and satirical the way that Adams was, although it would obviously still be in his own voice. But I'm sure Fry is too intelligent to want to. Besides which, it seems from a couple of interviews that I've read that the way Colfer got the gig was that his agent is friends with the person who used to be Adams' agent. So it wasn't necessarily about who was a good fit for the material.

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

Making Arthur, Trillian et al marginally more nuanced and human ironically makes them less sympathetic to me, not more.

I don't mind that. Well, I don't think it's true of Arthur, I think that he feels the pain of the destruction of Earth all the time, and I think that's evident from the way he acts throughout the series. However, Trillian was always shallow and self-obsessed. That's made explicit in Mostly Harmless where she has a daughter because she fears that she's getting old, and then abandons her for her career.

But, either way, I don't mind characters being less than sympathetic.

If Arthur and Trillian can show affection and concern for their daughter, it makes them seem a little odd and creepy for not showing much concern for the fact that their home planet was destroyed.

Trillian doesn't show concern for her daughter, and Arthur does show concern that his home planet was destroyed.

To me it feels as wrong as John Cleese writing a new series of Fawlty Towers only this time the bulk of the series is given over to a more sombre, less farcical tone, with Basil taking care of Sybil as she slowly withers away from a fatal disease. Yes, I suppose that could be made to be both funny and perhaps even moving, but we are now in another universe that bears little resemblance to the brilliant farce of the first two series. This is not what anyone wants or needs from Fawlty Towers. Fry and Laurie made a similar misstep in their series when they introduced a note of genuine pathos into an otherwise silly and playful recurring sketch about two overly polite secret service employees. I have similar feelings about the evolution(?) of the T.V. series M*A*S*H that I wrote about in another thread.

I don't mind a series evolving, as long as it evolves to somewhere good.

Lest you think I'm some shallow soul who values superficial laughs above all else, I get equally annoyed when a movie/TV/book series starts with relatively realistic, grounded, sympathetic characters who get progressively stereotypical and or bizarre for "funny for funny's sake" purposes as the series progresses. One recent example of this for me is there T.V. sitcom Community. It was never what you call a "realistic" show in terms of its premise of characters, but in the first two years of the show the characters felt more real, more sympathetic, more grounded than they've become in subsequent seasons. It has since degenerated to the point that they'll have any character do or say anything as long as it elicits some high concept laugh, even if it runs totally counter to what the show established about the character in earlier episodes.

While this should probably take place in the Community thread, I'd disagree on a couple of points. I don't think the characters are often shown acting out of character. And I think that the show does still treat it's characters as real people - just not in every episode.

And I disagree that the realism lasted as long as you're saying it did. By the second half of the first series they were already doing the big concept episodes (most memorably mafia chicken and paintball) which require the characters to act in more stereotypical and unrealistic ways. Look at the chicken fingers episodes, and how everybody acts in that. There's not a realistic human being amongst them.

But it is a good case in point for a series evolving. I think that it started off as a fairly funny sitcom, but it's only when it started allowing itself to get stranger and really run with premises that it became truly great. It'd be terrible if it did a high-concept episode every week, but the fact that it's become the kind of show where anything can happen is, I think, a huge strength.

And the other really successful change is Britta. She's now my favourite character. But at the beginning she was my least favourite because, while she had the "slacktivist" thing, her basic role was love-interest. She was the girl who would put Jeff in his place. She was the mother of the group, keeping everyone in line and on track. Once they took away the idea that she's worthy of respect (to a certain degree. She's the butt of many jokes but, for example, it's her actually being allowed to sing "Roxanne" that creates the best timeline) and made her goofy she became something awesome.

Anyway, if we're going to continue this discussion, we should probably decamp to the Community thread.

 

[catsmate]

<snipped for brevity>
What a shame.

Agreed. It was crap. Whoever commissioned Colfer should be flogged, alongside him.

 

[Wowbagger]

Thank goodness you hated that book!

If you had actually liked it, for some stupidly retarded reason, you'd be forced to debate with me about it. And you do NOT want to go up against me, about the awfulness of that book! Your fate would be worse than that of the Creationists and Windows 8 fans on this forum. Hoooo boy...

 

[smartcooky]

I also have no objection to someone other than Adams writing another Hitch-Hiker's book. There are plenty of good writers out there, and the universe Adams created is rich for exploration.

IMO, Terry Pratchett would probably have the requisite sense of humour and penchant for the outright ridiculous. The pity is that, even if interested, he would probably now be too ill to take it on. Of course, he also probably has plenty of story ideas of his own.


EDIT: BTW, thanks for saving me the money I would have spent buying it.

 

[Wowbagger]

Four years ago, I started this thread about the WORST book anyone's read:
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=187493

In that thread, I refer to "And Another Thing" as a "Literary Mockbuster". It's not really a Hitchhiker's novel. It's just cashing in on the superficial aspects of the Hitchhiker's brand name.

It has a LOT more in common with movies like Titanic II, or that awful "Sherlock Holmes"-like movie (with dinosaurs) they tried to push, around the time Robert Downey Jr. had his movie coming out; than anything Douglas Adams would have ever endorsed.

Agreed. It was crap. Whoever commissioned Colfer should be flogged, alongside him.

Ugh... That would have to be Jane Belson, Douglas Adams' widow, I'm afraid.

I think we can give her a little bit of a break on this whole deal. Let's just focus our anger on Colfer.

 

[fromdownunder]

I purchased it a couple of years ago in hard cover, remaindered at AU 5.00, mainly to find out how our heroes would be brought back from the dead. I was far from satisfied with the explanation, and pretty much everything that followed.

The Asgard part came out of nowhere (well, the second Dirk Gently book, but is was never established that Gently was in the same Universe as Arthur) and the whole last quarter of the book was nothing but a mess, following stuff that was already pear shaped.

It is also sad to note that Colfer left enough loose ends for another sequel. Hopefully that will never happen.

I did read the whole thing though, and a year ago started it again, got to about page 20, and stopped.

 

[fromdownunder]

Well, the thing is that what Adams was going to re-work into the 6th book had already been posthumously published in The Salmon Of Doubt. It's been a long time since I read it (I bought it, read it, then my step-sister snaffled it and I've never seen it again), but IIRC there's also a brief bit of story which involves Zaphod.

From memory, The Salmon of Doubt is mostly short articles written by Douglas, discussions with others, and other talks and interviews and maybe even stuff from his webpage. At the end of the book there are about four short chapters of the proposed 3rd Dirk Gently novel. Maybe 5,000 words, which were cobbled together by the Editor of the book from notes and Chapter headings on Douglas' computer, purporting to be the "last" version of the start of The Salmon of Doubt.

So it cannot be said to have been published as a novel, and who knows where Douglas' mind would have headed with this. I have no memory of Zaphod being mentioned in this "final cut"

Norm

 

[Wowbagger]

...and a year ago started it again...

Why would you DO such a thing??!!!!

 

[fromdownunder]

Why would you DO such a thing??!!!!

I have read stuff before that I did not like on first reading, tried again and did like it the second time. Same with some movies.

And One More Thing did not make the cut and it only took 20 pages and less than an hour to find out.

Norm

 

[Wowbagger]

I have read stuff before that I did not like on first reading, tried again and did like it the second time. Same with some movies.

Yeah, but when most people get their guts twisted up and ripped apart by medieval torture devices, they don't normally say to themselves "Well, I really didn't like that, at all, the first time. But, maybe I will enjoy it more the second time!"

 

[Squeegee Beckenheim]

The thing that gets me about this book is that every professional review I've read seems to love it.

IMO, Terry Pratchett would probably have the requisite sense of humour and penchant for the outright ridiculous.

I don't know. Pratchett seems more interested in history than technology, and I think he's gone off the boil in the last decade or so. I find his books to be way too predictable these days.

The Asgard part came out of nowhere (well, the second Dirk Gently book, but is was never established that Gently was in the same Universe as Arthur)[...]

Thor does feature briefly in Life, The Universe, And Everything, but as a throwaway gag. Trillian gets chatted up by him.

From memory, The Salmon of Doubt is mostly short articles written by Douglas, discussions with others, and other talks and interviews and maybe even stuff from his webpage. At the end of the book there are about four short chapters of the proposed 3rd Dirk Gently novel. Maybe 5,000 words, which were cobbled together by the Editor of the book from notes and Chapter headings on Douglas' computer, purporting to be the "last" version of the start of The Salmon of Doubt.

So it cannot be said to have been published as a novel, and who knows where Douglas' mind would have headed with this.

I didn't say it had been published as a novel, I said that what Adams was going to use as the basis for the story had already been published. The point under discussion was whether there was any notes relating to what Adams was going to write for a 6th book. The answer is yes, and the ideas therein have already been published.

I have no memory of Zaphod being mentioned in this "final cut"

A different story in the same book.

 

[Spacetime Inhabitant]

I too hated this tragically bad novel.
If rating the various versions, this is my personal selection:
Radio series > original trilogy > miniseries > 4th and 5th books >> movie >> this 6th novel.

 

[Wowbagger]

The thing that gets me about this book is that every professional review I've read seems to love it.

Most of them either are morons, or were temporarily inflicted with moroniness, at the time.

If rating the various versions, this is my personal selection:
Radio series > original trilogy > miniseries > 4th and 5th books >> movie >> this 6th novel.

This is my own ranking, I think:

The Five Novels by Douglas Adams > The LP Adaptation of the Radio Series > Original Radio Series > New Radio Series Episodes (by Dirk Maggs) > TV series > That Stage Adaptation with the Hovercraft-like Chairs > The Comic Books > Most of the Other Stage Adaptations > Revised Computer Game (with lite graphics) > Original Computer Game (text based) > The 2005 Movie > The Towel .....

(Adding a few unrelated items, here, for reference purposes)
... > Star Wars Epsiode I > Windows 8 > Manos: Hands of Fate > .....

...Then we have "And Another Thing"

 

[asydhouse]

Thanks everyone for the heads up on this: I shall not waste my time.