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I have finished The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Slowly slowly I add to my geek cred on all those '100 books everyone should have read' memes. So now I know where Babelfish came from, and 42. OTOH I wonder at the lack of commas after apostrophes in this original paperback (which somehow has not fallen apart in the last 30 years.) Not the punctuation apostrophe, the other kind. 'What's happened Ford?' sort of thing. It's endemic. Is this a feature of Adams' style?

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Was it worth reading? I've flipped thru a couple of pages and just didn't find it either funny or engaging, so haven't.

Um. No, not really. Unless you read fast and can get through it in half an hour. The geekery can all be gained from the net, as I did; and otherwise, well, it's English fluff. Nice if you like it, like Dr. Who and Pratchett, who are much more solid than this book seems, at least.

I actually did read it once upon a long ago and thought it was fun even but apart from little(geekerish) things, and 42, I can remember naught of it all. It could be part my memory and part that it wasn't that memorable after all. Some books have stayed with me a lot longer than that. ^_^

I wondered if it was like Who, half composed of nostalgia and half of seeing stuff that isn't there and then writing s;ash about it. But there's no subtext to it that I can find. Maybe more Python-- certain lines enter the fannish vocab but you don't have to have seen the original to know them.

Then again, like Python, it makes a huge difference to have *heard* Cleese and Chapman. 'Maybe it's pining for the fjords' and 'This is an ex-parrot!' recalls their voices, which adds extra point to the lines. Maybe Hitchhiker works better for those who heard the radio play.

I'm not sure! I read it when I was quite young and likely didn't notice the lack of punctuation.

I'm in the camp of, it was something to read to say you've read it but I didn't find it particularly brilliant. Or funny. XD I guess for when it came out it seemed very imaginative and inspired?

I'm in the camp of, read it when I was 12, influenced for life. XD; I don't think I had a sense of humour to speak of before Pratchett and Adams; I was one of those kids who took everything seriously and sincerely. Those guys taught me what the beast was. I didn't like the radio play, but then I don't actually like British comedy very much when it's not on the page. In my head, things are played very straight and naturalistic and dry.

The thing about HHGG (IMO) is that the first book by itself doesn't do much - book 2 is pretty much the second half, and both characterization and worldbuilding deepen in 3-4. The difference is that Pratchett is essentially optimistic/humanist, and creates likeable characters. Adams' worldview is basically tragic/absurd, and his people are, at heart, not very likeable - they get chances to better themselves, and the chances get pulled from under their feet. Book 5 feels like reading Sartre or Camus.

What HHGG accomplished in terms of the SFF-scape was to bring to the literature side that Doctor Who paradigm of the universe being infinitely weird and crowded and unable to be rationalized into an encompassing explanation. In fact, HHGG is basically DW-verse; Adams wrote some of the most well-known DW episodes.

Don't remember the punctuation issue at all...

Ah well. Read at the right age and in the absence of anything similar and it takes, clearly. Just as all those people can't see what's so wonderful about Tolkien and bounce off of The Left Hand of Darkness and I'm left shaking my head and muttering 'Are you mad?'

Am amazed you could figure out what a sense of humour actually was from Adams and Pratchett if you didn't have one innately. I mean, I don't have one either in spite of an English father. So Pratchett's wordplay is marvellous while Adams' unlikeable charas are exactly like all the other unlikeable English characters in English satire-- a downer and a bore.

See below. Evidently you had to be there. Also it reads to me very male: ie not much sympathy for anyone and a low opinion of mankind.

I had a friend who went to Shakespeare plays and thought 'what's the big deal, it's all cliches' until she realized that's where the cliches started ...

You and petronia have described Adams writing perfectly!

Even when you know, it's hard sitting through Macbeth-- and rather worse acting it, I'd guess-- because the Famous Quotes come every other line just about. At least people know that 'to be or not to be' is in Hamlet and expect it, but Macbeth gets thrown into a lot of literature unattested, and then you're sitting there hearing it...

Yeah, the joy of HHGG has nothing to do with the characters - it's all about the universe, the realization that SF didn't have to be po-faced and regulated and The Stuff Of Big Ideas. It could be purely whimsical.

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