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Oops.OK, I've missed a week. Sorry for those of you who came by on Tuesday expecting to see a new issue. Don;t worry, I wasn't ill or anything, just discovered that after driving back and forth across England, then having to go to work and earn some money didn't leave me with any time to write this column and so I've had to skip a week. Hopefully, it won't happen again for a while. I know the next time I'm going to be away for a while and will prepare in advance for that.
Still, I've managed to make issue 007 appear on the same day as Goldfinger was on the TV, which isn't much to get excited about, but it's interesting in a minor way.
A quick treat for those of you who've come here looking for stuff about Michael Moore's Stupid White Men (I see the search logs, you know). Click here to see a section from it, as featured in The Guardian yesterday. It's good stuff.
Anyway, you've waited two weeks for it so without any further ado, here's this weeks recommendation:
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by Douglas Adams |
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As a bit of a change for this week I've decided to shy away from doing another deep and meaningful book, or one that's going to inform you about the world around you and instead just go for something fun which is, however, one of my favourite books. Interestingly, though, it is possible to connect it to almost all the other books I've recommended - it features the end of the world, a President (of the Galaxy this time) being hunted, there are aliens as weird as Vonnegut's Tralfamadorians (OK, they don't feature in Mother Night, but it's close) and Richard Dawkins was one of Douglas Adams' friends. I just can't work out how to link it to Stalingrad, but I'm sure someone out there must be able to...I have to admit I don't know how well known the Hitch-Hiker's books are in the US so maybe I'm preaching to the choir here, especially if they're anywhere near as popular as they are in the UK. Still, I'm sure they'll be at least one person reading this who's never read them so that's got to be a start.
For the first book in a series that goes on to span a galaxy or two, with a few parallel universes on the way, Hitch-Hiker's starts deceptively small with Arthur Dent facing off to the faceless bureaucrats of his local council who want to demolish his house to make way for a nice new road. What he thinks is going to be a bad day gets progressively worse when he discovers that not only is Ford Prefect, his best friend, an alien, stuck on Earth researching an entry for the eponymous Guide, the whole planet is about to be demolished by the Vogons to make way for a new interstellar bypass. It's not really the sort of science fiction adventure you find in the average episode of Star Trek, though opinion is divided as to which of listening to Vogon poetry or watching William Shatner 'act' is the worse form of torture.
Hitch-Hiker's is the first, and probably best, of a 'trilogy in five parts' and introduces most of the characters who would go on to become favourites of Adams' many fans around the world. What makes Adams such a successful author is that although he is writing a comedy, he knows the area he's satirising and using for his jokes. Unlike many humorous novels, Hitch-Hiker's has characters who seem real and a plot that makes a vague kind of sense - it's not just a bunch of jokes linked together, but a coherent story setting Arthur and Ford off on a quest across the galaxy that could just lead them right back to Earth. If the mice let them, of course...
What I'm trying to say here, and seemingly not managing to do very well, is that the Hitch-Hiker's series comes from a certain vein of British humour and absurdity that also gave the world Monty Python. The series of books (the other four books in the 'increasingly inaccurately named' trilogy are The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe; Life, The Universe and Everything; So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish; and Mostly Harmless) have gone from their humble beginnings as an obscure BBC radio show to being seen as a British comic masterpiece that are known by millions. If you want proof, just ask the next British person you meet who Slartibartfarst is, and what country he designed. And if you ever wanted to know why Altavista called it's translator program the Babel Fish, you'll find the answer here.
It's also inspired the H2G2 website (now run by the BBC) which is trying to create their own Guide to the planet, in the idiosyncratic manner of the fictional Guide,which could devote several chapters to Eccentrica Gallumbits, the triple-breasted whore of Eroticon Three but dismiss an entire planet as 'mostly harmless'.
There are rumours that Hollywood is planning on making a movie of this (but there have been for twenty years, so I'm not holiding my breath) so read it now and you can be all knowledgeable about it when it comes out, and save money by not having to buy an overpriced movie tie-in version. Go on, I know this hasn't been my best written recommendation by a long way, but it is worth it and I promise you will laugh. Repeatedly.
Ok, that rather poor effort means I'm all done for another week! This time I promise I'll be back next Sunday...though I might be running eighteen years behind the times...
