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.
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.
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