Support NeoGAF

[Brannon]

It can't end like this! GAH! Tonight, I damn Douglas Adams to hell. Tomorrow I go for the third book.

Though it's just too oddly funny that Arthur Dent would have to have those initials. Did he really think the series through so far in advance? Or am I looking too much into it?

At any rate, if he were still alive, he'd get my leaves.

 

[nitewulf]

It can't end like this! GAH! Tonight, I damn Douglas Adams to hell. Tomorrow I go for the third book.

Though it's just too oddly funny that Arthur Dent would have to have those initials. Did he really think the series through so far in advance? Or am I looking too much into it?

At any rate, if he were still alive, he'd get my leaves.

actually the first two are pretty much the great ones...then it gets way less funnier and samey. you'll regret it.

 

[JackFrost2012]

actually the first two are pretty much the great ones...then it gets way less funnier and samey. you'll regret it.

This is sort of true ... in a way. I'd call the third book (Life, the Universe, etc.) a watered-down version of the first one's brilliance. But the fourth book (So Long etc.) has grown on me a lot, as I get older ... I reread it recently and consider it to be equally brilliant to the first two, in a totally different way. It's a lot more mature, understated, and character-based in its humor. Melancholy instead of madcap, but still great. The fifth book (Mostly etc.) is a giant "fuck you" to fans, however.

 

[Fuzzy]

I've been rereading them again in anticipation of the movie and I'm half way through Restaurant right now and I'm loving it just as much as I did the first time I read them 10 years ago.

The fifth book (Mostly etc.) is a giant "fuck you" to fans, however.

I've never read it and after reading what you just said it has made me very weary of picking it up. I only ever had the first four because I bought the hardcover with them all together. I remember how cool it was back in grade 11 English because we had to do a group project on a book by an author (Adams was one of the choices) and the four of us decided to it on the four HH books (my part was on So Long....). I'm very thankful to my friends for introducing me to these books.

 

[Anthropic]

The fifth book (Mostly etc.) is a giant "fuck you" to fans, however.

I agree with you about 99% of the book (the senseless destruction of Fenchurch was stupid, among other things), but the ending is pure Hitchhiker's Guide. No ending to the H2G2 series can really ever be adequate, but the ending we got had all the humor and wit we could hope for.

I think the problem with the later H2G2 books is that by that time Adams was actually writing books (like the Dirk Gently series) where the structure was like a novel, rather than shoe-horning radio scripts into book form. The pacing and story structure is totally different. So, the later books feel different because they're written by a man who writes real novels rather than a series of skits.

Personally, my favorite Douglas Adams work is Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It has the trademark Adams humor and plot wackiness, but it also succeeds as a novel too.