The Official Heart of Gold Memorial Ford Prefect Thread #42

The rules here are simple.
1. Any quote from any of the five books of the trilogy is acceptable;
2. Any post of any fraction, multiple or exponent of 42 is acceptable;
3. Any Kiva references are considered to be equivalent to two 42's;
4. Photos are encouraged

I will begin:

Don't Panic!

I have no idea what this thread is about, but here:

In the beginning, the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The people were angry in the beginning? That's wrath of god kinda stuff.

haha yeah, I guess it should be "has made a lot of people very angry"

This thread is about, if anything, a series of books/television programs and bad movies made in a quasi science fiction but really fantasy vein by Douglas Adams, a failed british advertising copywriter. They were called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and there was a Trilogy of Five books. The whole of it is wildly humorous to those of us who are demented, warped and/or otherwise unfit for normal human discourse.

here is a link WARNING: this garbage can become addictive!:
http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/hhgg.html

I see. I know nothing about that (other than they exist).

I still stand by my prior assessment (and no, it's not me).

Very good, my friends, very good !

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass.

Facing annihilation at the hands of the warlike Vogons

The unhappy inhabitants of the planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads - so they plan to destroy it.

Left at the end of LIFE, THE UNIVERSE AND EVERYTHING with the address for God's Final Message To His Creation, Arthur Dent let this crucial information slip his mind.

It's easy to become disheartened when your planet has been demolished for an unnecessary hyperspacial express route

From Eoin Colfers 6 th book of the original trilogy of 5 (And another thing):

Folfangan Slugs judge a number's worth based on artistic integrity of its shape. Folfangan supermarket reciepts are beauteous ribbons, but their economy collapses at least once a week.

I have never tried the game, but it must be amazing. Has anybody tried it?

... unfortunately the Earth was in the path of this planned expressway, so the remorseless Vogons were dispatched in a constructor fleet to remove the offending planet with a gentle use of thermonuclear weapons.

Now only five individuals stand between the killer robots of Krikkit and their goals of annihilation...

What can one say of President Beeblebrox that he has not already had printed on T-shirts and circulated throughout the Galaxy free with every uBid purchase? Zaphod says Yes to Zaphod was probably the most famous T-shirt slogan, though not even his team of psychiatrists understood what it actually meant.

Zaphod Beeblebrox - the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out to lunch president of the galaxy;

According to a janitors assistant at the Maximegalon University the universe is sixteen billion years old. This supposed truth is scoffed at by a clutch of Betelgeusean beat poets who claim to have moleskine pads older than that.

What was the book called? Oh, yes: The Pitchforkers's Pride is a Fallacy. That, or something very close to it.

KREUSER
I grew up in St. Louis Park, MN, went to college at Carleton, where I majored in English.View my complete profile

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TUESDAY, OCTOBER 13, 2009

The Pitchforker's Pride is a Fallacy


At 1:30am on Sunday morning, while I was doing some homework (I know), I happened to discover that there was a new Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book coming out. The next day. In London, at an event called Hitchcon '09. The book, since Douglas Adams had died in 2001 (one of the saddest days of my life), had been written by Eoin Colfer, with the approval of Adams' widow and publisher. H2G2 was a serious influence on my life, and I knew that I had to go to London the next morning to get the next book. Unfortunately, because I am a lazy bastard (well, technically just lazy), I missed the one panel discussion I really wanted to see, which was a discussion about Douglas by people who had known him. So my day wound up being me buying the new novel, wandering around looking at the various paraphernalia they had laid out, watching a bit of the BBC H2G2 tv show they had running on a loop, going out to get some lunch, and then coming back to have my book signed by Colfer before I returned to Oxford. Altogether an amazing day.

I finished reading the book (And Another Thing...) Monday afternoon, and I can tell you it's good. Unfortunately for all of us, Adams was fantastic. Superb. Amazing. Whatever term you want to use to describe him, he was a step (or several) above good. Colfer has done a fine job with the characters, with the universe, and with the plot (in true Adams' fashion, it makes little or no sense). What Colfer cannot sustain is Adams' brilliance of phrasing, of putting things in such a way that is both unexpected yet perfect. This is not Colfer's fault-he actually achieves this at least a couple of points in the book, but can't sustain it like Adams.

That said, this book is worth the read. Especially if, like me (and Adams, as quoted in The Salmon of Doubt), you've always felt that Mostly Harmless is an uncharacteristically and undeservedly bleak end to the H2G2 series. The characters all return (except Marvin, who's death makes the end of So Long, and Thanks... the best of all the H2G2 novels), and Colfer does an excellent job of name dropping that dedicated fans will enjoy. Things are decidedly more upbeat, and even certain death is faced with the knowledge that things will turn out ok.

I was thrilled to learn about the book, and very happy to meet the author and get it signed. It's just that (without offense to Eoin Colfer), I wish it had been Adams doing the signin

You are all doing a wonderful job ! ZB

I have just gone off to Amazon to buy a Kindle copy of them both. Why did I not know?