h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm amazed even die-hard Rankinites buy his stuff any more.
He totally sold out to commercialism around 1993.

Since then all his books have been written off the same template and have shown little to no new creativity.

He can only make the same running jokes in a book so many times before they become grating and then continuing to use and re-use them in book after book just shows how lazy he has become as a writer and how much he has sold out.

He no longer cares about writing anything new.
It has to be the same old tired material that you've read 5 or 10 times.

This is my opinion of course. I don't care if Rankin fans agree or not. It's what I think. I actually used to respect Bob as a writer but he had gotten very lazy and he lost all my respect.

Try something new Bob.

Get out of Brentford.
Forget any characters with the name Rune.
Forget Boleskin and tweed.
Forget Ghandi's Hairdryer.
Forget any running jokes that aren't funny any more.
Forget Sprouts.
Forget Elvis.
Forget evil aliens or elves or Santa.

Try and be creative. Write something totally new.
Have a go, once? You might even regain my respect and the respect of many who think the same way but were just to afraid to say it out loud.

I largelyt agree with that but his recent paucity of ideas doesn't detract from the glory of the first three Brentford books and the Armageddon The Musical books. I've only bought one Rankin book in the last four or five years (Chocolate Bunnies...) and gave up fairly early on.