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

Entry: Douglas Adams 1952 - 2001 - A782822
Author: St Demon Drawer (Now with 100 entries!!)[RIP Eleni Ioannou tragic almost Olympian] - U104826

OK Jimster thinks we bneed to work on this together to get it ready for the guide. So here goes. I've given it a good start but need some help over to you.

I'll try and give it a detailed going over during lunch hour.

Taking a break from proof reading.

Here's my contribution to the content. Replace the Dirk Gently section with the following:

After the fourth novel in the Hitch Hikers TrilogyThe subtitle used on the cover of So Long and Thanks for all the Fish., Douglas wanted to find a different direction for his creative writing. This he did by inventing the character of Dirk Gently.

Svlad Cjelli, or Dirk Gently as he prefers to be known ('more of a Scottish dagger feel to it'), is a small man who wears more than the usual number of hats. That is, he wears a hat. He believes that everything in the Universe has a completely rational and scientific explanation, but is plagued by unusual occult events happening around him. In the first Dirk Gently book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, he tries to solve a mystery by holistic means, taking into account the interconnectedness of all things. This leads to an adventure involving a tall thin computer expert called Richard, an electric monk from another dimension, the conjuring tricks of an absent-minded Cambridge professor and an encounter with Samuel Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. The final solution to the mystery is a science-fiction masterpiece reminiscent of
Back to the Future or Dr Who at his best.

In the second Dirk Gently book, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, Kate Schechter, a disillusioned American woman living in London, has an encounter with the Norse god Thor, while Dirk himself in on the trail of Odin and the pact he has made to the detriment of all the other gods. While an amusing book, this lacks the cleverness of the first one, and is not as convincing.


You should change "The Meaning of Liff" from a subheader to a header.

I'll do some proofreading some other time.

Sorry, should be a after "at his best."

Grr now he tells me

That's an interesting description of 'Tea-time'. I must admit I tend to think of that book as a sort of shaggy dog story. Though it's generally amusing, I didn't really laugh much until I reached the last line, at which point I howled.

You know that DNA once said that he purposely wrote the bit in 'Life' where Ford and Arthur are chasing the sofa on prehistoric Earth just so that he could absent throw in the line about them appearing at Lords? I sometime thing a similar thing abot 'Tea-time', that he wrote the whole book just so that he could get that last line. Which makes the final line the justification for the entire things.

Please correct me if I'm talking complete rubbish.


Geggs

I don't even remember the last line.

No Geggs this is all good.

Gnomon the last line is God's message to mankind.

I apologice for the inconvenince.

Wrong book!

'So Long'

No, the last line of 'Tea-time' is: He turned to the front page to see if there was any interesting news.

The point being that the interesting news he would find is that his house has been demolished by a fighter jet flying out of it.


Geggs

The scene I loved in Teatime was where Gently, just to get the police chief off his back, sketched a solution to the insoluble crime on the back of an envelope, in true Jonathon Creek fashion. This left him free to get on with solving the actual mystery.