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

I make a point of reading the Massey Lectures each year (this year I also listened to them -- I have them on a wee thumb drive). I've even made a point of going back and collecting copies of every years lectures that I can get my hands on. Hoarder? Collector? Too much time on my hands?

This year's set was unusual in that they constituted a novel in five one hour parts (which more or less maintained the Aristotelian unities) rather than a conventional series of lectures. To be honest, while I had my doubts as I approached the audio files, and while the doubts lingered as I later read the text of Douglas Coupland's 'Player One: What Is to Become of Us', now that I've completed a leisurely two day read I think I will have to say

Oddly, I don't think that the piece would have been as successful if it had been published word-for-word as simply another of Coupland's novels. It strangely benefited from the lecture context, I think.

In any case, I recommend the work. It is a suitably depressing and finally uplifting piece of apocalyptic science fiction, set in a seedy cocktail bar as the world and humanity as we know them come to an end.

I hope I am not posting a spoiler when I post a passage from very near the end of the novel/lecture series, but I thought it something worth sharing:




'Here's a toast to everyone on earth who's ever been eager -- no desperate -- for even the smallest sign that there exists something finer, larger, and more miraculous about our inner selves than we could ever have supposed. Here's to all of us reaching out our hands to other people everywhere, reaching out to pull them from the icebergs on which they stand frozen, to pull them through the burning hoops of fire that frighten them, to help them climb over the brick walls that block their paths. Let us reach out to shock and captivate people into new ways of thinking.'

The character 'Player One' in the novel/lecture 'Player One: What Is to Become of Us' by Douglas Coupland, pp. 213-14.