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

One of Terry Pratchett's great skills is his uncanny ability to take a stereotype or an archetype and disguise it as a character of his own creation.

It's actually a form of genius. We think the characters are well rounded because we know them so well. For example, I grew up with a Granny Weatherwax AND a Nanny Ogg as my respective grandmothers. This is why I find the Witches books so appealing. And how many times over the years have we seen Samuel Vimes on the TV or in films? That particular brand of world weary, cynical copper?
Wasn't Lady Sibil Ramikin written to be played at some point by Margaret Rutherford?

OK...some of El Tel's characters are original. Angua, for example. But they are rarely the ones who carry the story. Even when Angua is central to the plot - as in The Fifth Elephant - she's really not that interesting. Vimes keeps that story together.

I think Terry has tapped into a huge store of common images. He's letting our imaginations to at least half the work...for example, does anyone else here agree that Mustrum Ridcully is screaming out to be played by Brian Blessed? It's a great ability.

On the other hand, Douglas Adams was partly responsible for creating a few of those common images. For a man who never wanted to be a novelist, he was remarkably good at it.

There's one other strike against Terry. It's the depressing effect he has on the market for comic fantasy. Or anything amusing for that matter. The shelves groan with Pratchett novels and they sell well. Where is the competition?

Mustrum Ridcully as Brian Blessed! Yes, thank God someone agrees with me! My mother has always seen him as thinish, for some reason.
On a personal level, he reminds me of my Grandad... So much so he even looks like him in my head

sorry but i've always imagined him as quite thinish too - in that wiry strong way though, given his love of the outdoors and hunting etc - the kind of guy who could probably lift a really heavy box, but you'd be stunned to find out that he could

Brian Blessed has climbed Everest more than once. He's not exactly corpulent.

I know what you mean about Ridcully, though. However, given that he's a wizard I would think that while the others are "zeppelin on legs" figures, Ridcully is more likely to be brawny. It's his voice and persona that drew me to see him as Brian Blessed.

whew, finally got through all the backlog.

Blues Shark, re:post 91, the shark thing:
refresh my memory; was that the one where the two boys find a shark skeleton? or am i thinking of something different?
(i've loved everything by ADF that i've read so far, outside of the Flinx series especially Greenthieves)

Pratchett has some good one-liners, too, although i can only think of one right this moment: "Thunder rolled. It rolled a six." -- i really liked that one; actually searched through the various books to find that one, did, but have now forgotten which it was. although most of the quotes i find funny because they remind me of the whole thing, some stand by themselves.
the 'sooo many books' has never been a problem for me, i'm *very* *glad* to have more by him to read. and am slowly but surely collecting them all.

'bye!

My man seems to think I'm a geek or summat just because I've got a fair few Pratchett books...but if you love the musings of good old DNA, it's only natural to love Pratchett too

BTW, love the idea of Brian Blessed as Ridcully - 'BURSAAAAR!!'

ADF and Sharks, no, it was about a dive to find the long held to be extinct Carcharadon Megalodon. Worshipped in hawaii as a God. Which is pretty sensible when dealing with a predator 100feet long plus...Called something like 'Him' if I recall correctly.

I've always seen Ridcully as (the late, great) Brian Glover, myself. But casting Pratchett's novels is a different discussion.

And I don't see that it can possibly be Pratchett's fault that there is no compettion-if no-one does it as well, or publishers are unwilling to publish it, is that his fault? Not really, not anymore than the only humourous SF you can see about is DNA rather than Sheckley and Simak and Sladek...

Blues Shark: You are correct - that story *is* called "something like 'Him'" - it's called "He" . It was first published in "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" in June 1976, and is available in the short story collection "With Friends Like These..." (which I don't think has ever been published in the UK - I got mine on import).

H.

That'll be the one.
It was published in this country, in a uniform edition with all the Flinx novels. I think my brother still has it on his bookshelf...

Simak!

THANK YOU!

I've been trying to remember that name for weeks!

OK only scanned this thread but it looks like, and I can't believe it that no-one has mentioned the more obvious similarities between DNA and a certain J K Rowling - I mean to say -

"When Mr and Mrs Durlsey woke up on the dull grey tuesday our story starts, there was nothing about the cloudy sky outside to suggest that strange and mysterious things would soon be happening all over the country"

(hopefully short enough to count as valid review length)

but that is pure DNA, and that is on the 1st page, I could give many more examples, but in general the style is very similar, short, well formed sentences, and just a general easy, laid back style.

Well I think so anyway

CH

You might just have a point there, but the big difference being DNA was more obvious with his sarcasm

As with the Pratchett comparison, there are far more differences between DNA and JKR than there are similarities.

The most glaring of these must be JKR's discipline in planning and careful use of foreshadowing - there are things which are carefully set up in the first Potter book which don't pay off until the third and fourth books. (ability to speak to snakes, for example)

Now it's true that there is at least one specific gag ("oh no not again" from the bowl of petunias) in the first Hitchhikers book which doesn't pay off until the third and then fifth book - but the HUGE difference is DNA was making that stuff up as he went along, and retrofitting new gags to old loose ends - he wrote "oh no not again" as a throwaway line in a radio show, and only MUCH later thought of a way to build on it in the third book, LTU&E, and then further still at the climax of MH.

H.

Well - I wrote early on about having seen Pratchett give a talk in Brighton, and being less than salutory about DNA, but apparently things have changed.
Mum went to see 'The Two Terries' (Pratchett and Jones) in Brighton the other night and, get this, Terry (p) has changed his tune magnificently. He says (and I quote)

"DOUGLAS ADAMS WAS THE BEST WRITER OF ANY GENRE BAR NONE."

That Jones was standing next to him, and was a lifelong friend of Adams (contracted in to write the book of the game of Adam's 'Titanic'), surely has nothing at all to do with this massive change of heart. In fact it was petty and cheap of me to mention it at all.

I am sorry - on reflection, I still prefer Terry Pratchett - though DNA was brilliant. But some of his writing seemed to me to be 'reaching' - by which I mean, striving too hard to be clever - I am sorry if that seems like blasphemy to his supporters!

Some 'funny' writers aren't. Someone recommended Tom Holt, and a bloke called Andrew something. I was disappointed.

But I did just read a book by Phil Janes, called 'Fission Impossible'. It really *is* funny, hilarious - a bit closer to the DNA end of the spectrum. I found it by sheer accident, which is even better!

"I am fascinated by him as a semiotician."

Wash your mouth out Ben! (I'm sorry, that word just scares me, makes me think of Foucault, Derrida and post-modernism.)

Don't forget Umberto Eco and Roland Barthes!

who are they?

(finally through with the butting in with no relation to the last post.)

Someone mentioned "funny" writers, who aren't. I have a book recommendation: "A Malady of Magicks" by Craig Shaw Gardner, and its sequels "A Multitude of Monsters" and "A Night in the Netherhells".

They have covers drawn by Josh Kirby (or at least in the same style as Josh Kirby...), and one online review I read said "Reading A Malady of Magicks was amusingly reminiscent of both Robert Asprin's Myth series, and Terry Pratchett's Discworld series." Hmm.

Like I say, I have a book recommendation. I recommened that if ever you see a copy of any of these books, be they new or second hand, BUY THEM. In fact, I recommened you buy every single copy you can find, to prevent anyone else getting them. I further recommend that you don't read them, but instead IMMEDIATELY bury them in soft peat for three months and recycle them as firelighters. If there's a god of literature, you'll be in his good books FOREVER.

The Exploits of Ebenezum (as they are collectively known) are vapid witless cack that I'm sorry I ever polluted my eyes reading. I strongly urge any fans of Pratchett, Adams, and pretty much everyone else who can read to avoid having any contact with them at all, unless you decide to take up the holy crusade to rid the world of them, in which case at some point you're going to have to actually touch them with your hands (sorry).

If anyone needs a description of what they're like, imagine a man with absolutely no sense of humour whatsoever. No wit, no irony, no sarcasm, no concept of puns, no hyperbole, no parody, no pastiche, NO concept at all of what makes something funny or clever. Equip him with just enough intelligence to operate a typewriter, make him read "The Colour of Magic" at a single sitting of one hour with no breaks and tell him you'll give him a million dollars if he can write another book like it by the end of the week. "A Malady of Magicks" might be the result. Cynically package that in a cover which makes it look like a Discworld book, stick a quote on the cover where some idiot says "Gardner is the new Terry Pratchett!", and hordes of dolts who buy books because of who painted the cover rather than who wrote the words will buy it. This will mean locking Captain Humourless in a hotel room again to churn out a sequel, then another.

I must admit now that I *was* one of those dolts. I can only offer in mitigation that the late eighties were lean times for Pratchett fans.

In my day you didn't have twenty five Discworld novels to read like you youngsters. We had THREE, IF we were lucky! But we were 'appy, mind.

So any comic fantasy was snapped up. But I read the WHOLE of the first book thinking "it'll start getting funny on the next page, it's SURE to" right to the end. I bought the sequel (SHOOT ME!) thinking "he must surely have had at least *one* funny idea if he's written a sequel". But no. I must therefore state outright that I haven't read the third one, but on the evidence of the first two, the omens are not good. (fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times - are you f**king kidding me?)

H.
Wishing I had back the small amount of money and larger amount of time I wasted on those books.

Are those the ones with a singing dragon?
I think they are. Hooloovoo, you're being too kind to this arse-biscuit of a novel.