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

Entry: Blast Off Prologue - A54996835
Author: adsadam345 - U14084478

This is the third draft of the introductory prologue of my little story about a spaceship which bounces off the earths atmosphere and out into space. When it returns one day later the earth is 34 years in the future. I will write chapter one soon if this is accepted into the alternative writing workshop and hopefully into Fiction central. I find this a great way to imrove my writing whilst reading the creative writing course.

This is very, very funny. It reads like a postmodern parody of a science fiction story.

If this is what you intended, you have succeeded beautifully. The terrible descriptions add to the fun.

>>His wife and kid were down there, egging him on. <<

The choice of phrase 'egging him on', rather than 'cheering him on', so completely undercuts our sympathy with the character that it is impossible to identify with him. Cool.

It sets us up for the next sentence, which is a total non-sequitur of description:

>>James had ginger hair and deep blue eyes, as a tear trickled down.<<

Combining the physical description with an unrelated emotional reaction is just perfect, if you want us to start laughing and think of every space opera we've ever read.

The cliche lift-off is perfectly in line with the parody aspect, and then we get the mixed metaphors.

>>the clouds became as small as cotton wool.<<

Of course, there's no reason cotton wool is small. Cotton wool could be large, huge even. This sets us thinking, expecting more humour from the oddness of the description. (Nice technique, skipping the actual metaphor 'the clouds looked like small balls of cotton wool' to the 'oh, you know what I mean' shortcut that makes its own malapropism.

>>They were in space and who knew what wonders and terrors awaited them in the wide, ongoing, infinity of it all.<<

The overstatement in this last sentence really sets us up. We now expect the story to take on bizarre proportions. We also expect a laugh a minute.

One crit: If you are indicating possession, you need an apostrophe. 'Helmet's' and 'pilot's seat'.

This is a good crit, Dmitri, but what if Adsadam didn't mean it to be funny?

Are you saying that the whole blast-off scene is too cliched to be written now?

I am certainly saying that it is too cliched to be written in this way and taken seriously.

As a parody the piece works rather well, setting you up to expect a joke payoff.

For this story to be taken seriously, it would of course need a lot of serious work, such as eliminating the lazy half-metaphors, really describing and motivating the characters, etc...

Maybe the author of this piece can give us a hint as to what he intended to say?

I'm with dmitri here.

Having said that, there's a market for this sort of writing in Germany. It's called 'Groschenroman'.

The prologue was supposed to be serious but funny at the same time. Not like Douglas Adams but close too it. But the main thing is did you like it?

If this story is supposed to be taken seriously...

No.

It needs a lot of work before it's readable as a straight story.

Thanks for the advice but I think I'll make it a parody piece.

Good jobyour prologue held my attention and made me interested to know what will happen next in the story. I especially liked your description of lifting off into space. Only the sentence about the tear going down the one astronauts face seemed a little out of place. What I mean to say is that that sentence would have been better right after the sentence about his family "egging him on" than after the description of the astronauts hair color etc. Again good job I look forward to reading chapter 1.

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