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12:40 AM: No. No. No no NO NO NO.
NOTE: This post contains spoilers for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy, and will probably be of no interest if you haven't already read it.
They've hired Eoin Colfer to write a sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy. A book, which, if Adams's widow is to be taken at face value, will resurrect Arthur and Marvin. One would like to think this will at least be set in the years between books 3 and 4, but I suspect one would be optimistic. I suspect they're going to try to undo Mostly Harmless, perhaps taking its cue from the wretched BBC conclusion.
A word on that. After Adams's passing, the BBC adapted the final three books of the series to radio format, neatly closing the circle that began when the first two books were adapted from the radio versions. On the whole, they were quite good. Yes, in parts they contradicted both the books and the original radio episodes, but that was entirely in keeping with every other incarnation of this series. Except for the ending, the spirit of the original was kept intact.
Except for the ending.
The bastards gave it a happy ending.
History is replete with this sort of thing, of course. For centuries, Shakespeare's greatest tragedy, King Lear, was performed with the final act changed so that Lear and Cordelia both live, and the latter marries Edgar. Pygmalion is still performed with the implication that Eliza and Higgins will get together, shredding Shaw's intentions in which an empowered Eliza leaves for good. (Shaw was a fan of Ibsen's A Doll's House, which similarly got slapped with an ending in which Nora stays for the sake of the children.)
The two best books in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy are the first and the last, in completely different ways, for completely opposite reasons. The first one works because Douglas didn't know how to write a book; the last one works because he finally mastered the form.
The first book was based on the radio series, albeit highly modified. It is hysterically funny, trampling over genre conventions, digressing all over the place, and basically not resembling anything seen in print to that point. It ends in the middle of nowhere, not for effect, but because Adams couldn't keep a deadline if his life depended on it, and his editor finally had to tell him to just finish the page he was on and send it off already. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this wouldn't work. Nine hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand, it wouldn't work. This was the exception, the one which breaks all the rules and succeeds brilliantly.
It was a fluke, and flukes are very hard to duplicate.
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe came close, but that was a direct continuation of the first, based off the same source material, and picking up from the page where Douglas had had to stop writing. After that, he found himself in the position of figuring out what to do from there.
The third book, Life, the Universe, and Everything, was supposed to have been a Doctor Who arc. After the script was rejected, Adams set about adapting it to the Hitchhiker's world, using Slartibartfast—of all beings—as a stand-in for the Doctor. It's easily the weakest book in the series.
So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is marginally better. I wasn't thrilled with the Earth being brought back, let alone virtually the whole book taking place on Earth Mk II, and I didn't much care for Fenchurch. It is, however, the first book in the series actually written as a book first, and it's a step toward Adams figuring out how to write them properly. Plus Marvin finally, finally gets to power down.
Between this and the final book, there are two more important evolutionary steps: the Dirk Gently novels. These are fiendishly complex interlocking puzzles, good in their own way, but a bit too challenging and not as engaging as the Hitchhiker books.
Mostly Harmless is the one where he finally got it right. Like the Dirk Gently books, several plotlines are woven together so that everything falls into place at the end, but this time it's an easy read, it has engaging characters, and it contains a more mature version of the sci-fi zaniness so sorely missing from the fourth book. And it has an utterly perfect ending. The final pages, where Arthur gains the peaceful realization that it's all finally over, the Vogon captain gets to put a tick in the box, and the Grebulons stop getting television, can't be improved upon.
It's a terrible thing to admit, but when Douglas Adams died an untimely death at the age of 49, part of me was relieved. It was sad on a personal level, absolutely. And I'd have liked to have read other books of his in other series. But he had occasionally made noises about possibly returning to Hitchhiker's and resurrecting the whole gang, and I could not see how he could do so without destroying what was already the best of all possible conclusions. The one slight silver lining in his death was that the series would stand as-is. Or so I thought.
The BBC version, incidentally, goes up to the ending given in the book, and then proposes some alternatives for what happened next. What they come up with strongly resembles the lost ending to Casablanca from The Simpsons, and is just as bad in exactly the same ways. Personally, I've edited my copy of the MP3 to redact that bit.
And now somebody's going to try to do the same thing in print? Good lord.
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
[whew]
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
A couple of weeks ago, I was sent a review copy of The Opinion Makers: An Insider Exposes the Truth Behind the Polls, by a friend who worked on it. I think this is a terrific idea, and I'd like to encourage more people to send me free books.With that said, the one minor hitch in sending me a book to review is that I'll probably review it. I have, in fact, done just that over on my long-neglected booklog. And while I'm entirely certain my friend wouldn't want me to post anything but my actual opinion, and it's not a totally negative review, I'm still feeling apprehensive about how well it's going to go over. I've lost friends over less.
Just remember: there's no such thing as bad publicity!
(Also: the author is about to make a whole bunch of media appearances, and they're probably worth watching or listening to. The case he makes is a good one.)
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