The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

Helaas kwam knor niet verder dan de eerste vier pagina's, maar ik denk dat die nog teveel verwacht dat het een verhaal a la startrek is ofzo.

Bizarre verhaallijn, schitterende dialogen, enorm droge vertelwijze maar vooral een heerlijke relativering van alles waar wij ons druk om maken.

Kan trouwens ook de orginele BBC radioshow (waarop het boek gebaseerd is) van harte aanbevelen...

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"Six pints of bitter," said Ford Prefect to the barman... "And quickly please, the world's about to end." ... So the barman said, "Oh yes, sir? Nice weather for it," ... [A ship appeared above the earth with a booming voice that said] "As you will no doubt be aware, the plans for development of the outlying regions of the Galaxy require the building of a hyperspatial express route through your star system, and regrettably your planet is one of those scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes. Thank you." The PA died away. Uncomprehending terror settled on the watching people of Earth. ... Observing this, the [ship] turned on their PA again. It said: "There's no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department in Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you've had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it's far too late to start making a fuss about it now." The PA fell silent again ...

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Ok, hij staat nu boven aan het 'volgende keer aanschaffen' lijstje!

T

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Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape- descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.

And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.

Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.

And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, one girl sitting on her own in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work, and no one would have to get nailed to anything.

Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone about it, a terribly stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea was lost forever.

This is not her story.

But it is the story of that terrible stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences.

It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or heard of by any Earthman.

Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.

In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either.

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one - more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words Don't Panic inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

But the story of this terrible, stupid Thursday, the story of its extraordinary consequences, and the story of how these consequences are inextricably intertwined with this remarkable book begins very simply.

It begins with a house.

...

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Ben erg benieuwd!!!

"The Colour of Magic"

Deze schrijver (Pratchett) was tot aan J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter veruit de populairste Engelse schrijver ooit, met precies dit boek en de delen die volgden.

Dezelfde absurde humor, van hetzelfde hoge nivo, maar in een heel andere setting (Fantasy)...

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Op 11 maart 2001 12:36 schreef Schorpioen het volgende:
Dat is toch deel 1 van de discworld reeks? Die heb ik inderdaad met zeer veel plezier gelezen. Ook de volgende delen zijn aan te bevelen.
Heel erg leuk, die vent is ook helemaal maf Fantastische anarchistische kolder is dat

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Helaas is Pratchett net iets te productief geweest, in tegenstelling tot Douglas Adams, die ze zelfs een keertje 2 weken opgesloten hebben in een hotel om 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish' te schrijven.

Discworld-delen die ik me kan herinneren met veel plezier gelezen te hebben:

deel 1, "The Colour Of Magic"
deel 2, "The Light Fantastic"
deel 4, "Mort"
deel 5, "Sourcery"
deel 8, "Guards! Guards!"

mijn favoriete figuur is toch Marvin the Paranoid Android. geweldig. Alles ziet ie negatief, en iedereen die iets positiefs over hem zegt wordt helemaal depri na 5 min tegen hem praten

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Op 12 maart 2001 04:26 schreef Vision het volgende:
mijn favoriete figuur is toch Marvin the Paranoid Android. geweldig. Alles ziet ie negatief, en iedereen die iets positiefs over hem zegt wordt helemaal depri na 5 min tegen hem praten

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Of na per ongeluk 'een beetje lang' ergens achter te zijn gelaten:

"The first ten million years were the worst, and the second ten million, they were the worst too. The third ten million I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."
. . .
"It's the people you meet in this job that really get you down,"
. . .
"The best conversation I had was over forty million years ago." (pauze) "And that was with a coffee machine."
. . .
"You don't like talking to me do you?"

*vlug verder lezen*

Heb gelijk maar deel 2 en 3 besteld, echt een aanrader!!!

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Op 21 maart 2001 10:32 schreef Jarno het volgende:
En alweer uit!
Wat een vreselijk leuk boek zeg!!

Heb gelijk maar deel 2 en 3 besteld, echt een aanrader!!!

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Op 21 maart 2001 15:33 schreef w.o.r. het volgende:
Told you so

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Ben eigenlijk nooit zo'n fan van SF boeken, en stond dus ook een klein beetje wantrouwig tegenover deze titel, maar nogmaals: wat heb ik gelachen zeg (Ondanks de kaak).