Still fabulously funny
4 stars
I absolutely loved the Hitchhiker's series as a young teenager so was curious to discover how I would feel listening to it again now nearly thirty years (eeek)! later. One of the AudioSYNC downloads last week was the Stephen Fry narrated version. He does an excellent job, obviously enjoyed the novel as he reads it and managing to include a few aural nods to the original radio series. I wasn't prepared for how much of the book I still had memorised so apologies to anyone alarmed by the 'crazy' headphoned woman apparently muttering to herself, 'It must be a Thursday, said Arthur, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.' 'Life? Don't talk to me about Life!'.
Marvin is still, for me, the complete star of the show, but the other characters are excellently portrayed too and Adams' dry wit carries the story with a humour that is perfectly suited …
I absolutely loved the Hitchhiker's series as a young teenager so was curious to discover how I would feel listening to it again now nearly thirty years (eeek)! later. One of the AudioSYNC downloads last week was the Stephen Fry narrated version. He does an excellent job, obviously enjoyed the novel as he reads it and managing to include a few aural nods to the original radio series. I wasn't prepared for how much of the book I still had memorised so apologies to anyone alarmed by the 'crazy' headphoned woman apparently muttering to herself, 'It must be a Thursday, said Arthur, I never could get the hang of Thursdays.' 'Life? Don't talk to me about Life!'.
Marvin is still, for me, the complete star of the show, but the other characters are excellently portrayed too and Adams' dry wit carries the story with a humour that is perfectly suited to my own. I hadn't remembered the story having so much politics in it. Admittedly it's disguised well, but prescient ideas such as the new President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, having got the job for his ability to deflect attention from the real power-holders rang pretty true. The electronic book form of The Guide predated ebooks and ereaders by decades too.
Despite my glorious wave of nostalgia, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy didn't quite get the full five star rating. There are pacing issues and a couple of plot holes large enough to fly a Vogon constructor fleet through. Some story elements haven't dated well either. The 'small green pieces of paper' will probably still make sense to American readers, but became obsolete in the UK shortly after my first reading of the novel back in the 1980s. That said, where Hitchhiker's 'scores over more pedestrian' science fiction is that it is simply tremendous fun. I could feel Adams' ideas almost clambering over each other to be written down and he had me giggling most of the time.
