I couldn't get into the books and figured the movies would be a good gateway. I can safely say I'm not a Tolkien fan.
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I think it helps if you read them before you get a real girlfriend.
I was already an adult before I'd ever heard of Tolkien though.
Same here.
I did read The Hobbit when I was 14, remember I was a bit intrigued by it.
The book was some older edition with a few uncolored drawings only.
Then I tried to read the Ring trilogy and my interest disappeared and never came back.
Today Tolkien has become an over-established franchise brand, a soup stirred by too many chefs.
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And Hitchhikers Guide for me. Though that movie didn't disappoint because I knew it would suck. The humor
Oh I got interrupted and posted an unfinished reply. The humor in that book isn't so much what happens as the way it's described.
G
Gimlet
Guest
I came across the book first when it was performed on the radio in the '70. As a radio play it worked vastly better than a TV series or a film with the wilder futuristic elements left to the listener's imagination and inner eye rather than being interpreted by a special effects department. And it allowed for a narrator to speak Adam's descriptive prose and give voice to the book. I though it hilarious at the time.
I reread the book many years later and found it oddly depressing and couldn't finish it.
I need to hear the original radio play. If I understand correctly it was the first iteration and kind of more fly by the seat of ones pants. It's a story that he put into every type of media he could and frankly it worked in every single one except for movies and t.v.. Yes so much of the humor really came from the narrator and their take on things. The funny thing is in a way that is almost the most realistic sci fi take possible. If one was dealing with a huge number of alien cultures their take on what is happening would be more bizarre and silly in some way.
I just turned a young co-worker on to the books. The look they gave me when I started to talk about it was priceless. They just looked confused when I said it's a super nerdy funny ha ha book that starts with the complete destruction of earth for the building of intergalactic highway. Then I told them about how it described flying as throwing oneself at the ground and missing.
G
Gimlet
Guest
The humour is very self-deprecating middle-class British from the 60's/70's. That's who Adams was himself and it comes through in the narration. I loved the little asides and whimsical discursions around figures of speech he used in his narrator's voice.
A good example are the opening lines to his final Hitch-Hiker's spin-off, Mostly Harmless:
"The history of the Galaxy has got a little muddled......
One of the problems has to do with the speed of light and the difficulties involved in trying to exceed it. You can’t. Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws. The Hingefreel people of Arkintoofle Minor did try to build spaceships that were powered by bad news but they didn’t work particularly well and were so extremely unwelcome whenever they arrived anywhere that there wasn’t really any point in being there".
Typical Adams. A film production can't reproduce that voice.
They did about as well as they could with the HHGTTG movie. It was OK and at least not an embarrassment, IMO. I definitely wouldn’t consider it iconic.
It would be really hard to be as good as the books. For the same reason the radio play was good, it’s happening in your mind.
Almost completely, but not quite entirely, unlike a cup of tea.
It would be really hard to be as good as the books. For the same reason the radio play was good, it’s happening in your mind.
Almost completely, but not quite entirely, unlike a cup of tea.