Only Zarquon gonna save you now!

[vovat]

I've now listened to the final three Phases of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show (i.e., the ones that were made after Douglas Adams' death).


As I mentioned in a previous entry, I'm not so keen on the majority of the Secondary Phase being dismissed as a "double psychotic episode" on Zaphod's part. There are some attempts to tie everything together, which results in Zarniwoop and Vann Harl being conflated into one character, and Zaphod showing up in the section of the show based on Mostly Harmless. Still, it seems like they could have come up with a way to get to the basic plot of Life, the Universe, and Everything without contradicting the Adams-written episodes of the radio program. I suppose Arthur could just as easily have rescued Trillian from the President of the Algolian Chapter of the Galactic Rotary Club as from Thor, and Marvin could have been stolen during the raid on the Heart of Gold (although that would have meant writing out the scene in the mattress swamp). That doesn't explain how Arthur would have gotten from the ship to Lord's Cricket Ground, though. I'm sure someone could have come up with something, though. No one alive today can write quite like Adams, but I'm sure many of them can come much closer than I can.

One thing I did like about the later radio series was how they made more of an effort to tie together the events of the final two books, largely by making the Earth brought back into existence by the dolphins the same as the one that Trillian never left. In the books, it's never quite clear why the Earth is there in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and then gone again in the final book. [1] There are also a few clever lines that presumably weren't written by Adams, but seemed like he COULD have written them, like the callback to Arthur's wishing he had a daughter so he could forbid her to marry a Vogon. The references to modern things, like mobile phones and reality TV, worked in context, but still seemed a bit odd.

I'm not sure what to think of the happy ending. I wasn't at all satisfied with the "and then everyone dies" ending to Mostly Harmless, so I'm glad they didn't just end it with that. And it was cool that all of the principle characters showed up again. It kind of struck me as too positive for the Hitchhiker's franchise, though.

Speaking of endings, I had a dream last night in which I had a copy of the final Harry Potter book. As far as I remember, though, I didn't actually have a chance to read it.

[1] One thing I've always wondered about the books is that, if the Earth was only five minutes away from coming up with the Ultimate Question before being destroyed, and the Earth in Mostly Harmless went on for years after that WITHOUT being destroyed, wouldn't it have completed its program? I have a few theories as to why it didn't, but I'm sure no one cares. I guess there are other forums for speculating about fictional events, so I should probably stop doing it in my journal. That's not to say that I actually WILL stop, mind you.

Comments

[onib.livejournal.com]

I thought I remember Adams saying in an interview once that one of his biggest annoyances in writing the books was coming up with how to bring all the characters together again. He felt he spent a lot of the later books explaining how the characters finally met up. By killing everybody (except Zaphod, who hadn't appeared for a while anyway) in one swoop, it would make writing a new book much easier. I didn't mind the unhappy ending to the books as I did the blatant foreshadowing throughout Mostly Harmless/ One of the things about Adams' writing that I always felt drawn to was how he wove so many random things together, and then surprised you by bringing back some random throw-away scene to tie things together. Throughout the last book, he keeps bringing up Arthur's death so often, I felt like he had abandoned subtlety altogether in favor of the slap-your-readers-around-with-the-important-details method of writing.

As far as the Question being completed by Earth, I think (1)the mice don't care anymore as they made up their own answer, (2)an alternate Earth might not have the same question as the original, (3)Fenchurch seemed to have come up with it...but then her epiphany turned out to be God's final message to the universe, and (4)Using the Scrabble tiles and Arthur's subconscious in the second book, they came up with the question "What is six multiplied by nine" which is either (4A)the wrong question because he left too soon, (4B) the right question which caused the universe to already be replaced with something more confusing, (4C) a reflection of the surreal nature of the universe, or (4D) entirely correct, if you are using base-13 arithmetic.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

By killing everybody (except Zaphod, who hadn't appeared for a while anyway) in one swoop, it would make writing a new book much easier.

Of course, he has to bring them all together again in order to kill them.

I have to wonder if, had Adams been able to write another book, he would have found some implausible way to bring the familiar characters back, or he just would have left them out entirely. A Hitchhiker's book without Arthur, Ford, Trillian, or Marvin would probably still have been funny, but would it really have been a Hitchhiker's book? I know long-running series will eventually bring minor characters into the forefront, but I don't think the sixth book would have been soon enough to feature, say, the hitchhiking adventures of Roosta and Gargravarr, stowing away on Wowbagger's ship. {g}

Throughout the last book, he keeps bringing up Arthur's death so often, I felt like he had abandoned subtlety altogether in favor of the slap-your-readers-around-with-the-important-details method of writing.

Yeah, you have a point there. I think both of the last two books in the series were much less random (but not Random Frequent Flyer Dent {g}) than the first three, and more intentionally building up to something. Of course, they were also the two where he didn't already have the story worked out in some other format.

As for your proposed answers to my question about THE Question, I'd respond thusly:

1. That appears to be the case with Frankie and Benjy, and the idea that they'd simply dismiss the expensive and time-consuming computer program in favor of a question they thought up themselves is amusing, but who knows whether the other pan-dimensional beings would have been satisfied with it?
2. That's possible, but I get the impression that only one Earth was made, and its placement in a Plural Zone allowed for it to have mutliple futures. I suppose it might have been placed there to allow for a backup in case anything happened to it, although Slartibartfast and the mice don't seem to consider this.
3. This is a little unclear. The introductions to both the first and fourth books include the description of "a girl sitting on her own in a small café in Rickmansworth," who turns out to be Fenchurch, with the implication that it's the Question she came up with. When they see the Message, Fenchurch says, "Yes, that was it," implying that that was actually what she had come up with. But who knows how her mind would have been affected by the destruction and reintroduction of the Earth? Still, the best explanation presumably is that it WAS the Message she came up with, and the fact that she came up with it so close to when the Earth was supposed to finish its program was a red herring (albeit probably an unintentional one at first).
4. In the book (I don't think it's in the radio show), Ford proposes that the arrival of the Golgafrinchans might have ruined the computer program. For that matter, any number of other things could also have resulted in the calculation of the Question being delayed or even halted. Deep Thought was carefully protected and maintained for millions of years, but the Earth was left to operate as a planet, with the mice running experiments on its inhabitants, but presumably not interfering with any outside factors that might have harmed the program (like Golgafrinchans and Vogons).

And failing all of that, there's always Prak's statement that knowledge of the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive, making it impossible for the Earth to complete its program without the Universe being replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable (unless, of course, this had already happened).