And Another Thing…: Part Six of Three in Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Eoin Colfer
Hyperion, $25.99, 288pp, hc, 9781401323585. Science fiction.
It’s been a long time since I first read Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the
Galaxy trilogy. Afterwards, I read So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless, the fourth and fifth volumes in the trilogy, when they came out. So it’s been a long time since I last read any of the series. I fondly remember them, and eagerly picked up Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing…, which is Part Six of Three in the series.
Colfer’s microwriting is wonderful, definitely up to the level set by Adams. I found myself laughing out loud at some of the Guide’s explanations (with which the book is nicely larded—see the Reviewer’s Notes here for a very pale, almost translucent, imitation of the style), some of the utterly ridiculous comparisons, and wonderful little language vignettes strewn through the book like palm fronds on a beach after the storm has passed.
Unfortunately, the macrowriting (that is, the overall story) doesn’t live up to the sainted memory of Adams’s originals. It’s almost as if Colfer knew this book would have a lot of trouble standing up to the preceding quintet, and so decided to focus on minor characters, leaving our focal points wandering around off to the side, where we just keep catching glimpses of them out of the corners of our eyes, but whenever we turn to look at them directly, they stand still and say “What? Me? I wasn’t doing anything. Go over there, look at them, that’s where the story is.” Except the new people they’re pointing us at really aren’t as interesting.
And then, to make sure we realize these aren’t Adams’s characters, but rather Colfer’s interpretation of them, Trillian leaves before the end of the book, and upon her departure, we get the feeling she was never really there. Ford seems to be here simply to be here, but he’s almost invisible in all things. Zaphod, the two-headed, three-armed President of the Galaxy, has decided to remove his left head (before the action in this book starts), so now he’s just a guy with one head, and that third arm only makes itself noticed in passing. Instead, Zaphod’s left head has taken over command of the Heart of Gold, and Eddie, the wonderfully happy personality that used to run the ship, is nowhere to be seen (except for, and I counted them, three doors, each of which makes one happy comment to Zaphod as he once again boards the ship to go off in search of the President of the Galaxy—yeah, that’s the other problem there). And Arthur, oh, poor Arthur. He’s still the schnook to which things happen, and he does seem to be a magnet for planetary destruction.
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Reviewer’s Note: See Bad Boys, wherein Marcus rids himself of Julie, telling her she’s “a magnet for random gun fire.”
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Indeed, I started comparing Arthur to Harry Potter in his seventh book, wherein he reverts to the personality he was stuck with in the first book: not doing anything, but having things happen to him. Except that in Arthur’s case, he’s also morose and trying to remain anonymous, while Harry was incredibly well-adjusted, and, if not exactly seeking public acclaim, at least trying to raise his peacock-like tail feathers. Arthur, it seems, would be happier with the plumage of a peahen.
So, we may recall that the Earth has been destroyed, and then replaced, and then destroyed again, and now it seems it’s well and truly gone for good. But there are still a few humans wandering around, and this is where this book’s main characters come in (you know you’re in trouble when a wonderful throwaway like Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, from the earlier volumes, becomes one of the focal characters in this book, and then turns out to be just a bland, nice guy). Wowbagger becomes… less infinite. And it’s sad. But he’s one of the main characters here, along with the Earth’s greatest salesman, Hillman Hunter, who is something of a cross between Harold Hill and P.T. Barnum, combined with Billy Mays (the infomercial salesman of late, apparently lamented memory) and Ron Popeil. Hunter keeps running into Zaphod (or Zaphod knows a cow he can keep milking), who keeps selling him something he desperately needs, whether it’s a new planet, a god to head up his religion, or a dud of an experimental bomb (well, he’s also selling to the other side, but when did Zaphod become the galaxy’s greatest salesman and agent?).
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Reviewer’s Note: It becomes apparent that Zaphod’s left brain was where all the higher functions took place, which leaves the reader wondering why it was removed—to leave us with this bland, barely functional, monobrained Beeblebrox—and why the formerly left head (now called LB, for left brain) is content to live in a floating bubble in the Heart of Gold, doing nothing much beyond directing the ship. The embodied right head, which seems to have the memory of a goldfish (15 seconds), can’t recall who he was at breakfast (or if he ate breakfast), yet he can remember Hunter’s phone number for years at a time, and keep convincing him to buy buy buy! Zaphod is still all over the place, but less endearingly than in the past.
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Hunter’s little colony, named after his deceased grandmother (and just why is that a problem? Apparently it is, but we’re not told why) started on Earth as an exclusive community for the far-too-rich, moved out here to avoid planetary destruction (see: Vogon Constructor Fleet), and now is battling with another settlement with a remarkably similar leader (although Hunter can’t see it).
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Reviewer’s Note: See “multiverse” and “breaking the boundaries between parallel universes”.
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And here, again, we have another example of those who are on stage being far less interesting than those who are off stage. The competing colony is made up of Tyromancers, who worship The Cheese. Just remember, though, that as the cheese and its source are holy, the Tyromancers are loathe to eat the poor cows, who would like nothing better than to be the guests of honor at a barbecue.
Anyway, Hunter knows that what he needs to unite his colonists (and incidentally scare the servant class back to work) is a religion backed by an actual god. So as we meet him, he’s interviewing gods (because, you know, since the sub-etha network grew to be everywhere, and we climbed down out of the trees and learned science, gods have been increasingly on the dole). Well, Zaphod just happens to be the agent for Thor. Yep, the Thundering God himself is much “smaller” than we might imagine, uncertain of himself, and apparently a dupe to whatever Zaphod can convince him of. And what Zaphod’s convinced him of now is to take on the job of being the deity on Nano (for that is the name of this new planet, and the nickname of Hunter’s deceased grandmother). Well, Hunter’s no fool (all right, he is a fool, but not that big of a fool), and he wants a contract and an audition.
Unbeknownst to any of them, the Vogons are on their way to finish their contract: the destruction of humans. (Well, actually, some folks knew they were coming, but they all assumed it would take the Vogons several hundred years to get there, instead of a few days.)
And now we meet the last of our main characters, Mown (yes, even the main Vogon we once knew, Jeltz, is shunted off to the side, in favor of his son, the most un-Vogonish of all Vogons). Mown, for some reason, doesn’t want to kill the humans. Actually, he doesn’t even want to own the castle and the curtains, he just wants to sing.
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Reviewer’s Note: Stop that! See Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Now, let’s get on with it.
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Mown eventually proves himself a Vogon (even though he does still feel pretty). And even though the Vogons themselves seem far less Vogonish (oh, they’re still moderately interested in the proper paperwork, but their abiding love of bad poetry has fizzled to a passing fancy, and they seem instead more interested in what sobriquets will eventually be attached to their names: “Utter Bastard”, “Drooling Poet”, or perhaps “Bob”), we get a nice glimpse into the inner workings of Vogon life and work (another thing we could have probably done without. Just as Wowbagger was more ominous when we hadn’t wandered around inside his skin, so too the Vogons were far more ungainly when the camera was focused on them. Anyway, Mown never actually meets the other main characters, but just convinces Daddy and crew to turn around and go home.
And perhaps that’s the metaphor we need, too. It’s a wild ride getting to the end, but once we’re there, we just want to… turn around and go home. Rather than a great ending like “…and the night was filled with the crescendoing sounds of pursuit,” we’re instead “treated” to this fade out, which feels much more like a bologna on white bread just laying there, urging us “don’t bother with that spicy mustard; use something calm and quiet, like a low-fat mayonnaise, or an off-brand ketchup (no, make that catsup). Or even better, no spread at all.”
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Reviewer’s Note: lie/lay—one of the most confused grammatical difficulties in the English language. Indeed, only the difference between its and it’s is more confused. But lie and lay leads to far more nervous, half-amused chuckles, at least by those who have low minds. We’ll still not sure if we’ve used it properly above, but just take our word for it, we mean a sandwich resting upon a flat surface, not moving. For further reading, see Woe Is I by Patricia T. O’Conner, and Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.
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In retrospect, I wonder if there’s a direct relationship between the grandeur of the title and the wonder of the book. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was titled after a truly remarkable, incredibly far-ranging book. It was followed by The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and while a restaurant might be a small establishment, the End of the Universe is an arresting place to be situated. Life, the Universe, and Everything… well, subjects don’t get much bigger than that. Then came So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, a puzzlement of a title, but it was talking about all the fish, which is some significant volume. And as the titles shrank farther, we got Mostly Harmless, which at least hints at “slightly harmful”, which is an interesting warning of a title. But And Another Thing… as Adams himself says on the back cover, is what the fellow says when he calls you back twenty minutes after the argument is over; meh.