'And Another Thing...' Review

Stories get continued until they don't. It's like the joke they made on Simpsons ages ago: the show continues until it is no longer profitable. I'm paraphrasing the line to make it fit better, no need to correct my verbiage in the quote. It's funny because it's true. We get sequels to movies because someone somewhere believes that the already familiar characters will draw more people to the theatre than new characters in an interesting new environment. Maybe it'll be nostalgia that'll bring in the folks or wanting to see an old familiar character with new special effects. Maybe we'll just remake/restart a previously popular franchise and see if there's still some money left in it. It happens all the time.

For most of these stories, there's no one person to look to as creator. That happens more in music. Maybe your favorite band breaks up and you hope they'll reform some day and then one of the band dies and you know they could reform, but it won't be the same. For movies you don't often get a singular vision like that. Directors are important to the process but so are actors sometimes and sometimes producers and sometimes writers. Who is most responsible for a movie character you like? The casting director? The director? The writer? The actor? All of them? The lines can blur.

With a book, there tends to be a more singular vision. There's an editor that may well be a useful influence but a book is generally one person's view of a world, whether their own or not. It's much more difficult for someone to take over that singular view and replicate it as there own. If you add into that a particularly singular view of Life, the Universe, and Everything then it becomes an even dicier effort to take over that view.

Yet, someone somewhere said 'Let's try for another Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy book even though Douglas Adams is dead'. Someone else decided there could be money in it and, hey look!, I've got this book sitting next to me now, all read and everything. Eoin Colfer, writer of the Artemis Fowl series that I am in no way familiar with apart from knowing it exists, had the task of continuing the adventures of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Zaphod Beeblebrox. My original intent was to re-read the original five books in the trilogy before reading this one, to see how well the new book fits in. Instead the new book arrived and I plunged in immediately out of curiosity.

Is it funny? Yes, funny enough. It's full of wit, silliness, and oddly named characters who don't need to appear in the story itself, just as asides.

Does it... feel like a Hitchhiker's book? This is a trickier question to answer but I'm going to say No, it doesn't.

Under these circumstances 'No' is always the easier answer to give. 'No, of course not,' is an easy response to questions like 'Are Muppet productions post-Jim Henson like the ones with him around?' I still find joy in new Muppet productions and some are quite good. Many miss the combination of weirdness and character and emotion than the 'original' productions have, even if some of our reaction to them is knowing that the major component in their creation is missing and, therefore, they are different to what we saw before now. It doesn't necessarily mean that the characters are useless without the Jim Henson component; it just means that things will change and might be differently good.

That's part of why I'm saying this book isn't necessarily bad but I had a hard time agreeing that it was a good continuation of the series: I kept feeling the absence of Douglas Adams. Now, before you go 'So it's all in your head then, is it?' I'll respond with 'There's a reason, in the book, that I feel this way.'

Arthur Dent is missing for most of the book.

By 'missing' I don't mean 'lost as part of the story and the rest must find him' or 'isn't written properly so it's like he's not there' or anything like that. There are long sections of the book where Arthur doesn't appear at all. He's not important to the story. This is hard for me to take because, while I'll not argue much about the different versions of the story in different media, one thing is for certain: Arthur Dent is the main character. He's the character you play as in the text adventure for Zark's sake. Without Arthur anchoring the story, the book becomes a collection of silly named characters and odd asides, all entertaining, but missing the point. Who is the main character? Zaphod. It gives me the impression that Eoin said to himself 'I love these books but I can't write Arthur in too much and have it remain funny so I'll focus on this idiot character to keep things silly'.

I believe this was done with good intentions. It is a funny book. It is an entertaining book. It just didn't come together for me. My recommendation is to wait until you find it on sale for $5 somewhere and give it a try then. I paid more than that and I honestly don't think it was worth it. It's fun but it's not 'right'.