[HN Gopher] The Berkeley Hotel Hostage of Douglas Adams
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The Berkeley Hotel Hostage of Douglas Adams
Author : thunderbong
Score : 89 points
Date : 2023-09-09 11:12 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thebookseller.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thebookseller.com)
| superchroma wrote:
| Afterwards he wrote Mostly Harmless, which is a tough read even
| in the best of conditions. The rebelliousness of youth totally
| gives way to the grimmer realities of life in that novel
|
| I've often felt that the series lost its free spirit and
| lightness and became incredibly personal towards the end. Maybe
| it always was incredibly personal. I don't know if it's true or
| if it's just Douglas's depression. The time with Fenchurch feels
| almost like a stolen glimpse of a very private moment.
|
| Some points also to Eoin Colfer who didn't make a total hash of
| the sequel book, which I imagine is a very difficult thing to
| approach and would inevitably upset a lot of people.
| 1auralynn wrote:
| I saw him give a talk a couple years before his death where he
| said he wrote it when he was very depressed and regretted
| ending the series that way: he was considering writing another
| a_t48 wrote:
| The Eoin Coifer sequel felt like mediocre fan fiction to me,
| unfortunately.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I read some other Eoin Colfer books before this ... and it
| felt like a mediocre Eoin Colfer novel to me.
| jpm_sd wrote:
| Regarding the sequel, I think the phrase you're searching for
| is "This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely
| regarded as a bad move."
| nadermx wrote:
| Having read the series twice in my life. The first time Mostly
| Harmless felt like a horrible ending. Rereading it 15 years
| later, Mostly Harmless felt like a fitting ending and made me
| smile when it ended.
| thanatos519 wrote:
| I have a lot to say about Eoin Colfer's travesty of a sequel,
| but I'm not going to say it all here.
|
| To sum it up in one word, I felt betrayed. The original books
| shed humorous light on so many of the rotten things in our
| world, in a way that had protected me. For example, I had met
| the Vogons before I encountered actual bureaucracy. This book
| depicted Vogons as people complete with awkward father/son
| reconciliation plot. I was certain when I read it that Adams
| was 'spinning in his grave' as he would have put it. I was
| inconsolable.
|
| I had to opportunity to read the final manuscript in
| preparation for interviewing him. After reading the manuscript,
| which was difficult as I became increasingly upset as I slogged
| through it, I refused to be involved further and suggested that
| they not publish it. When further begged for interview
| questions, the best I could come up with was something along
| the lines of "How dare you?".
| DylanSp wrote:
| The Digital Antiquarian blog talks about Adams's struggles with
| writing when he was working with Infocom on two IF games, their
| _Hitchhiker's_ adaptation and _Bureaucracy_:
| https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/ and
| https://www.filfre.net/2015/08/bureaucracy/
| NKosmatos wrote:
| Reminds me of this little story on how Douglas Adams went to
| Corfu in 1978 to start writing The Hitchhiker's Guide To The
| Galaxy:
| https://twitter.com/jasonhazeley/status/1158046572363550721
| raldi wrote:
| > One of these was the brainchild of Adams's English teacher at
| school: define the place-name. So, 'what is epping?' and 'what
| are devizes?'
|
| I don't understand a word of this.
| pimlottc wrote:
| Epping and Devizes are both towns in the UK. The idea is to
| take an interesting sounding proper name, pretend it's just a
| normal word and then come up with your own definition.
| mannykannot wrote:
| Leading to one of Adams' least-known books, "The Meaning of
| Liff" (1983)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Meaning_of_Liff
| ivorbuk wrote:
| Duddo (n.) The most deformed potato in any given
| collection of potatoes.
|
| I use that word to this day.
| partomniscient wrote:
| I borrowed someone's copy of that once back in said
| 1980's. I remember there was a word for the cooler side
| of the pillow when you turned it over, but can't remember
| what it is - but I think it started with 'a'....seached
| the internet for it 'abilene', not to be confused with
| Abeline in Texas of course.
|
| There seemed to be a lot of words related to knights
| having to deal with the different reasons/states of
| drawbridges not opening to let them in as well.
|
| Now I have an irrational desire for Bryan Ferry to write
| a song similar to Avalon, but called Abilene all about
| how nice the cooler side of the pillow is.
| antod wrote:
| I think skoonspruit (forgot the spelling) is the main one
| that still stuck in casual use decades later for my
| family.
|
| It's the rare fountain thing a saliva gland makes eg when
| yawning.
|
| There was another one for a group of cars all doing
| exactly the speed limit because one of them is a police
| car. I was better at remembering the definitions than the
| actual words.
| f4c39012 wrote:
| The book puts names to things that are otherwise nameless,
| and draws those names from places in the UK. One that sticks
| in my mind is a "sheppey", the distance at which a sheep
| stops being picturesque. It has the narrative structure of a
| dictionary, but the ideas...
| StuntPope wrote:
| Great story.
|
| I was a huge HHGTTG fan (counting Disaster Area among my top
| musical influences)
|
| When I was at UWO in the early 90's Douglas Adams came on campus
| for a book signing - it was to last about 45 minutes, and it was
| scheduled right in the middle of one of my exams.
|
| So I decided to sit the exam, thinking "I'll catch up with him at
| a future book signing", alas he died before I ever got the
| chance.
| SeanLuke wrote:
| It's worth mentioning that this story is prior to 1984, when So
| Long and Thanks for All The Fish was published. That also happens
| to be the year when the Mac came out, and Adams was an _ardent_
| Mac enthusiast -- indeed AFAIK he was the first person in all of
| Europe to buy a Mac. So as he transitioned off of a typewriter,
| one would presume that the strategy employed here would become a
| bit harder.
| netsharc wrote:
| I thought it was Stephen Fry, but you're right, apparently he
| bought the first 2, and Adams' good friend Stephen Fry bought
| the 3rd: https://www.whynow.co.uk/read/douglas-adams-stephen-
| fry-a-te...
| marttt wrote:
| Fun story on accidentally buying Douglas Adams' Mac IIfx from
| ebay:
| http://web.archive.org/web/20051127025410/http://www.vintage...
|
| "When switched on for the first time, it was clear that the
| last user had little understanding of how to store files on the
| hard disk. The root directory contained hundreds of MacWrite
| documents. Scrolling through them was a pain and, as I have no
| interest in other people's private affairs, I selected the lot
| and deleted them. /.../
|
| I started up MacWrite Pro and noticed that it was registered to
| "Douglas Adams, Serious Productions Ltd". I paid little
| attention to this as I had seen warez copies of Claris software
| where the registered user was Douglas Adams. I then started
| Claris Resolve, ignoring a warning dialog (mistake number two),
| and noted that this software was also registered to Douglas
| Adams. The copies of Claris Works 4.0 and Now Up-to-Date were
| registered to Jane Belson; I was unfamiliar with the name but a
| quick web search determined that she is Douglas Adams's widow."
|
| Also discussed on HN:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7091793
| [deleted]
| scandox wrote:
| The single most important piece of information is missing: how
| long did they stay in the hotel?
|
| Update: 2 weeks according to another site[1]. That seems like a
| very short time to turn out another 100+ pages of a book...
|
| [1]
| https://www.chortle.co.uk/news/2017/11/06/38330/new_play_cha...
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