Penelope wrote:

giselle:

'Absolutely Marvelous'

Fabulous = AbFab

Good catch Penny! I was just checking to see if you're awake and not spent too much time sheltering from the wind ...

Mary: I appreciate your point about authors that are almost offensive in the way that they spoon feed the reader. I much prefer the author that assumes an intelligent reader and tests that intelligence (with the risk of course that some times I don't 'get it'!) .. as to a favorite part, great question ... I like the way Ford Prefect convinces the Council dude to lie in front of the bulldozer and convinces Arthur that its ok to go to the pub while he does so.

Giselle - oh yes that was a brilliant little scene - but of course poor Arthur is as much the butt of the joke as the wanna-be Ghengis since Prosser must have got up so the bulldozer's could do their work. The thing (it seems to me) that this scene (and really the whole book) speaks to is that what matters is how we treat each other and not what we think is of value - especially since we can't know what Vogon monstrosity is around the hypergalatic bend. I suspect it is this basic ethic that made DA an atheist.

Mary Tulip:

Does anyone have a favourite section in chapters 1 to 5?

I think mine is in the introduction, but it is one of my favourites:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
~~~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Penelope wrote:

Mary Tulip:

Does anyone have a favourite section in chapters 1 to 5?

I think mine is in the introduction, but it is one of my favourites:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.
Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
And so the problem remained; lots of the people were mean, and most of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches.
~~~The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

I'll second that. That is my favorite part as well.

Yes, this is a brilliant bit of comedy ... and Adams seems to suggest, in a back handed way, that people are caught up in finding happiness in funny places, like owning a gadget, where they really should know it will not likely make them 'happier' .. (although in the case of digital watches, it might make them more on time, especially if it has the alarms that go off) ... maybe today's version of this would substitute 'cell phones' ...

giselle wrote: ... maybe today's version of this would substitute 'cell phones' ...

or if we want to be really edgy substitute iPhone or iPad - I can feel the riled upness as I write this

But it's a great thought Giselle. Translated into today's terms, what specific things would DA have pointed to? In my area the towel might well have become the yoga mat, for example.

MaryLupin wrote:Translated into today's terms, what specific things would DA have pointed to? In my area the towel might well have become the yoga mat, for example.

You're right, I'm a bit behind the times, cell phones are passe, its really iPads and there ilk now. Do you see the Hitchhikers Guide as a book? or maybe its like a Kindle or iPad? I can't recall for sure but I think Adams describes it this way? Thinking back to the time Adams was writing HHG it was the earliest days of computers, calculators and word processors were still all the rage. Its coincidental that we are reading this and last week there was all the publicity around the Endeavour and its 'last' tour on the streets of LA. And of course the recent Mars mission and all the pictures that are coming back. We are slightly closer to the universe as depicted by Adams, makes me wonder when the Vogons will show up! or maybe they are already here!! We better have our towels and yoga mats ready ..

giselle wrote:makes me wonder when the Vogons will show up! or maybe they are already here!! We better have our towels and yoga mats ready ..

Oh I know a few Vogons. They all work for some corporation or other

It's a great point you make though about DA's prescience with regard to the HGG. I was rereading that passage today where Ford is telling Arthur how to use it and it does sound like some convoluted webpage with "click here" over and over and over in order to find something like where to find the next toilet. I wonder about that and authors sometimes. How much is it they just know their stuff and so it seems like prescience and how much of it is that those images they leave us with are so compelling that the next generation of designers still remembers the descriptions and so such things become how we create our material world. Take the flip phone and the Star Trek communicator, for example.

Mary Lupin:

Take the flip phone and the Star Trek communicator, for example.

Well, we often think, 'Oh Beam me up Scottie', don't we? I was thinking the other day, that it wouldn't be so great to get beamed about because we'd grow so fat. We get so little exercise now, without teleportation adding to our unhealthy lifestyle.

I deliberately walk for half an hour most days just for the exercise I wouldn't get otherwise, yet we've got all these labour saving devices which make life 'easy' for us. Going to the gym would be like listening to Vogon poetry for me......excruciatingly boring!

those images they leave us with are so compelling that the next generation of designers still remembers the descriptions and so such things become how we create our material world.

Not only materially either. George Orwell's 1984 is scarily accurate.