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Една от не толкова добрите и забавни хумористични фантастики - слаба фабула и малко скучновати герои. Все пак съм доволна, че привършвам цикъла "Дъглас Адамс" :)
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Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic
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Arguably the greatest collaboration in the whole history of comedy!
Bestselling author Douglas Adams wrote the storyline based on his CD-ROM game of the same name (as this novel, not as him, obviously).
Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote the book. In the nude! Parents be warned! Most of the words in this book were written by a naked man!
So. You want to argue with that? All right, we give in.
Starship Titanic is the greatest, most fabulous, most technologically advanced interstellar cruise line ever built. It is like a cross between the Queen Mary, the Chrysler Building, Tutankhamen's tomb, and Venice. Furthermore, it cannot possibly go wrong. . . .
Sadly, however, seconds after its launch it undergoes SMEF, or Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. And disappears.
Except, everything's got to be somewhere.
Coming home that night, on a little known planet called Earth, Dan and Lucy Gibson find something very large and very, very shiny sticking into their house. . .
Bestselling author Douglas Adams wrote the storyline based on his CD-ROM game of the same name (as this novel, not as him, obviously).
Terry Jones of Monty Python wrote the book. In the nude! Parents be warned! Most of the words in this book were written by a naked man!
So. You want to argue with that? All right, we give in.
Starship Titanic is the greatest, most fabulous, most technologically advanced interstellar cruise line ever built. It is like a cross between the Queen Mary, the Chrysler Building, Tutankhamen's tomb, and Venice. Furthermore, it cannot possibly go wrong. . . .
Sadly, however, seconds after its launch it undergoes SMEF, or Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. And disappears.
Except, everything's got to be somewhere.
Coming home that night, on a little known planet called Earth, Dan and Lucy Gibson find something very large and very, very shiny sticking into their house. . .
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1,1997
This edition
- Format
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256 pages, Paperback
- Published
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October 27, 1998 by Random House Publishing Group
- ISBN
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9780345368430
- ASIN
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0345368436
- Language
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English
About the author
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Librarian note:
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Terence Graham Parry Jones was a Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones and writing partner Michael Palin wrote and performed for several high-profile British comedy programmes, including Do Not Adjust Your Set and The Frost Report, before creating Monty Python's Flying Circus with Cambridge graduates Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Eric Idle and American animator-filmmaker Terry Gilliam. Jones was largely responsible for the programme's innovative, surreal structure, in which sketches flowed from one to the next without the use of punch lines. He made his directorial debut with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he co-directed with Gilliam, and also directed the subsequent Python films Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
Jones co-created and co-wrote with Palin the anthology series Ripping Yarns. He also wrote an early draft of Jim Henson's film Labyrinth and is credited with the screenplay, though little of his work actually remained in the final cut. Jones was a well-respected medieval historian, having written several books and presented television documentaries about the period, as well as a prolific children's author. In 2016, Jones received a Lifetime Achievement award at the BAFTA Cymru Awards for his outstanding contribution to television and film. After living for several years with a degenerative aphasia, he gradually lost the ability to speak and died in 2020 from frontotemporal dementia.
There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name
Terence Graham Parry Jones was a Welsh actor, comedian, director, historian, writer and member of the Monty Python comedy troupe.
After graduating from Oxford University with a degree in English, Jones and writing partner Michael Palin wrote and performed for several high-profile British comedy programmes, including Do Not Adjust Your Set and The Frost Report, before creating Monty Python's Flying Circus with Cambridge graduates Graham Chapman, John Cleese, and Eric Idle and American animator-filmmaker Terry Gilliam. Jones was largely responsible for the programme's innovative, surreal structure, in which sketches flowed from one to the next without the use of punch lines. He made his directorial debut with Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which he co-directed with Gilliam, and also directed the subsequent Python films Life of Brian and The Meaning of Life.
Jones co-created and co-wrote with Palin the anthology series Ripping Yarns. He also wrote an early draft of Jim Henson's film Labyrinth and is credited with the screenplay, though little of his work actually remained in the final cut. Jones was a well-respected medieval historian, having written several books and presented television documentaries about the period, as well as a prolific children's author. In 2016, Jones received a Lifetime Achievement award at the BAFTA Cymru Awards for his outstanding contribution to television and film. After living for several years with a degenerative aphasia, he gradually lost the ability to speak and died in 2020 from frontotemporal dementia.
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Community Reviews
Rating(3.9 / 5.0, 113 votes)
5 stars
38(34%)
4 stars
30(27%)
3 stars
45(40%)
2 stars
0(0%)
1 stars
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113 reviews All reviews
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This is a hard one to review because on one hand it is a lot of fun, it's silly and light and there's a couple of particularly hilarious sex scenes. And it is the result of two great comedy minds working together so I can't really criticise. However it is a novelisation of a point-and-click computer game and this really shows in the pacing and plot points.
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Както винаги Дъглас Адамс разсмива и те увлича дори в този сравнително кратък роман.
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That something written by DNA should receive anything other than 5/5 says it all really. The idea is here, the bones with a fair degree of meat attached, but... it hasn't the ability to lead you to a 'wow moment' without seeing it well in advance. As his other books did. Do!
I bought the game too, it was equally as frustrating.
I bought the game too, it was equally as frustrating.
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An entertaining alien take on the Earth's seaship titanic, the starship Titania is having teething troubles as its lavish construction costs take down a planets economy.
The story covers multiple humorous characters including the ships genius creator who is trying to complete Titania whilst finding all is not to the standard he envisaged, three humans who accidentally end up on the starship, a alien journalist on the hunt for the story of his lifetime with an uncontrollabel sex drive, an easily distracted bomb that speaks and a parrot.
Not on the level of Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, but still an interesting read.
Whilst there are some parts where Douglas makes funny parallels to real life, the story is a little predictable once it gets going. However, it doesn't really take too many parts of the real life titanic story, which I guess was to stop the plot being too obvious (which I actually found to be a negative and a positive).
The story covers multiple humorous characters including the ships genius creator who is trying to complete Titania whilst finding all is not to the standard he envisaged, three humans who accidentally end up on the starship, a alien journalist on the hunt for the story of his lifetime with an uncontrollabel sex drive, an easily distracted bomb that speaks and a parrot.
Not on the level of Douglas Adam's Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, but still an interesting read.
Whilst there are some parts where Douglas makes funny parallels to real life, the story is a little predictable once it gets going. However, it doesn't really take too many parts of the real life titanic story, which I guess was to stop the plot being too obvious (which I actually found to be a negative and a positive).
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I found a copy of Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic at a half-price book store last December, and picked it up. I'd played the related computer game when it came out back in 1997 and was curious to see how (what I remembered of) the storyline played out in book format.
The story opens with Leovinus - the genius designer of the Starship Titanic "the ship that cannot possibly go wrong" - taking a last-minute tour of the ship, only to find that some very serious corners were cut in its construction.
He tracks down the project manager, who is being pointedly questioned by The Reporter - a struggle ensues, during which the ship suffers from SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure); winking out of existence from its launch point, crashing into Earth - where 3 humans board it (and Leovinius apparently disembarks), and winking out again. The ship's artificial intelligence is damaged, there's a sentient bomb aboard, and the original builders are massing outside, ready to take the ship as plunder.
Terry Jones does a serviceable job writing from the basic outline of the game that Adams designed - but he just doesn't have the subtle & absurd way with language that we see in Hitchhikers or Dirk Gently. It does make me want to try re-loading & playing the game, however.
Overall, I'd rate Starship Titanic as a decent, if light, sci-fi read - and recommend it to Douglas Adams completists.
The story opens with Leovinus - the genius designer of the Starship Titanic "the ship that cannot possibly go wrong" - taking a last-minute tour of the ship, only to find that some very serious corners were cut in its construction.
He tracks down the project manager, who is being pointedly questioned by The Reporter - a struggle ensues, during which the ship suffers from SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure); winking out of existence from its launch point, crashing into Earth - where 3 humans board it (and Leovinius apparently disembarks), and winking out again. The ship's artificial intelligence is damaged, there's a sentient bomb aboard, and the original builders are massing outside, ready to take the ship as plunder.
Terry Jones does a serviceable job writing from the basic outline of the game that Adams designed - but he just doesn't have the subtle & absurd way with language that we see in Hitchhikers or Dirk Gently. It does make me want to try re-loading & playing the game, however.
Overall, I'd rate Starship Titanic as a decent, if light, sci-fi read - and recommend it to Douglas Adams completists.
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They say imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but Terry Jones' attempt to mimic Douglas Adams reminds us that it can also be the gravest form of insult.
When I was younger, the cover of the Starship Titanic video game - back when games were still published in nice big boxes that could show off their art - was the coolest and scariest thing I'd ever seen. It stuck in my head, and when I stumbled on this in a free bookshelf, I was thrilled to read it and finally enter that world. What a massive waste of my time.
You see, the *title* is Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic, but as Adams was busy the novelisation was written by Terry Jones, of Monty Python. You might think Adams' and Python's styles are pretty compatible - Adams even worked on the show - but Jones does a terrible Adams impression. (Jones was always the broadest Python, humour-wise. Maybe Adams would have been better served by the dryness of Chapman or the humanism of Palin.)
Yes, Python is zany and Hitchhiker's Guide (of which Starship Titanic was a spinoff) is zany, but Python is a sketch show which seldom had to worry about the world outside its two minute surreal masterpieces. H2G2 is a five novel series. Its zaniness works because it's built on a strong satirical core, memorable characters with unique voices and well crafted stories. Jones can occasionally pull off a funny line, but most of the time it's just meaningless absurdity - he tries many times to craft a simile to rival Adams' perfect "The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't" and falls inevitably short. Where he does make a good joke, he often kills it with an unnecessary exclamation mark!
The plot is clearly adapted directly from a text adventure video game, mostly concerning collecting vouchers to upgrade class to unlock a new area to search for another collectible to upgrade to another class. Stuff happens, and the characters bimble along with each event, their mood and personality completely arbitrary from one line to the next. They argue about something, and within half a page the topic has changed entirely and their tension is forgotten. And speaking of the characters...
This is one of the most misogynistic books I've ever read. Two of the main characters are women, but both are sensual beauties who alternate between brilliant and brainless. One immediately and impulsively has sex with an alien and spends the rest of the novel alternately rejecting him and screwing him, while the other is groped, ogled and doused with an aphrodisiac perfume. It's a teenage boy's fantasy - and a particular grimy, crusty-socked kind of fantasy at that - and indeed the writing style feels simplistic enough for 10 year olds, if it weren't for the occasional descriptions of handjobs.
A dire book that, like its namesake vessel, should have undergone a Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure.
When I was younger, the cover of the Starship Titanic video game - back when games were still published in nice big boxes that could show off their art - was the coolest and scariest thing I'd ever seen. It stuck in my head, and when I stumbled on this in a free bookshelf, I was thrilled to read it and finally enter that world. What a massive waste of my time.
You see, the *title* is Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic, but as Adams was busy the novelisation was written by Terry Jones, of Monty Python. You might think Adams' and Python's styles are pretty compatible - Adams even worked on the show - but Jones does a terrible Adams impression. (Jones was always the broadest Python, humour-wise. Maybe Adams would have been better served by the dryness of Chapman or the humanism of Palin.)
Yes, Python is zany and Hitchhiker's Guide (of which Starship Titanic was a spinoff) is zany, but Python is a sketch show which seldom had to worry about the world outside its two minute surreal masterpieces. H2G2 is a five novel series. Its zaniness works because it's built on a strong satirical core, memorable characters with unique voices and well crafted stories. Jones can occasionally pull off a funny line, but most of the time it's just meaningless absurdity - he tries many times to craft a simile to rival Adams' perfect "The ships hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't" and falls inevitably short. Where he does make a good joke, he often kills it with an unnecessary exclamation mark!
The plot is clearly adapted directly from a text adventure video game, mostly concerning collecting vouchers to upgrade class to unlock a new area to search for another collectible to upgrade to another class. Stuff happens, and the characters bimble along with each event, their mood and personality completely arbitrary from one line to the next. They argue about something, and within half a page the topic has changed entirely and their tension is forgotten. And speaking of the characters...
This is one of the most misogynistic books I've ever read. Two of the main characters are women, but both are sensual beauties who alternate between brilliant and brainless. One immediately and impulsively has sex with an alien and spends the rest of the novel alternately rejecting him and screwing him, while the other is groped, ogled and doused with an aphrodisiac perfume. It's a teenage boy's fantasy - and a particular grimy, crusty-socked kind of fantasy at that - and indeed the writing style feels simplistic enough for 10 year olds, if it weren't for the occasional descriptions of handjobs.
A dire book that, like its namesake vessel, should have undergone a Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure.
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Hittade den i en bokbytarhylla.. den höll ju inte Liftarens-guideklass alls, men skulle kunnat vara refuserade delar ur serien slarvigt ihopbundet till en berättelse. Kul med absurda grejer, kul med Liftarens guide-känslan men inte en bok jag skulle rekommendera någon annan.
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