Една от не толкова добрите и забавни хумористични фантастики - слаба фабула и малко скучновати герои. Все пак съм доволна, че привършвам цикъла "Дъглас Адамс" :)

Overall a reasonable read and written in the Cain of other Douglas Adam’s books . Just felt too similar to HHGTTG

Very reminiscent of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, rather unsurprisingly, but a little too long I think and lacking the same level of charm. A good if bizarre read to fill an afternoon.

Setting: Most of the story takes place on the eponymous starship, which sounds very much like a luxury cruise liner, except in space. The robots were an amusing touch with their quirks and bizarre programming. I could visualise the setting enough for reading the book, but no more than that. In places, a little more detail would have been appreciated but what was there was adequate.

Character: I didn’t really connect with any of these characters, except perhaps the architect. They were stereotypes given names and not that much was done to subvert these. This was a quick and fun read but I won’t be able to remember any names in a few days. There was a great Monty Python nod with a particular cameo.

Plot: Perhaps a couple of the complications could have been eliminated without any damage to the plot line as a whole as it did feel a bit long. The events did all hang together and the ending was satisfying if a little oddball in places.

Auch wenn ich kein wirklicher Fan von Monty Python bin und mit dem Namen Terry Jones nicht viel anfangen konnte, fühlte ich mich doch ein wenig in die Zeiten des "Anhalters" zurückversetzt. Die Reise von Lucy und Co. mit dem Starship Titanic erinnert gekonnt an Douglas Adams' Werk, wirkt aber leider auch teilweise wie ein lauwarmer Aufguss. Insgesamt war sie nette kurzweilige Unterhaltung.

Is it a shame that Douglas Adams concentrated on the video game and let the book over to Terry Jones? We will never now but it is certain that Terry Jones did a terrific job in writing this book (in the nude) completely in the style of Douglas Adams' Hichthiker's Guide series. Of which it is a spin-off of course.
Not too many characters, coming from three planets, so it is not very hard to tell them apart. A lot of bots and a parrot. The action also takes place on the above-mentioned three planets but mostly in space aboard the Starship Titanic.
A lot of action, impossible situations quickly following up on other crazy situations, constant danger for life, a race against the clock, sex, violence, hi-tech, ...
Witty but mostly absurd conversations between humans and humans, humans and a parrot, humans and a bomb, humans and bots...
If you loved THHGTTG you will certainly like this book. If you abhor absurd humor stay away from it.

This is a madcap silly tale full of highly imaginative humor in which one escapade keeps leading to another. A light, fast paced story.

It was ok. The innuendo felt forced and too frequent. The story was so so. The humour mediocre. Probably the weakest in the Hitchhikers series and feels a bit dated now.

I listened to the audio book, with Terry Jones narrating, and it was brilliant. I'd highly recommend it. His narration of a particular sex scene and the subsequent discovery of that scene by the other characters had me laughing so hard that it left me gasping for air. It was a fun book. I'll add it to my list of books that I reread when I need a pick me up.

Great, albeit short, novel based on the video game created by Douglas Adams.
When Douglas himself decided he had no time to write the novelization, he enlisted the help of Monty Python alum Terry Jones. Terry does a great job telling the story in a style that's somewhere between Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett. Or maybe that's Terry's actual style, having not read his work before I can't be sure. Either way it's an easy read, if anything I feel this could've setup a series of novels but given both Terry(s) and Douglas have sadly since shuffled off, this is all we're getting!

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 computer game came with the first cassette of an audiobook adaptation included, and the excerpt on the tape was just long enough for me to recognize the book as an imperfect pastiche of Douglas Adams's style. Douglas Adams-like digressions, but lingering a bit too long, or failing to come together into a clever bit. Jokes that would've been great if Adams told them, but which somehow don't stick the landing... I never picked up the book.

What I wasn't picking up on back then, of course, is that when the Douglas Adams voice is botched here, the stuff you see beneath the the patchwork is Terry Jones, if a bit rough around the edges in his first published novel. And that's charming on its own rights. Starship Titanic is not a Douglas Adams novel, and I can't imagine it would sustain repeated readings the way his do. But neither is it just a poor imitator.

From what I've read, this is a novelization of a game where you're exploring a ship on your own. The book has multiple organic characters (including a group of humans), and for the first half of it or so I was both amused and interested in where the plot was going, and generally pleased with how everything was working. The characters had a goal, they worked to get to the goal, great. However, the latter half of the book suffered from that age-old pitfall of multiple characters with different genders pretty much descending into a distracting, chaotic mess of heterosexually pairing up by virtue of existing too closely to each other for too long. I think it took the token human businesswoman about two seconds to fall for the first organic alien lifeform she encountered onboard.

From that point onward, everything just snowballed into a mess of ship fodder. Unfortunately, the publication of this book predates any possible shipping puns that could have been made. While some of it turned out to be a product of a cultural miscommunication that was never pointed out outside of the narration or even viewed as that much of a problem, whenever a book starts to focus on romantic or sexual relationships, I suddenly lose the ability to relate to the narrative entirely. You can throw any kind of alien technology at me and I'll be able to roll with it and go, "Yes, that makes perfect sense, go on and explain the trans-dimensional energy cartridge system now," but the minute characters start coupling up, it turns into a case of "Oh, this old charade again? Bo-ring."

I am mildly curious about the game now, but it seems like nothing I couldn't get from Myst or Beneath a Steel Sky. I'm giving the book three stars because, at least according to whatever approximates as logic for me, everything holds up alright, and the first half even amused me. The back end just wasn't terribly enjoyable for me to slough through.