A definite case of expectations spoiling things, but how could a novel based on a game by Douglas Adams that was written by Monty Python's Terry Jones not be something you'd presume would be very funny? It's a shockingly patchy work though, sometimes containing very bland prose that feels like you're reading through a strategy guide for the game, it has a reliance on silly names and an off-putting obsession with female breasts, but there are just enough decent jokes and a vaguely okay plot and selection of characters that I don't regret reading it. Only just, though, and I doubt I'll ever read anything by Jones again. A generous 2.75/5

Ако някой себеуважаващ се читател на фентъзи и фантастика все още не се е запознал с магна опуса на Дъглас Адамс за Пътеводителя на всичките поизгубени галактически стопаджии – веднага да метнете една пухкава хавлия на рамо и да тичате през глава да си поправяте почти непростимата грешка. За всички останали – помните ли великолепния меланхолично – суициден мърморко с роботско сърце Марвин? Сега си представете цял гигантофилски кораб натоварен до пръсване само с вариации на Марвиновци, кой от кой с по-лош характер, сякаш подбирани сред най-големите нелюбезни бюрократични мрънкала в галактиката по извънредно детайлен междувселенски каталог. Да, точно толкова добро е. Въпреки , че Адамс тук е само инспиратор на събитията и вдъхновител на откачения Тери Джоунс, аз лично не можах да намеря каквато и да било стилистична разлика от обичайните му дъгласовски приключения на ръба на дивия крясък, останал нечут в среда на абсурдно пропусклив вакуум.

Казват, че Джоунс е писал книжката напълно гол, и някак си съм склонна да му вярвам – толкова леко и безсрамно написано е, с щипещо английско, и все пак напълно първосигнално разбираемо чувство за хумор, а сцените се редят като в наистина добре обмислен до последна сцена скеч на Монти Пайтън ( за тези , които не знаят – това е група актьори, несвенящи да се подиграят със съмнителна доброжелателност на всичко свято, забранено за коментар или просто табу, и на��равили едни от най-смущаващите филми на едно чисто етично и политически некоректно ниво, които изключително срамотно те карат да се кискаш в шепа и да гледаш с широко отворени очи сякаш невероятно впечатляваща катастрофа, която не можеш да изповядаш в неделя на който трябва) .

Имаме една извънземна цивилизация, намираща се в далеч по-централно място от нас във вселенски мащаб ( за справка – ние сме някъде къмто подмишницата на космоса ) , разрешила проблемите си с трафика преди да премине към ниво на разумно общество и измислила имитиращи оръжия, които запълват желанието на хуманоидните индивиди откъм локви кръв и откъснати крайници, но всъщност не причиняващи почти никакви други щети. Сред тях, разбира се, се натрисат една групичка безскрупулни земляни, които освен да пищят , тичат в кръг и пребиват откачените роботи с всичко под ръка, се хързулват из тъмни дупки, свалят умни бомби и се онождат с инопланетяните съвсем неморално. И откриват колко близки са бюрократичните системи и дребните мошеничества във всеки един ъгъл на мирозданието, а откъм материал се пести по майсторски нагло и в най-мащабния проект на всички времена. Въобще забавлението на моята книга 200 за тази година е гарантирано и за най-кривите читатели, чиято негласна кралица съм аз, естествено :)

Douglas Adams and Terry Jones, in collaboration. What's not to like? As I went through the "to be read pile" this turned up next on that huge pile and I admit to a happy smile at that.

The pleasure didn't last so long as it turns out this is not the most stunning example of any of the hitchhiker tales. The humour turns to farce, and not in a funny way, but in typical, Monty Python style which overdoes the funny bits and diminishes the total kind of way.

Skimmed much of it and realised I didn't actually miss anything.

All OK, but not worth a reread.

A humorously silly planetary adventure...

A mně se to líbilo. Bylo to správnou měrou praštěné, dostatečně vtipné i ujeté, nechala jsem se unášet příběhem - nepříběhem.
Mluvící bomba mě bavila, i Žurnalista. Mluvící toustovač z Červeného trpaslíka je sice lepší, ale co dělat, když Trpaslíka už mám celého přečteného...
Prostě se mi to i trefilo do momentální nálady, tak musím jedině chválit.

Както винаги Дъглас Адамс разсмива и те увлича дори в този сравнително кратък роман.

A wonderful sci fi novel with a twist on the Titanic story.
Leovinus a genius of the galaxy has an idea to build the most magnificent starship known to the universe, all controlled by his beloved Titania.
Things go well until his accountant and other business partner cut corners due to financial issues, on the day of the launch the Starship Titanic suffers a SMEF, Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure and it crash lands right in the middle of a rectory on earth.
Enter the four humans, Nigel, Nettie, Dan and Lucy who are offered a free trip on the starship in return for destroying the rectory they were looking to buy and set up as a business.
Nigel will not go but for the rest of them it totally revolutionises their lives.
From affairs with aliens, attacks by Blerontins, a bomb that is going to blow the starship to smithereens but keeps losing count when the humans talk to it, to a madcap dash space to find the other part of Titania's "brain" to save the ship from destruction and many other MISadventures this book has it all.
Hilarious and a wonderful storyline makes this a book hard to put down.
A great read.

Should really be 2.5 stars. This was an okay read - which I realize is damning with faint praise. While written by Jones, it's based on Adams's game, which I have not played, but I can recognize or guess the elements that surely must come from Adams and not added in by Jones. I also recognize the beats of the plot's developments as clearly being stages or "levels" of a computer game - that's not a bad thing necessarily, just something that stands out more than a wholly original novel not based on a game.

The book starts off pretty darn funny and silly. There are some genuinely funny moments - short scenes and single lines - in this book that made me laugh or facepalm (especially when listening to the audiobook, read by the wonderful and sadly late Terry Jones himself - the man makes one hell of a vocal narrator). Granted, there are many such moments, but as the book progresses, and especially in its latter half, too often the moments lack a certain punch given the stakes and setting of the story - this is not as insanely ridiculous or as adventurous as the Hitchhiker's Guide saga - and too much going on *between* the funny moments that isn't funny and did not feel strong enough to make me care; they only made me impatient for the comedy to resume. Basically, too often the book seems to get bogged down either in its pacing or in the amount of comical content, although the latter is so subjective that what does not work for me might easily work for someone else (look at all the other readers giving this book 4 or 5 stars!). If it's not the pacing, then it may be cultural references or cultural standards that might appeal better to British readers than Americans like myself.

Ultimately, I am glad I read the book (especially as an audiobook), but I don't feel a compelling need to keep it in my iTunes library or acquire a print copy. Should you try it? Sure, but I recommend that you go with the audiobook for best effect (it's about a 5-hour listen, so it's a brisk "read" even with the pacing issues), and be aware it may not appeal to everyone, even devout fans of Douglas Adams and/or Monty Python.

Oh no! I really really wanted to love this. Douglas Adams and Terry Jones writing a hitchhikers universe based space adventure! Sounds amazing! Unfortunately everything seemed to fall very flat. At one point while I was reading I was worried I’d been duped and had ended up buying an AI written novel that had been fed only Douglas Adams and poor, badly aged romcoms. It’s fine. But not great. Would have given it 2 stars but I heard it was written in only 3 weeks and only cost me 99p. I don’t blame the author I blame the publishers for rushing it. Could have been so much better.

It is so achingly close to being the Douglas Adams I remember. So painfully near you can almost feel it but just distant enough to feel wrong, like an ill-made facsimile.

The concept was well within Adams's wheelhouse. Madcap sci-fi shenanigans. Earthlings playing the fish-out-of-water. Decently witty with just enough silliness. The not-a-ghostwriter is Terry Jones. As in Monty Python emeritus Terry Jones. That should have gelled perfectly.

But it kind of just doesn't.

Starship Titanic was a point-and-click adventure game first and then eventually novelized by Jones. It grew out of an offhand joke in the Life, The Universe, and Everything and grew from an idea Adams had to the tune of "What if Myst had characters you can interact with?" It isn't infertile soil to mine.

And some of the jokes DO land but some of it feels very dated. There's an extended sequence where a non-earthling character becomes enamored with one of the Earthlings and turns into a complete sex pest for the rest of the novel but it's ok but she's kind of into it, sometimes, if she isn't too busy talking a bomb out of exploding. It's a running joke that takes up an incredible percentage of the book but also feels ripped from an 80s sex comedy and even in 1996 seems very dated.

It's also very short novel that somehow feels padded to the point of pain. Very precious little actually happens in the way of plot. It contrasts with the Hitchhiker's Guide where a lot of things happen at a breakneck pace but Starship Titanic manages to do little while breaking the sound barrier doing it.

Maybe it's the medium. Maybe this kind of fiction just isn't Jones's forte though he seems to be a fairly prolific writer. Perhaps it was the weight of Douglas Adams's name on the front of the title. Having it there does create an expectation that it will be his style and while there is some cross-pollination between Adams and the Pythons but it does mean that Jones has to consciously write in the Adams mold.

It's hard to put it into words. But it's like something skinned your best friend and is wearing their flesh to a dinner party and pretending to be that friend even though it's obvious that something horrible has occurred.

Ok - that's a bit overdramatic. But the novel is the literary equivalent of the uncanny valley, a principle that holds that as something artificial becomes more human-like humans react more positively to it until it reaches a point where it's in the 'moving corpse' level of resemblance and reaction drops sharply. The novel is so close to being like the Adams novels I remember but it's just different enough that it feels wrong.

2.5 stars. This is definitely not a Douglas Adams book. I like Terry Jones for what he is and what he's done over the course of his life, but this book is not one I hold in high regard. It definitely reads like an extended Monty Python skit set in the Hitchhiker's Guide universe. The first half of the book was full of cringeworthy and overly exagerrated attempts at humor. By the second half those had tamed, but only a bit. In the end it took longer to read than I had anticipated, given its short length. There were contradictions throughout the book, and I attribute that to either Jones rushing through a scene and forgetting none of the aliens had even heard of Earth before, or the editor didn't edit very well. Despite not knowing Earth or what a human was (or any Earth animal for that matter) there is a parrot in the alien spacecraft and parrots exist on their world somehow. I guess there could be reasons for it, but those ideas were never explored. At one point, on page 34 of the hardcover, the author forgets hes writing about the aliens and refers to them as human.

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.