Сигурно някои от Вас са чували за тази книга, а други може да са повече запознати с компютърната игра със същото име. Лично аз, като заблудено и необразовано агне, си мислех, че втората е правена по първата, а то се оказа, че всичко било правено… паралелно. Дъглас Адамс (познат на по-голяма част от човечеството със своя “Пътеводител на галактическия стопаджия”) измисля историята, но решава да я пренесе директно на компютърния екран. В същото време издателите му искали да напише и книга със същия сюжет, която да излезне паралелно със софтуера, явно за вдигане на продажбите или нещо подобно. Уви, Адамс не е можел да съчетае двете неща и затова предлага на Тери Джоунс (евентуално познат на мнозина с изявите си в Монти Пайтън, а и не само), който е озвучавал папагал в компютърната продукция, да напише литературния вариант и той се съгласява. Всичко това го пише във въведението.
Първо, искам да си призная, че навремето така и не успях да довърша играта, защото се появиха други заглавия, прекалено след времето си на излизане ми попадна и… вече беше към края на манията ми да играя куестове. Именно поради тази причина се абстрахирам изцяло от някои сочени недостатъци, че Джоунс се е отклонил прекалено много от сюжета към края или, че просто имало много големи разминавания. Лично мен това не ме бърка особено, защото не знам какво се случва след първите един-два часа геймплей. Но… нека се насочим към самата книга.
Тя ни запознава с най-големият ум във Вселената и неговото ново велико произведения – звездният кораб “Титаник”, който трябва да бъде изстрелян на своето първо пътуване. Но нещата не са такива, каквито изглеждат, а огромна конспирация се заражда. Корабът каца за малко на Земята (не става ясно защо) и трима земляни получават правото да се повозят като компенсация. Скоро се оказва обаче, че има бомба, която всеки момент ще избухне. Освен това друга цивилизация си иска “произведението” обратно и е готова да си го вземе на всяка цена, стига никой да не пострада, особено корабът (ако нещо се случи, те ще си го поправят, разбира се).
Казано накратко, книгата има някои много силни хумористични моменти. Признавам си, че не съм кой знае какъв фен на Адамс, както и на неговия “Пътеводител” (първите две части бяха забавни и прилични, но после стана толкова банално и безинтересно, че само на инат дочетох тухлата). От друга страна обаче съм голям почитател на Джоунс, най-вече на Монти Пайтън. Разбира се, британският хумор не е от най-лесните за разбиране и на моменти може да постигне дори обратен ефект – да те отегчи или накара да гледаш в недоумение. Все пак авторът се е постарал да изгради една интересна и доста забавна история, като в същото време изглежда е искал да заплете и самия сюжет.

“- Виж какво! Аз съм само едно просто приспособление за броене и избухване и не съм оборудвана за философски дискурс — отговори бомбата. — Моля те, не ми говори, докато броя. Да му се не види! Заради тебе забравих докъде стигнах! Видя ли какво стана? Рестартирам броенето.”

Лично за мен един от най-силните персонажи в книгата е бомбата (да, точно така, една най-обикновена бомба, но с… характер). Тя не е като да иска да избухне, но все пак това е част от същестуването й. Не обича да я прекъсват докато брои и много лесно може да се обърка и да се наложи да започне отначало. Въобще Джоунс е успял да изгради плеяда от второстепенни и поддържащи герои, които в по-голямата си част са къде по-интересни от главните. Тъжно ми е да го кажа, но човешките същества в случая бяха просто… мизерни (да не казвам жалки) – визирам най-вече Дан и Люси, защото Нети, след “интересната” промяна, стана по-приятен персонаж. Прекалено много от мислите, чувствата и действията им бяха леко абсурдни, макар че може и това да е била цялата идея. Все пак не ми допаднаха.

“Блеронтинците не се предават току-така — обикновено се бият до последния наш човек!”

Друг интересен елемент в книгата, това са ясаканците. Те са раса от миролюбиви строители и са отговорни за по-голяма част от изграждането на “Титаник”, преди да им бъде отнет и да не им бъде платено за труда, което води до крах на икономиката им. Тъй като са миролюбиви, те не стрелят директно във врага си, а над главите им. Нищо чудно, че никога не са печелели битка срещу блеронтинците.
И ако до този момент не съм успял да Ви убедя, че тази книга си струва четенето, то не знам какво още бих могъл да добавя. Текстът е кратък и структуриран в не много дълги глави, които се четат бързо и лесно. Джоунс няма кой знае какъв сложен стил на писане, а и не си е давал много зор с описанията кой знае колко. Във всеки случай няма да съжалявате за няколкото часа, които ще отделите на това произведение.
А аз може отново да се пробвам с играта.

This is a rare 1 star review for me. I debated back and forth between 1 and 2 stars. If I'd gone with the text version it probably would have been 2 stars. More on that below.

I didn't look that close at the author when I picked it - it's not actually Douglas Adams. This is written by Terry Jones on a Douglas Adams' concept. I like Terry Jones video work, not so sold on this. It appeared to me he wanted to write it in Douglas Adams' style and it was close. But it wasn't as good as Adams' actual work. It didn't quite achieve the comedy level and the tone was constantly thrown off by characters constantly having sex or talking about sex. That seemed to be a primary plot point for no real reason. Unless you're just desparate for more in the Hitchhiker's Guide vein I can't recommend this. (And I definitely wouldn't get the audio book. One of the female characters screams constantly in the first half of the book at every little thing. It gets VERY old on audio.)

This book was cowritten with Robert Sheckley and it kinda shows. It fits thematically with Adams's other works but if you're looking for a Douglas Adams book, this isn't one. The style feels much less mature and polished than anything else Adams has written.

What can I say that hasn't already been said? Nothing, that's what, so I guess I'll say it all anyway.

I went into this really wanting and expecting it to be good, considering it had the names of two comedic legends in big letters on the front. As I read the first couple pages, however, I quickly realized that I was going to be disappointed in this book. I've never read anything else by Terry Jones, so I can't say that he's a bad writer necessarily, but he is definitely not good at emulating the Douglas Adams style, which is what it seems like this whole book is an attempt at doing. As a result, most of the jokes are sub par, the moments that try to be self aware and break the fourth wall are painfully and un-self-awarefully on the nose, and the romance subplots are predictable and clunky.

In the end, it was definitely entertaining, but it just reads like a mediocre fan fic short story. In a word: disappointing.

From the mind of Adams but the reality of a Monty Python. I just wonder how much better this could have been if Adams had penned it. Good, but not Great.

n  n    B.R.A.CE. 2018 Ένα βιβλίο για το οποίο έχεις μεγάλες προσδοκίες n  n

Douglas Adams first imagined the Starship Titanic in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third entry in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, where it is briefly mentioned in the book's 10th chapter. Adams describes it as a "majestic and luxurious cruise-liner" that "did not even manage to complete its very first radio message - an SOS - before undergoing a sudden and gratuitious total existence failure

Τι άλλο να ζητήσω δλδ; Μία ιδέα του αγαπημένου Douglas Adams, σε απόδοση από ένα μέλος των Monty Python ( Terry Jones ) ο οποίος συμφώνησε να γράψει το μυθιστόρημα με τον όρο ότι θα το έγραφε απολύτως γυμνός!
Μην ψάξετε τον σύνδεσμο με το "Γυρίστε τον γαλαξία με ωτοστόπ", εκείνο είναι μοναδικό. Αυτό το βιβλίο είναι κάπου παραδίπλα. Είναι η φαντασία του αναγνώστη του έργου του Adams για όλα τα spin off που δεν μπόρεσαν να γραφτούν. Είναι σαν φόρος τιμής.
Είναι απολαυστικό, θα γελάσεις, θα αγωνιάς για την εξέλιξη και θα λες " γαμώτο, πόσα ακόμα θα μπορούσαν να υπάρξουν!"
Σίγουρα όμως δεν είναι ΑΜΦ (Ανεπανάληπτου Μεγέθους Φιάσκο)! ;)

Douglas Adams plus Terry Jones, I feel like that says it all. Wonderful story, super entertaining and funny. Of course, also very well written and polished.

Full disclosure to start with, I’m a huge fan of Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker’s Guide series and I had the Starship Titanic computer game back in the 1990s. This of course isn’t written by Adams, as he was busy with developing the game at the time, but by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, of whom I’m also a fan.

It pains me to say therefore that this book isn’t very good. There are some nice comic touches – the intelligent bomb that’s easily distracted and loses its place in the countdown is a particular highlight. There’s too much filler between the laughs, however, and it lacks Adams’ carefully honed prose, in particular the deliciously memorable absurdities like, ‘...hung in the sky in exactly the same way that bricks don’t’.

All of which is a shame because there’s a lot of potential in the idea. It’s hard to escape the conclusion that this would have been much better if Adams had written in himself. Sadly, short of finding a way to some parallel universe, we’ll never get to find out.

easily the best book I've ever read that was based on a CD-ROM computer game, especially under the sub-category of books written by comedians I like based on CD-ROM games by favorite authors. I dare say it tops both of those lists.

oooof .... the setting is delightful, the robots would clearly have been infuriating to deal with in the actual (original PC) gameplay
its all the human characters that are the absolute worst (and also ridiculously horny)

All the worst parts of a 90s SciFi action flick, with spots of humor somewhere inbetween the sex

Takto - základní nápad je zajímavý, představivost autorů skvělá a začíná to velmi slibně. Člověk si říká (po přečtení předmluvy), že to bude takové zajímavé převedení počítačové hry do knihy. Jenže... Není to vtipné. Děj divně skáče, opakuje se, motá se a nedává smysl. A i když už člověk cítí, jaký by to mohlo mít ústřední motiv, zase to uteče někam pryč. A to i když se onen motiv opakovaně vrací. Nemluvě o mizení, objevování a všeobecném nepropracování postav... A ona divná posedlost divným sexem. No, nevím. Tohle se z mého pohledu mnoho nepovedlo.

I recently replayed Starship Titanic, over two decades after my first play-through, and it was a lot shorter and less clever than I remembered it being. It did remind me that there was also a book (I remember downloading it as a text file and printing it out on my first ink-jet printer in middle school, but I'm not sure, now, that I ever read the whole thing), so in an effort to salvage my fond memories of the game, I thought I'd give that another go. It didn't help.

It's technically a video game novel, of course, but it's a video game novel written by one of the Monty Pythons, about a game made by Douglas Adams, on which said Monty Python actually worked—the writing really has no business being this amazingly awful. At least some of the blame must fall on the publisher's insistence that it be released at the same time as the game (as Douglas Adams mentions in the introduction; the book was actually published a few months before the game was released), meaning it had to be written while some aspects of it were still, presumably, up in the air. That might explain why, for example, the pellerator has a Liftbot and why the Succ-U-Bus doesn't have a name or much of a personality yet and why Leovinus has a beard instead of being Douglas Adams; the space battle and the gun-fights and the sex scenes (and the constant threat of additional sex scenes in the later part of the book) are harder to justify.
To some extent the problem is that Jones tried to write another Hitchhiker's Guide novel instead of a Starship Titanic novel; the latter may be a spin-off of the former, but the tone of the two settings—or rather, the scope, the acceptable range of events and actions taken by the characters—is very different. Even putting that aside, though, he's just a bad writer—another reviewer mentioned that the book reads like a chapterbook, and that's only a little bit of an exaggeration. I've previously read another book by Jones and hated that as well, but that one was non-fiction and I thought it was just because he got all of his facts wrong.

Starship Titanic the game could have been a great game if it had been the puzzle game it pretended to be instead of the look-at-our-fancy-speech-engine-and-3D-FMVs game it actually was; as it was, it was just okay. Starship Titanic the novel could have been a great complement to it (and probably a decent novel in its own right) if it had been the canon prequel it initially looks to be instead of an alternate universe mess that only vaguely resembles the finished game, but it would have needed someone else to write it as well; as it is, it's extraordinarily bad.
Two lessons:

1. Being good at funny voices doesn't automatically make you a good writer, comedic or otherwise.
2. Writing in the nude is fine, but writing with an erection will completely wreck your book.

And maybe also:

3. Don't ask a close friend to write a book for you if your friendship means you won't be able to get someone else to do it when it turns out to be shit.