Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site ucsfcgl.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!rl From: rl@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Robert Langridge%CGL) Newsgroups: net.books,net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: Douglas Adams, A new book? Message-ID: <414@ucsfcgl.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Dec-84 13:13:29 EST Article-I.D.: ucsfcgl.414 Posted: Fri Dec 28 13:13:29 1984 Date-Received: Sat, 29-Dec-84 23:02:55 EST References: <2084@uw-june> Reply-To: rl@ucsfcgl.UUCP (Bob Langridge) Organization: UCSF Computer Graphics Lab Lines: 31 Summary: <--- There is indeed a new Douglas Adams book, the "*Fourth* Book in the Hitchhikers Trilogy", entitled "So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish". (Harmony Books, a division of Crown Publishers, NY, 1985. Price? I don't know, mine was a present and the price was deleted). In summary, I was disappointed. Perhaps it is difficult to keep up the frenetic zaniness of the earlier books, and although I would never accuse Adams of writing clear and unambiguous prose, this volume is particularly unfocussed. Even the celebrated non sequitors and incongruities are in short supply. Ford Prefect is present (though in a diminished role), and there is a major new character, an attractive lady named Fenchurch, and a major new minor character, Wonko the Sane, who lives in a house whose roof "...folded back on itself like something that M.C.Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative's purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one,..." Advice? Wait for the paperback, then buy it to occupy a short plane trip. Bob Langridge (UUCP: [...]!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!rl) Computer Graphics Laboratory (ARPA: rl@ucbvax 926 Medical Sciences or University of California langridge@sumex-aim) San Francisco CA 94143