Afterwards he wrote Mostly Harmless, which is a tough read even in the best of conditions. The rebelliousness of youth totally gives way to the grimmer realities of life in that novel
I've often felt that the series lost its free spirit and lightness and became incredibly personal towards the end. Maybe it always was incredibly personal. I don't know if it's true or if it's just Douglas's depression. The time with Fenchurch feels almost like a stolen glimpse of a very private moment.
Some points also to Eoin Colfer who didn't make a total hash of the sequel book, which I imagine is a very difficult thing to approach and would inevitably upset a lot of people.
I have a lot to say about Eoin Colfer's travesty of a sequel, but I'm not going to say it all here.
To sum it up in one word, I felt betrayed. The original books shed humorous light on so many of the rotten things in our world, in a way that had protected me. For example, I had met the Vogons before I encountered actual bureaucracy. This book depicted Vogons as people complete with awkward father/son reconciliation plot. I was certain when I read it that Adams was 'spinning in his grave' as he would have put it. I was inconsolable.
I had to opportunity to read the final manuscript in preparation for interviewing him. After reading the manuscript, which was difficult as I became increasingly upset as I slogged through it, I refused to be involved further and suggested that they not publish it. When further begged for interview questions, the best I could come up with was something along the lines of "How dare you?".
Having read the series twice in my life. The first time Mostly Harmless felt like a horrible ending. Rereading it 15 years later, Mostly Harmless felt like a fitting ending and made me smile when it ended.
I saw him give a talk a couple years before his death where he said he wrote it when he was very depressed and regretted ending the series that way: he was considering writing another
Epping and Devizes are both towns in the UK. The idea is to take an interesting sounding proper name, pretend it's just a normal word and then come up with your own definition.
I think skoonspruit (forgot the spelling) is the main one that still stuck in casual use decades later for my family.
It's the rare fountain thing a saliva gland makes eg when yawning.
There was another one for a group of cars all doing exactly the speed limit because one of them is a police car. I was better at remembering the definitions than the actual words.
I borrowed someone's copy of that once back in said 1980's. I remember there was a word for the cooler side of the pillow when you turned it over, but can't remember what it is - but I think it started with 'a'....seached the internet for it 'abilene', not to be confused with Abeline in Texas of course.
There seemed to be a lot of words related to knights having to deal with the different reasons/states of drawbridges not opening to let them in as well.
Now I have an irrational desire for Bryan Ferry to write a song similar to Avalon, but called Abilene all about how nice the cooler side of the pillow is.
"in the beginning of the Monty Python film, the gravestone with the title "The Meaning of Liff" appears before a lightning bolt strikes the last F and converts it to an E."
The book puts names to things that are otherwise nameless, and draws those names from places in the UK. One that sticks in my mind is a "sheppey", the distance at which a sheep stops being picturesque. It has the narrative structure of a dictionary, but the ideas...
It's worth mentioning that this story is prior to 1984, when So Long and Thanks for All The Fish was published. That also happens to be the year when the Mac came out, and Adams was an ardent Mac enthusiast -- indeed AFAIK he was the first person in all of Europe to buy a Mac. So as he transitioned off of a typewriter, one would presume that the strategy employed here would become a bit harder.
"When switched on for the first time, it was clear that the last user had little understanding of how to store files on the hard disk. The root directory contained hundreds of MacWrite documents. Scrolling through them was a pain and, as I have no interest in other people's private affairs, I selected the lot and deleted them. /.../
I started up MacWrite Pro and noticed that it was registered to "Douglas Adams, Serious Productions Ltd". I paid little attention to this as I had seen warez copies of Claris software where the registered user was Douglas Adams. I then started Claris Resolve, ignoring a warning dialog (mistake number two), and noted that this software was also registered to Douglas Adams. The copies of Claris Works 4.0 and Now Up-to-Date were registered to Jane Belson; I was unfamiliar with the name but a quick web search determined that she is Douglas Adams's widow."
I was a huge HHGTTG fan (counting Disaster Area among my top musical influences)
When I was at UWO in the early 90's Douglas Adams came on campus for a book signing - it was to last about 45 minutes, and it was scheduled right in the middle of one of my exams.
So I decided to sit the exam, thinking "I'll catch up with him at a future book signing", alas he died before I ever got the chance.
I've often felt that the series lost its free spirit and lightness and became incredibly personal towards the end. Maybe it always was incredibly personal. I don't know if it's true or if it's just Douglas's depression. The time with Fenchurch feels almost like a stolen glimpse of a very private moment.
Some points also to Eoin Colfer who didn't make a total hash of the sequel book, which I imagine is a very difficult thing to approach and would inevitably upset a lot of people.