Brad just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time (and Will reread it for the eleventy-thousandth), and now we're here to discuss the book's cheeky sci-fi Anglicisms and cavalier relationship with reality and metaphysics, its endless influence on pop culture, the career of Douglas Adams, and more. Thanks to all of our supporters who made this episode possible! Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Brad just read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the first time (and Will reread it for the eleventy-thousandth), and now we're here to discuss the book's cheeky sci-fi Anglicisms and cavalier relationship with reality and metaphysics, its endless influence on pop culture, the career of Douglas Adams, and more. Thanks to all of our supporters who made this episode possible!
Support the Pod! Contribute to the Tech Pod Patreon and get access to our booming Discord, your name in the credits, and other great benefits! You can support the show at: https://patreon.com/techpod
Will: [00:00:00] Brad,
Brad: [00:00:01] Yes,
Will: [00:00:01] I fulfilled a lifelong dream this weekend.
Brad: What’s that ?
Will: Well, when I was a little boy, I saw a movie you may have heard of it. It's an indie. It was a small production by 20th century Fox called star Wars. And it was about a young farm boy who grew up to save, uh, the rebellion, uh, and, and defeat a fascist empire.
Brad: [00:00:20] fought a war in the stars.
Will: [00:00:22] He, he flew an X wing star fighter and he used it to blow up the bad men. And I have done that now. And, um, a lifelong dream has been fulfilled. I put on a virtual reality headset, it's a new bleeding edge technology. And, uh, I got in the cockpit of a Starfighter and I shot up a bunch of TIE fighters and then got killed over and over and over again in multiplayer online.
Brad: [00:00:46] you sat in the X wing.
Will: [00:00:47] I have been in the X wing. I
Brad: [00:00:49] inside the X. Where
Will: [00:00:50] I have held the flight stick. I have a throttle. I have done it all.
Brad: [00:00:54] you go all the way
Will: [00:00:56] I spent a lot of time binding control.
Brad: [00:00:57] You got fully, fully kitted out on that thing.
Will: [00:01:00] look that might've been the, I don't have pedals. I think pedals might have to have to be an add on at some point in the future.
Brad: [00:01:04] Is there, is there a HOTAS? That's the question?
Will: [00:01:07] I have, I have hot ass’d all the way down.
Brad: [00:01:10] Okay. That's commitment. Although I'll give it to you. That's a, I figured I would just do the Xbox controller on this one.
Will: [00:01:17] I had the hot ass from when I briefly thought I was going to get deeply into, um, elite dangerous. And then I played enough elite dangerous to realize I wasn't going to get into elite dangerous, but I was past the return window at that point.
Brad: [00:01:29] Ah you know
Will: [00:01:30] um, it turns out the hot ass used to be a lot cheaper than it is in a post Microsoft flight SIM 2020, and ex uh, star Wars, squadrons world , so
Brad: [00:01:38] you gotta hang on to that thing. It might be a lifeline for you. At some point you can trade it, you can trade it for 10 pounds of beans in our coming future.
Will: [00:01:45] Yeah. Hey, uh, you got, you got some tomato seeds. You got a little bit of a soy. I, yeah, I trade you a hot ass with that.
Brad: [00:01:52] was going to say you can use it as a tea bar over here. Uh, is there a term for like, that's kind of like actually the main reason I would want to use a controller in the VR headset is it's one unified control surface that you never take your hands off of. So there's no like blind fumbling to find a thing like even a keyboard
Will: [00:02:08] It’s not really a problem.
Brad: [00:02:09] really like even a keyboard and mouse for me in VR.
I kinda, you kinda just for a second, if you move your hands, you have to feel around to get them back to the home row position or in the case of like, How many pieces is your setup, a stick, a HOTAS oh just two.
Will: [00:02:21] sticking and a throttle yeah
Brad: [00:02:22] Okay. So your, I guess your hands are kind of planted there, but anytime you have like things you have to move your hands back and forth between there's a perception issue,
Will: [00:02:30] so there are buttons. I feel like I brought the hot ass in when we did it. Rebel galaxy outlaw thing last year. Um, when, when you had me come in to do a quick look for you with that,
Brad: [00:02:39] Where you in VR for that thing.
Will: [00:02:40] No, no, no, there's no VR. They don't have 3d cockpit. So there's no VR
Brad: [00:02:44] Oh yeah. Well, that's what I'm talking about
Will: [00:02:44] allied about, but I bought the HOTAS.
It's the same, it's the X 52. Um, it was a, it worked like, so there's buttons. There's like toggle buttons below the stick that you have to kind of hit occasionally to manage power distribution and stuff like that. But it's, it's been fine. Um, I'm not having to take, like, I'm not, I'm using the right. Hat switch.
The left hat switched. The throttle had switched for targeting stuff. The main thumb hat switch is for like power distribution. So like one way is shields. One way is weapons. One way his energy is a engines and the other one is rebalance it. And then like shield distribution, all that stuff is spread or up spread along the other buttons.
And it's working pretty well.
Brad: [00:03:23] It's you're so good at flying the next way you can do a blind.
Will: [00:03:26] I mean, I don't know if I could do it blind. I have my targeting computer on.
Brad: [00:03:29] Yeah, dude, you heard the man turn off the targeting computer.
Will: [00:04:00] Welcome to Bard and Will made a techpod. I'm Will,
Brad: [00:04:02] I'm Brad. Hello? Hi,
Will: [00:04:03] Hey Brad, uh, anything happened in this weekend? Anything exciting going on in the
Brad: [00:04:06] been hanging out. You know, it's been a lot like a quiet week around here. Really?
Will: [00:04:09] just, just no news. No news is good news. That's what we always say
Brad: [00:04:12] Nothing happening in any category of my life at all. Just steady as she goes, Smooth sailing.
Will: [00:04:19] Oh yeah. That's a good Raconteurs song. Um, I found out that the president had the coronavirus, uh, while I was streaming.
Brad: [00:04:26] Wait, what?
Will: [00:04:27] Wait, have you not been paying attention to the news at all? This is a spoiler.
Brad: [00:04:30] Dude I've done nothing. But look at the news over the last 24 hours.
Will: [00:04:34] I found out while I was streaming and I'm pretty sure I laughed because I thought it was a joke
Brad: [00:04:37] Nice.
Will: [00:04:39] I thought somebody was goofing on me.
Brad: [00:04:42] All of life is a joke right now,
Will: [00:04:44] it's but you know what
Brad: [00:04:45] a dark, a sick dark joke,
Will: [00:04:48] you know, what is a light fun?
Brad: [00:04:51] a fluffy airy joke.
Will: [00:04:53] dystopia. Yeah, exactly. It's something that's full of. Laughter and joy and mirth. Uh, Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy. So about a month ago, we promised that we hit a thousand backers on the old tech pod Patrion, which you can find at patrion.com/check pod and back for as little as $2 a month to gain access to the fabulous tech pod discord or $5 a month to get Paton exclusive content, which we posted earlier this week, where we talked about projects that we have in process and a bunch of other stuff before the, before the weird thing happened. Um, we promised that we would read Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, which is my millionth time and your first time, which is why this is exciting to me.
I'm very excited to hear how you found here. 50 years, ish, after it was written 45 years after it was written, how you found Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy Douglas Adams, seminal 1979 work.
Brad: [00:05:48] Well, it's scarcely more than 45 minutes since I finished it, it's still pretty fresh on my mind. Um,
Will: [00:05:54] Okay coming in hot.
Brad: [00:05:55] what a peculiar book. This is.
Will: [00:05:57] That seems right
Brad: [00:05:58] I don't mean that in a bad way, but it just, I wasn't quite, I mean, well then there are two, there are two ways to put this. I was not prepared for the way that book is structured and the general
Will: [00:06:10] You mean the complete lack of a traditional three act structure? Yes.
Brad: [00:06:13] the tone of it, the weird, like, like reality bending kind of metaphysical aspect of it really threw me for a loop on the other hand.
So much of that. So much of the details have been absorbed into my brain through osmosis over the years that like a lot of stuff about it. Should we talk freely about it or can we just assume everybody's listening to this as he has read it?
Will: [00:06:33] I feel like 40 years is outside spoilers,
Brad: [00:06:37] Okay.
Will: [00:06:37] Okay, well let's do the full
Brad: [00:06:39] the thing
Will: [00:06:39]Let’s do the warning.
Brad: [00:06:40] Cause the example I was about to give is practically the end of the book. So I just want to make sure.
Will: [00:06:44] If you haven't read Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy absorbed the radio play, watch the TV series, read the traumatized audio version or watched the movie featuring Sam Rockwell and Zooey Deschanel, and Mos Def.
Brad: [00:06:59] Talk about the movie later. We'll get there.
Will: [00:07:01] if you haven't absorbed any of that, and you are concerned about spoilers for this 40 year old property that you probably already know every fucking thing about. Maybe don't listen to this episode till you finish reading, the book
Brad: [00:07:11] Yes. You've been warned. Yeah, kind of like I did. I just felt like, I felt like as I read through it, I knew about half of them or the 40, 42 is the example. I was obviously the classic example. I was about to give of
Will: [00:07:22] the great answer.
Brad: [00:07:24] the, the microsecond that anything hinting at a great question and answer started being talked about.
I like 42 popped into my head immediately. Like that. It was just, um, I'm trying to think of some other examples, like so long. Thanks for all the fish was. Something. I was very well acquainted with, um, Marvin, the paranoid Android, uh,
Will: [00:07:45] Marvin is an eternal character, as far Zaphod Beeblebrox kind of is to
Brad: [00:07:50] that, so that was actually like maybe my number one question coming into, this was how you say his first name.
Will: [00:07:55] Zaphod
Brad: [00:07:55] Zaphod is I come? Is that canonical?
Will: [00:07:58] canonical. That is from the radio play
Brad: [00:07:59] Is it really Zaphod okay. Okay. Well, let's just about as authoritative sources, you can get,
Will: [00:08:04] we'll so.
Brad: [00:08:05] so technically proceeded the book, right?
Will: [00:08:07] yeah, I was going to say for your, the reason this book is weird is that it isn't an adaptation of a serialized radio drama. That was a radio comedy that was run on BBC radio in the seventies and early eighties. And, and as a result that each chapter doesn't quite, but almost is ?
What is it He says he is, he says it doesn't quite, it. Doesn't quite. It resembles, but doesn't quite entirely not resembled tea or something like that. It's like,
Brad: [00:08:38] Oh, you mean, Oh, you mean like a nice Brownian motion generator?
Will: [00:08:41] yeah. Yes. Hold on. Did we get to the Brownian emotion generator in this book?
Brad: [00:08:45] Yeah. That's totally in there. That's, that's how they, that's how they arrived at the infinite inprobability drive.
Will: [00:08:49] Oh, that's right. The Brownian motion simulator comes up in a later book as well.
Brad: [00:08:53] I see.
Will: [00:08:54] it's hard. It's hard for me to talk about specific plot beats and stuff in this book because I've listened to the radio dramas a lot over the years while I was driving back and forth places and commuting. And they're not. Quite entirely dissimilar, but they are like, the beats are the same, but then there's different.
There's a whole bit in the first radio play about shoes that they just don't get into it all here. And I don't think towels make an appearance in the radio radio play. Yeah towels are very important in this book.
Brad: [00:09:20] I thought, well, I thought towels after the initial, after the preamble about towels, I thought that they would figure heavily into the actual plot, but they kind of didn't
Will: [00:09:28] Well, see, this is, this is why your Western expectation of, of a chekhov chekhov, a gun does not apply in this one. Cause sometimes the payoff for a one off joke about towels will take two or three books to get to. And then the world of Hitchhikers guide.
Brad: [00:09:41]I would believe that I'm trying to find, so I've got a, I've got it here. The omnibus tome.
Will: [00:09:46] Yes, the big boy
Brad: [00:09:47] All 5 books in front of me, uh, in the introduction, uh, cheekily titled a guide to the guide. So, some unhelpful remarks from the author. Um, he kind of, he breaks down the history of this thing, pretty exhaustively.
And I'm trying to find, I know he listed in here and I can't find the list. He explains very explicitly, which episodes of the radio play formed the basis of the novel.
Will: [00:10:12] Oh, yeah. It's like one, three, five, seven in most of 13 or something like that.
Brad: [00:10:16] I found a list here of the second book, which is restaurant at the end of the universe, right. That book is episodes seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, five, and six in that order.
Uh, but I don't, I don't see the list of episodes of the first one, but yeah, like not exactly your typical three act structure here. Like it really, I don't know what, what I found more discombobulating, the fact that
Will: [00:10:39] Like the weird jumps and the fact that there's very little continuity between chapters sometimes.
Brad: [00:10:43] I don't know if I don't know what was more, uh, more baffling. Um, the fact that there was careening from one episode to the next or, or the bizarrely deus ex machina way that they got there.
Will: [00:10:56] So, so one of the things that's important to know, and I feel like this was covered extensively in, in Neil Gaiman's first book, ironically. Which was a biography of Douglas Adams and the story of the making of Hitchhiker's guide. It's called don't panic. It's very, if you like Hitchhiker's guide, it's worth reading.
It's really funny to read prodo Neil Gaiman prose in a nonfiction setting now. Uh, but, but literally there were times on the radio drama where they were recording the first part of an episode and he was writing the last pages of the episode while the recordings were happening.
Brad: [00:11:33] that was the other thought that occurred to me as I, especially as I got to the end of the book, which kind of, would you say I liked the book? I don't want to sound like I'm pooping on it or anything here. It's I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's just like, it's just weird. It's a really, it's just not it's it's very unconventional.
So
Will: [00:11:49] I mean, it, it just stops. He he's
Brad: [00:11:51] that's what I was. That's what I was going to ask you was, is it fair? Do you think it's fair to say that the book kind of doesn't have an ending.
Will: [00:11:57] Oh, no, the book absolutely doesn't have an ending. He, he, he even said in interviews, it may even be in the preamble in the introduction that like he blew through three deadlines and the publisher said, Hey, where are you? And then he replied here and they're like, okay, we'll just send that over and we'll publish it.
Brad: [00:12:11] that's exactly what I was going to ask was he says in the intro, they literally said like, well, we're just going to send a car over, just give us what you have.
Will: [00:12:17] Like that last line in the book, the, the, um, uh, well, let's see. It's, it's where he says it's like a Zaphod Beeblebrox line. And it seems like something that was totally just written by like the editor of the book. Cause it doesn't even seem like a Zaphod Beeblebrox line. Um, Yeah, it's it's uh it's okay, baby, hold tight Said Zaphod We'll take in a quick bite at the restaurant at the end of the universe, which is literally the title of the next book, which is, you know yeah. It's, it's. Like it is, it is in terms of like, there's so much in here that structurally shouldn't work. Like there's there's lines, uh, like an expression of deep worry and concern failed to cross either of Zaphod faces.
Like that is absolutely not the right way to write that sentence if you're writing grammatically correct English, but it works.
Brad: [00:13:10] it gets the point across.
Will: [00:13:11] Yeah. Um, w w yeah, this is another one of my favorites. The, when you're cruising down the road in the fast lane, and you lazy, sail past a few hard driving cars, and you're feeling pretty pleased with yourself, and then accidentally changed down from fourth to first, instead of third, thus making your engine leap out of your hood and a rather ugly mess.
That's the first punctuation in that sentence. And then it finishes, it tends to throw you off your stride in much the same way that this remark Ford Prefect is, he could have just said, Ford prefect was mildly confused by this,
Brad: [00:13:41] Spend an entire, but it's a very evocative way to describe exactly the feeling that he had.
Will: [00:13:46] Yeah. It's okay. It's a, it's beautiful. And there's like, there's like 10 of these pre page there’s another one I highlighted on this page that, that is, um, you know, the, when Ford meets Zaphod for the first time. And he's like, Oh, I said, we've met and Ford is like, what the fuck are you talking about monkey?
And he says, Ford ran into Arthur with an angry flash, his eyes. Now he felt he was back on home ground. He suddenly began to resent having lumbered himself with this ignorant primitive who knew as much about the affairs of the galaxy as an Ilford based net knew about life in peaking. Right. It's it's just right.
It's prose is delightful and unwieldy and bad.
Brad: [00:14:23] a lot of flourishes in there for sure. Um, I feel like by the end of like the first chapter, I started to appreciate why this book would be such a formative experience or a formative work for a young nerd. it was well, sorry, go ahead.
Will: [00:14:40] No, no.
Brad: [00:14:41] Like specifically, it was the, it was the moment for me where he's laying in the mud, trying to prevent the destruction of his house.
And he basically, he basically out logics the functionary who was there to preside over the destruction of his house, into laying in the mud for him and stopping the percentage destruction of his own house while he goes and has a beer, you know,
Will: [00:14:59] Yeah. It's
Brad: [00:15:00] pure, purely through some kind of like logical trap that he lays for this guy, you know, it's like, all right, this, I realized that like immediately, like, Oh, this book is playing fast and loose.
With like the rule of reality and like metaphysics and the logic in a way that like a kid who was a little bit too smart for his own grade would really get into. Does that make sense?
Will: [00:15:19] Well so, it's funny you say that because one of my. Dad's my parents' friends, second wife, who is also one of my parents' friends. Uh, but she was younger than them handed me this book when I was probably, yeah. Somewhere between 10 and 12. So I was like in fifth or sixth grade probably. And she handed me this, you said you like star Wars.
Right? And I was like, yeah, she was like, you like funny stuff. Right. And I was like, yeah, She handed me this big book that had a giant, like smiley green guy with thumbs up that said, don't panic on the cover. And just like, read this. You're really like it. And I read it and I really liked it. And I read it probably 10 more times over the next few years, but it was, it was such a.
Compared to the other stuff I'd been exposed to other the other books that I'd been exposed to. It was so profoundly weird, both in, in it's kind of British colloquialisms. And, and, you know, in addition to talking about foreign, like in addition to talking about outer space stuff that I actually like, I, I know which stars beetle juice, right?
Like I can look at it and find it in the sky. I don't know where the hell elfort is. Right. I, that could have been a made up place when he was talking about being in a field outside Innsbruck, Austria in the preamble. I, that that could have been a made up place for all I knew in Northeast, Tennessee in 1986 or whatever year it was.
So, uh, it was. Being exposed to something that the pros was both so flourishing and weird and unsettling in some places even really shaped my search for stuff. And it actually, like I went to the library and asked the library and Hey, I've really read, I've read the Hitchhiker's guide. Book. And she's like, well, you're probably too young for that.
And I was like, yeah, you, it worked out. She said, it was like, do you have anything else? That's like that. And then she pointed me to Mark Twain and I bounced off of that immediately and was like, eh, maybe not.
Brad: [00:17:05] from a different era. I get, I get part of that. I get where they maybe saw some overlap there. Um, I found that to be pretty, uh, I dunno, pretty perceptive around certain like sociological and economic topics and stuff too. About like, like the, the wealth hoarding of, uh, God. What is the, um, Magna Thea?
Yes. Like the collapse of the galactic empire due to the wealth hoarding of the Magna Theans. Um, the kind of the, kind of the cynical nature of like self-serving politicians who just sort of prioritize like aesthetics over substance and policy, you know,
Will: [00:17:41] Zaphod Beeblebrox is a parable and the morning for our time. Yes.
Brad: [00:17:48] except kind of a, like a benign, like a goofball one, you know, like
Will: [00:17:51] I'm sure that I'm sure that the president thinks he's a benign goofball too.
Brad: [00:17:56] Yeah… Mmm.
Will: [00:17:57] Yeah, I, that, that stuff was very like a lot of like, what are the interesting things reading this now is how much of this stuff that I missed and, or just completely glossed over without understanding at all. Um, you know, now versus then versus now, Uh, reality TV, like in a lot of ways, the stuff that they're talking about is, is a straight, a precursor to like, like when deep thought gives the philosophers, tells them, Hey, you got $7 million, 7 million years to make bank.
While I think about this, just, just yell at each other enough. And people will keep watching.
Brad: [00:18:37] Oh God.
Will: [00:18:38] for something written in the seventies, late seventies, early eighties. Holy cow was before Jerry Springer was before Donahue really.
Brad: [00:18:44] Or, I mean, you know, even, you know, before like the combative style of like 24, seven cable political programming, right?
Will: [00:18:52] There's no real Housewives that he was watching in 1980, that he was like, Oh yeah, this is when people yell at each other. People love that shit.
Brad: [00:18:58] Right. Uh, or, or, you know, that was like, not that long after the, when was the famous, uh, the core of it all, uh, bill Buckley like
Will: [00:19:08] the D debate
Brad: [00:19:09] that, that debate. Yeah. The thing that kind of was the Genesis of Fox news and stuff like that, like that's kind of
Will: [00:19:15] Yeah, I guess
Brad: [00:19:16] kinda echoes that a little bit, right? Like just.
You know, a couple of, couple of philosophers getting rich by just yelling at each other and disagreeing and they'll sleep on television
Will: [00:19:26] all you have to do is yell enough and anybody can be famous. Thanks for the Kardashians Douglas Adams. Um, No. So in terms of the structure, one of the things that struck me is there is a lot of Vince Gilligan has said that their writing process for, uh, breaking bad often was to like write themselves into a corner and then look, look at like, like look around at the set and see what kind of tools were available to the characters that could get them out of this trouble.
They found themselves in it's it's how, like, It's how they ended up when they had captured a guy and they didn't know how to capture a guy. Cause they were new to the crime. They used a U lock. And like U-locked the dude around the neck to the, to the pole in a basement. Right. And, and that was because they knew that that he'd have a U-Lock cause there was a bicycle in the garage that was in an earlier shot in one of the earlier scenes. And there's a lot of that here too. Like, like the difference is that where the breaking bad writing staff would. Would like, you know, use something from reality. Douglas Adams would just lop off the whole inconvenient corner and move onto the next thing.
Brad: [00:20:30] Yeah. Uh, yeah, the, yeah, the, he really gives himself a lot of just like very convenient sort of logical exits for a lot of situations. Right.
Will: [00:20:38] Well, but it's, I mean, it's a, it's a, it's an interesting situation. Cause like the technology, the way he presents tech space technology, and this happens more in the later books, but even in this one, there's a broad range of what. People know, there's like hyper dimensional, super intelligent mice that have infinite technology.
And then there's like, you know, the rich white people equivalent in the current galaxy, like Zaphod Beeblebrox that had the super duper ship. And then there's just like the normal chugs that we don't see a lot of, but like, like the cops have low end gear. And when the, when Marvin. Over depresses, there's ship.
The computer stops working those guys just croak because you know, they're there they're low budget, low budget, hardware stops working. It's yeah. I mean, you could say a lot of that outside Deus Ex Machinas , but I mean, it's a world of it's it's the Arthur Clark thing about, you know, sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
So, you know, is it plug armor? Is it magic technology.
Brad: [00:21:39] I like the way that they arrived at the infinite in profitability drive, I think is like the best example of that. Because the logical progression logical progression was basically like, what did was it? They said like, what? Like the guy who invented it basically just said like, well, if they say it's a virtual impossibility, then that means it's actually a finite improbability.
So I just need to calculate exactly what those odds are and then feed them into this machine and like flip the switch and it'll just come right out and sure enough, it did.
Will: [00:22:05] The, the description of the parties that they use, the technology for. Then the, the thing, the thing about, um, making the hostesses undergarments leap three feet to the left or something is, is just the kind of delightful science. Uh, uh, oversimplifications slash you know, it's the equivalent of using liquid, uh, um, carbon dioxide or liquid nitrogen to make your drink bubble at a chemistry party.
And when you're in college and that was, yeah. Um, it it's. I, the thing, the thing that I love about this book is that every time you start to think, you have an understanding of what's going on, you know, unlike every other science fiction thing where there's some primitive, earthling thrust into a larger galactic world, you know, that Arthur Clark and, and Isaac, Isaac Asimov, and all those folks were writing prior to this, they like this book, these books are aware that.
This whole universe is going to seem absurd. And, and the idea of an infinite universe, where there is some life forms that look like bic pens and some life forms that are like hyper intelligent shades of the color of blue is going to be inherently absurd to anyone who's who as recently as 50,000 years ago was, you know, hanging out in trees and, and wasn't, you know, wasn't using any kind of tool.
Um, so. Yeah, I, I just, I just it's. I find it to be really delightful, even it, the other thing that struck me is how little it's dated.
Brad: [00:23:50] Yes. I was, I was making notes of some of the depictions of technology in there. And I was like, we a couple of spots, you know, where he does feel very seventies, but like it envisions
Will: [00:23:58] you mean the digital watches. There's a lot about digital watches.
Brad: [00:24:01] Yes the digital watch stuff stands out in that context, for sure. But, uh, I mean, the ones that seem pretty prescient to me were like, uh, there's like the flying camera drones for the TV news around what, like, when they, the unveiling ceremony for the, for the.
Magic spaceship. Yeah. Like there's straight up cameras mounted to drones. Um, in the, uh, in the bridge of the heart of gold, they talk about how like switches and knobs for traditional control surfaces and spaceships had evolved into touchscreens. And then those had, those have just evolved into gesture based kind of motion controls and you know, like,
Will: [00:24:33] and also like he nailed the problem with connect. Like if Douglas Adams had lived long enough to see connect, like the, the, the problem with this is that you move your head the wrong way. And all of a sudden that spaceship veers off to the left.
Brad: [00:24:43] The line was long. The line was something about, like, once you find a station that you like with that interface, you just have to sit. Infuriatingly still.
Will: [00:24:50] uh,
Brad: [00:24:51] but then, so we, we started talking about this before the episode, and then you started to correct me. And so I want to hear your answer here, because, um, you mentioned that you felt like the guide itself or the physical, the physical depiction of the guide in the book is kind of like a smartphone because it is.
Will: [00:25:06] the guide is depicted as something that I like. If you were comparing it to a piece of hardware that people will probably be familiar with, who are listening, probably like a Blackberry. So it's like a screen with a whole boatload of buttons on the bottom
Brad: [00:25:16] Yes, yes. That's how it's described. So like the, the point I started to make before we started recording was he came up with touchscreen interfaces and he came up with a pocket computer with like functionally infinite information, but he didn't think to marry those two and produce the actual modern smartphone.
But then you started to say that you had a reason for that.
Will: [00:25:35] Well, I mean, I think, I think he was looking, I think he felt like the buttons were more practical. Right? I think he felt like the touchscreen was somewhere on that spectrum between the, the hardware buttons and the having to sit infuriating still to avoid changing the channel by accident and, and.
Like the interesting thing about the guide to me is that it was basically, it's basically just like an internet connected Wikipedia terminal, which somebody made. I feel like that was a product that somebody released in like 2005 or 2008. Um, but, but yeah, the, the buttons. Like the whole point of the guide is in his description of it.
And this may be from a further book or from the radio play something, but it's supposed to be nonthreatening. It's supposed to be friendly. It's supposed to make you feel better about where you are and it's remember it's for hitchhikers. So it's for the poors. It's not this isn't this, isn't some cutting edge touchscreen technology.
This is
Brad: [00:26:26] democratizing gateway to the galaxies information.
Will: [00:26:29] yeah. Five Alterian dollars a day. It's it's amazing. It was also amazing to me, kind of how much of this, uh, how much of this book, particularly the book impacted the like late nineties, early two thousands, internet monoculture, you know, think geek sold. A ringer, a blue ringer tee shirt, and like the fallout colors with the number 42 on it for years, I own one, it became Gina's favorite nightgown.
And I bought that before we moved out here. Cause like it came from Tennessee with us. Right. Um,
Brad: [00:27:08] Where does the green guy come from? Like, it's on the cover of my omnibus edition. Like the little dot kind of dude with the tongue and the arms
Will: [00:27:16] who knows, never shows up
Brad: [00:27:19] Right. I was like, I was starting with racking, my brain after I finished the book, trying to figure out where that cover art comes from. And I don't think it does.
Will: [00:27:25] I, this is an informed guess, but my guess is that because it's not on the, it, wasn't on the UK publisher, original versions of the book
Brad: [00:27:32] I Googled some other alternate cover arts from different additions and it's not on every edition of the book by any means.
Will: [00:27:37] it just says don't panic on the UK ones and my guests. I don't know for sure, but my guess is that somebody in the UK, in the U S publishers art department said, Hey, you know, books sell better if they have a face on them.
Brad: [00:27:50] Ironically, it's only like half a face. Cause there's no nose or eyes. It's just a mouth
Will: [00:27:54] Well, but, but that guy was on the version I got in like 1985. Yeah, he's been on all of the, he was on the audio books. He was on the, um, all of that stuff. I feel like maybe he was supposed to be on the cover of the guide saying don't panic, but it's unclear to me.
Brad: [00:28:08] I would believe that sure.
Will: [00:28:10] I think of him as the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy blob.
Brad: [00:28:13] Yeah I could see it.
Will: [00:28:14] Um, I don't know if it was, I don't know. I don't remember if that it's been a long time since I read the Neil Gaiman book. Uh, but I don't know if they covered that at all in there.
Brad: [00:28:22] Um, yeah, but yeah, like by the same token that I was going through and recognizing a bunch of the traits of this book that have permeated popular culture, I was also looking, or it was also finding all these references that have been appropriated by other things like, like the second that the character of trillion was introduced, I was like, really?
Is that where that came from? Because I used that IM client for however long it existed.
Will: [00:28:43] Late nineties monoculture
Brad: [00:28:45] Yeah, totally. I was an avid trillion user, and I never had any idea where that, in fact wasn't no, maybe I'm mixing. I was going to say it. Wasn't the icon of trillion, like a green dot or am I mixing that up something else?
Will: [00:28:56] Uh, you could make the icon of trillion of green dot for your online status if you wanted. But I don't remember
Brad: [00:29:01] okay. Maybe I'm mixing that. Yeah, that might be a little bit too much,
Will: [00:29:03] like it was like a blobby logo
Brad: [00:29:05] too much, too much overlap, but I have, I have to assume that's where they got the name of that I am client from, um,
Will: [00:29:11] Oh, a hundred percent.
Brad: [00:29:12] As soon as I, as soon as I saw paranoid Android, I obviously thought of the Radiohead song.
Will: [00:29:16] The Babel fish. Remember Google translate was originally called the Babel Fish
Brad: [00:29:20] So, okay.
Thank you. I was, it was killing me. I was trying to make a list of these before we started here and I knew there were at least a couple. I was forgetting. Babel fish was a huge one.
Will: [00:29:27] Oh, there's a, there's a, there we, no matter if, if all people do in the, this week's episode, part of the tech pod discord is talk about the things that are the same, that, that like this cause to be named something.
Brad: [00:29:42] Details of this book that have leaked out into other product naming.
Will: [00:29:44] it would be pages and pages
Brad: [00:29:46] I would love to hear more that I, that I I'm glad you thought of Babblefish uh, I noticed, uh, I mean, I know, I know the concept of the Google Plex exists outside of Google the company,
Will: [00:29:55] It’s just a math thing,
Brad: [00:29:57] right. But I, but I do wonder if the inclusion of that term in this book maybe helped inform them, picking that up for their name
Will: [00:30:03] I mean clearly Sergei and Larry or somebody there early on were fans.
Brad: [00:30:06] Yes, right. Um, it was, there were even there even like little, just kind of like manners of speech in here that I, that I recognized from people. I used to talk to you on IRC back in the late nineties,
Will: [00:30:18] Oh, yeah,
Brad: [00:30:19] just like little kind of verbal ticks, almost like ways of ways of truncating words and stuff like that, that I was like, huh, that explains,
Will: For example?
Brad: uh, like the one and the one that really comes to mind is the way that people shorten, because the word, because.
Will: [00:30:32] Oh, the COC
Brad: [00:30:33] Cos is the one in the book that I read because like the, at least in America, I think that the most common way on the internet, maybe not so much these days, but definitely back in the kind of late nineties, the most common way to truncate that word was CU Z because, or at least in my experience really.
Will: [00:30:49] Oh, I think that might be a regional one.
Brad: [00:30:51] Okay. Maybe so anyway, like I really,
Will: [00:30:53] I never saw it. I saw a CU se with an apostrophe
Brad: [00:30:56] yeah, yeah. That one. Well, that's,
Will: [00:30:58] but that hardly saves you any characters.
Brad: [00:31:00] That’s a little too formal for me. Thank you. Yeah, if you use the apostrophe, that's only, you're saving yourself one character stroke,
Will: [00:31:05] always thought if you see CU Z people are talking about their cousin.
Brad: [00:31:07] well, that was another use for it. Sure. But I definitely saw anyway, like I knew somebody who.
It's funny, all the overlap here, though. I knew somebody who spelled it cos on IRC, they wrote, they were also a big Radiohead fan. Uh, also I think, I think probably a big hitchhikers fan I don't know, whatever. It's just a bunch of little details for my life that I picked out of this book and felt like, Oh, that's where that maybe is exactly where that came from.
Will: [00:31:30] Well, the weird thing about this to me is that I don't know, like, I, I. I don't fully understand. Like, I know that a lot of times, because Britain is a little bit smaller and because at the time there was more of a monoculture, you know, there was radio, there was TV, but there weren't, weren't 50 million channels and Netflix and all that stuff, I don't know how much of a phenomena.
I know that this was presented in don't panic as a phenomena, but I don't know what a radio drama phenomena meant in 1980. Like even in the UK, I don't know if that meant that everybody had listened to this, or if like a double digit percentage of the country had listened to this, or if, you know, a million people have listened to this.
Uh, and, and I wonder, I wonder how much I got it a little bit like a counterculture, a kind of niche thing in the U S right up until the point that I got on the internet
Brad: [00:32:21] And then, and then you were like, Oh wait, everybody I know has read this.
Will: [00:32:24] I was like, yeah, all these people have been, they, they all know that. Yeah. There's a, there's a Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy mud.
That's an inflict. I didn't know. There was an InfoComm game. I should get that. I should play that.
Brad: [00:32:32] Have you, have you played that
Will: [00:32:33] I've never played it.
Brad: [00:32:34] really? Should we should check that out. Maybe
Will: [00:32:36] I've been saving it. Yeah, I would. Yeah.
Brad: [00:32:39] I mean, you know, he goes, he goes into that in the introduction that he basically makes us sound like every different manifestation of this work has been pretty different from every other one. So have you listened to the radio play?
Will: [00:32:50] Yes, multiple times. It's very good
Brad: [00:32:52] is, is it that different?
Will: [00:32:54] Uh, you, the thing that he said about it being like chapters one, three, five, seven, and most of 14 is absolutely correct.
Brad: [00:33:01] Okay. I thought it was kind of hard to tell in the introduction if he was just being self deprecating. But, but
Will: [00:33:05] No I mean yes but also it was true.
Brad: [00:33:07] I think the phrasing is something like, like a, the novel bore, very little resemblance to the radio play. And then the computer game bore very little resemblance to the novel.
Will: [00:33:15] So for example, in the radio play, When the cops are shooting at the computer bank that they're on, the computer bank blows up and they all think that they're dead, but they're not. They're just at the restaurant. And that happens at almost exactly the same, like as they're leaving Magothya, but like, like they, there there's a C there's a whole lot of confusion about what's going on and it is the biggest plot jump, I think, in the whole series.
Um,
Brad: [00:33:44]so they just skipped right over with Marvin convincing the cops spaceship to commit suicide,
Will: [00:33:49] Oh, they get to it.
Brad: [00:33:50] okay. That's
Will: [00:33:51] I don’t actually know if they get to the Marvin convincing. Yeah, you're right.
Brad: [00:33:54] That was one of the darker moments in that book I thought.
Will: [00:33:57] Like, like there's the, so Marvin I think was originally supposed to be a throwaway character who people ended up liking on the radio show. So he got to hang around and Marvin ends up hanging around a lot in the, in the books.
Uh, like, like a whole Marvin is very good. Marvin is one of my favorites.
Brad: [00:34:14] well, I keep saying they, but it's obviously it's just Douglas Adams. Does he run with some of the dangling threads at the end of this book? Like what happened with Zaph also, I cut myself off. I'm not used to saying, say Z/a/phod yet in my head, my head, it was Zaphod
Will: [00:34:28] Oh, no, it was Z/a/phod.
Brad: [00:34:29] or, or I even wondered, I didn't think this, but I even wondered if somebody might pronounce it, like zap hod or something like that.
But. Yes. Something like that, but Zaphod um, yeah, like,
Will: [00:34:40] Zaphod Beeblebrox Inventor of the pen. Galactic gargle blaster
Brad: [00:34:41] like, yes, like the, the mystery of whatever he did to his own brain, whatever's, whatever's locked in his brain. Like, do they revisit stuff like that
Will: [00:34:49] there's five more books Brad, you'll it'll work. You'll get there
Brad: [00:34:53] Okay. Are they worth it
Will: [00:34:54] It's yeah. Uh, so we talked about Dune a couple of weeks ago. And my advice on dune is that the first book is a transformative work of science fiction written when you, one of the best pieces of science fiction written in the 20 20th century and each subset subsequent book is worse than the one that proceeds it.
Brad: [00:35:11] It sounds like if you, if you prize your experience with that first book, you should, you shouldn't safeguard it by not reading anymore.
Will: [00:35:16] maybe the second and third books. If you really, really feel the need to get more, but just walk away,
Brad: [00:35:21] That's not the case here.
Will: [00:35:23] These books, even the books. So like the fifth of the six books, the six book was published post humorously. The fifth book is fine. Like, it's it. But like even the ones that are bad have delightful bits in them.
Like the fifth book has, this has this amazing bit. There's two things in it that I really love. I loved it enough that I bookmarked them years ago. Um, one of them is this and I'll read it, uh, when. It's about technology and failing. Uh, and he talks about this thing. The invented called the great ventilation and telephone rife riots of Srgt 34 54, that all mechanical electrical or quantum mechanical or hydraulic, or even wind steam or piston driven devices are now required to have a certain legend emblazoned on them somewhere.
It doesn't matter how small the object is. The designers of the object have got to find a way of squeezing the legend somewhere because it is their attention that is being drawn to it rather than necessarily that of the users. The legend. Is this the major difference between anything thing that might go wrong?
Anything that cannot possibly go wrong? Is that when you a thing that cannot possibly go wrong, goes wrong. It usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair
Will: [00:36:35] is a very,
Brad: [00:36:36] that's a very Douglas Adams passage.
Will: [00:36:38] yes. Uh, there's also a fantastic bit about sandwiches in that fifth book that is worth reading. Uh, but like, look. W when you, the first, second and third books were written all kind of in the same timeframe, they tell a really specific story.
The fourth book was added on later. They, each of them wraps up loose ends. Some of the, some of the loose ends are wrapped up in the bad star Wars way, where like you find out that the guy in the background at the, at the Cantina on tatooine was a bounty Hunter, or like someone had criminal or some bullshit.
Some of them are written, wrapped up in the star Trek. Good way where like, You know, Con shows up in the second movie and you're like, Oh, Oh, okay. Okay. Uh, so you know, you pays your money and you takes your chances. I guess
Brad: [00:37:24] Was he, do you know if he was still actively working on this stuff? I mean, I guess if the last book was posture and so I guess he was, if he was still like actively trying to extend the series when he passed away or was he trying to wrap things up?
Will: [00:37:37] I would. I don't, I, I never had the chance to meet him, which was a bummer. Cause like I was just getting to the point that I might've been invited to some game thing that he worked on when he died. Um, I feel like, like the, the maybe apocryphal stories about him having problems, actually being a productive writer are such that I would say he continued working on it in spite of his best efforts. Like he, so he wrote these six, five and a half books, six books. He wrote, um, two books in the Dirk. Gently is holistic detective agency series that are also very good and like absurdist, but on earth with a little tinge of mysticism, like FA like they're fantastical books set in the real world. Uh, is the, is the right way to describe them, but not like, not like swords and elves and shit like that.
It's just like, math is weird. And like when you do weird math, weird things happen. Um, and then he wrote a nonfiction book called last chance to see, because he was a really committed environmentalist and worked with the world wildlife Federation and a bunch of places like that and went. Basically, we went to Africa to see a bunch of endangered animals and kind of use his platform to, to spread the word and, and let people know that there's stuff worth saving.
Brad: [00:38:51] Yeah, I did. That's interesting because the reason I ask is that in the, in the forward, in this big tome, that I've got a by Neil Gaiman. He implies pretty strongly that Douglas Adams never set out to be a writer. And the like, in fact, maybe didn't even enjoy being one
Will: [00:39:08] I think that's right. I mean, like, if you look at who the are, the author proxy in his books are like dirk, Dirk gently is not the author, proxy Ford prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox. Aren't he's Arthur dent. Right? He's a guy that's always in a little bit over his head.
Brad: [00:39:20] fish out of water,
Will: [00:39:21] Yeah. And, and I feel like that's absolutely
Brad: [00:39:25] old, little down on his luck. A little.
Will: [00:39:28] I mean, yeah, kind of a little bit of a shumck
Brad: [00:39:30] got a guy who's like a little, a little swept up in events outside of his control
Will: [00:39:33] yeah, but, but like he's trying to do right, right. That like that's the defining characteristic. Arthur dent is that he's, he, he often tries to do the right thing and it ends up tragically not working out for him
Brad: [00:39:47] sure. I, you know, I should revise what I just said. I don't think it, I don't think it's that he didn't want to be a writer. I don't think he it's that he didn't want to be a novelist necessarily like. I think that the forward kind of painted them as like he was, he was looking to follow in the steps of like Monte Python and people like that.
Will: [00:40:01] yeah. I mean, he, he wrote dr. Who episodes,
Brad: [00:40:03] It was, it was like, he seemed like he wanted to be more of a comedy and TV writer type and sort of fell into writing books.
Will: [00:40:10] I don't. I don't know. I like it. Yeah. Like, it's funny if I ever met Neil Gaiman, I think the thing I would talk to him about most is Douglas Adams rather than cause like yeah.
Brad: [00:40:21] Yeah. You know what I mean? That is like, whatever, not to get off on a tangent here, but like, and I don't meet a ton of famous people all the time, but like, I think that's a good strategy for meeting your heroes or meeting famous people is to talk to them about something other than themselves,
Will: [00:40:33] I, for most people, I think that is a very good strategy.
Brad: [00:40:36] having, having a pre.
Uh, like a premade or ready conversation topic. If it is something they're interested in rather than their own work is a good strategy.
Will: [00:40:47] Exactly. Um, so I, I don't, I won't spoil things for you for the future, but yes, there are almost every single thread in this book has picked up. At some point,
Brad: [00:40:58] okay,
Will: [00:40:59]The next book picks up exactly where this left off. Right. You, you literally come back to the heart of gold as they're going to get lunch.
So
Brad: [00:41:08] Yeah, it's really, I think it's really just a result of the way things played out that I am even interested in like what his life goals and stuff were. Cause if he was still with us, like, I wouldn't spend two seconds. Right. I wouldn't spend two seconds thinking about like, Oh, what was he like? And what were his, you know, what were his ambitions and stuff, because he'd still be around.
And it just wouldn't be that interesting. But because it like is untimely, demise does give the, his, his career, the arc of his career, a little bit of a, like a tragic undertone.
Will: [00:41:33] Well, it's it's it's. Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because like, he's, we all know the people, we all know people like him, like he was a guy who was into computers. Right. He was into, he was even when he didn't have anything really he could do with a Mac, he had a Mac or an Apple two, and was, was like always noodling with that and was sending files back and forth.
And like, we've we know, um, W what's, there's a Neil Gaiman. I think Terry Pratchett collaboration book, where they made an Amazon series out of it a few years ago, but it's, uh, basically, yeah, they were sending a floppy disk back and forth in the mail. So like Neil would write one chapter and he would save it to the floppy disc.
And then they'd met he'd mail, the floppy disk, Terry Pratchett, and Terry would read what he wrote and then wrote, write the next chapter. And they were alternating POV throughout this book. And that was the kind of stuff like. Like he was Douglas Adams was really excited about how technology was going to grow.
Um, and, and at the same time, like I look at how my views about technology in general have been shaped by reading this book when, uh, at a formative age. And, you know, it's always. It's, I don't want to say cynical cause it's not, but it's not. It's it's like, it's like carefully metered, uh, excitement always.
Cause like there's always, there's always two sides of every technological coin, whether it's, you know, splitting the atom for the first time or. You know, the, everybody carrying a location, aware, always on microphone, spying device in our pockets all the time. Like you have to think about how all of this stuff is going to be used.
And he gets, he spends a lot more time thinking about the, like, like it turns out that the heart of gold is an ecological disaster for reasons that they won't get into for like five years, but five books.
Brad: Hum Interesting.
Will: Um, and there's all sorts of interesting stuff that comes along with his, his kind of take on, on tech in general.
Brad: [00:43:33] Yeah, it's just, it's kind of sad. Looking back for somebody with that kind of perspective. Wasn't around for longer.
Will: [00:43:39] Yeah. It's I mean, I remember it was, it was, he died when I was working at maximum PC
Brad: [00:43:44] I was gonna say, I think it was 2001. Was it, is that right?
Will: [00:43:46] was, it was early two thousands, for sure. He was 43 years,
Brad: [00:43:50] 42 to 49?
Will: [00:43:53] they invented they discovered DNA announced the discovery of DNA
Brad: [00:43:56] Uh, 49. Yeah. Was that a, was that like huge news? I just, I wasn't really aware of him at the time, so I didn't, it didn't catch my eye.
Will: [00:44:04] I probably found out about it on slash dot or something like that. So it was, it was a substantial, you know, it was, it was enough that we enough people at the office were fans that like people were bummed and talking about it at the water cooler and stuff like that.
Brad: [00:44:19] Sure. Um, how's the movie. Have you seen the movie? I want to say, I think I would think it might be in the introduction that he mentions in there. Something about, there's like a, an idea for a movie or like talk of there being a movie, but like has just been in some kind of development hell forever.
Will: [00:44:35] Yeah. So it finally came out in like 2013 or 2014, I think. Um, it's the movies fine. Like the movie it's it's. I mean when you take something that's as unabashedly, weird as Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy is, and try to transmogrify that into a movie. It's it's a challenge,
Brad: [00:44:54]I was thinking that the whole time I was reading the book, I was just like this, this book, the mental image that you paint of, of the events of this book is so fuzzy to begin with because the book itself has such a like tenuous grasp on the rules of reality that like having to depict that in some tangible form on screen a would be very hard for the person having to do it.
B I don't think I would want to put such like rigid, rigid imagery to the kind of open ended, like imagination that goes along with this book. Does that make sense?
Will: [00:45:21] Yeah, no, like what does sleek, like a running shoe look like when you're talking about a spaceship, right? Like you can't make it look like a shoe, but like that is, there's a very specific kind of curve that you think about with running shoes and like,
Brad: [00:45:34] like, like, like every time the heart of gold, like bends reality or remakes reality in some way, like having to, uh, having to make the depiction of that, like finite. And rigid on screen, as opposed to just the like endless weirdness that can be conjured in your head when you read that stuff. Like I don't, I almost don't think I would want to see that
Will: [00:45:52] Well, yeah, like when they're talking about the, the, the waves that, uh, Guilford. Removing the buildings moving up and down against the waves at Guilford. I'm like, I wish I knew what Guilford looks like. Cause of course it's not like you just go to Google image, search or street view or something and see what this beach side town in England looks like.
Right. Um, I feel like they did. I feel like the production design team did a really good job of capturing the raw essence of what. These things look like, like the Zapata Beeblebrox had has some pretty garbage CG on Sam. Rockwell's second head
Brad: [00:46:29] Oh, I saw, I was going to ask who some of the casting. Oh, God Martin Freeman’s in it.
Will: [00:46:33] Martin Freeman is Arthur Dent. He's very good. Like, like, like they like. If that movie was released in a vacuum without the other 12 different media that this product had come out in, it would have been a delight and people would have been really excited about it. Like they've launched something into this, this huge fandom and you know, like it was, it's fine.
I don't, I'm glad it exists. How's that? I don't, it didn't take anything away from hitchhiker is an in, in a, in a franchise that is so relentlessly, like cross media. I don't think it hurt. I don't, I, it, yeah, it's fine. I haven't watched it. I only watched it once or twice. I should go back kind of curious how they handled the whale and the petunia.
Brad: [00:47:19] sure.
Will: [00:47:20] When I think about it, cause like that such a profoundly weird and disturbing, like, like the whole internal monologue of the whale
Brad: [00:47:29] Yes.
Will: [00:47:29] when I was 12 years old, was. Buck and hilarious. Right. But now it's like, Oh, this is a really a horrible existence for this whale. This is not okay, man.
Brad: [00:47:39] Yeah. But also how you would communicate all of that on film. I have no idea.
Will: [00:47:42] Yeah. Right. Like, do you just have like, is it just a like third person shot of the whale falling toward the ground? It was like an internal monologue running. I don't know.
Brad: [00:47:53]I guess that would work. Two stars said Roger Ebert and for what it's worth.
Will: [00:47:56] Yeah. I mean, look, he thought. He thought video games. Weren't art. So what did he know
Brad: [00:48:00] he said that he said that he said it's a weird, may confused novices,
Will: [00:48:03] Well, Oh, it's too, too smart.
Brad: [00:48:05] to be fair, I suppose I could see,
Will: [00:48:08] Um, I mean, and that's the thing is like, if you think about a lot of the language that makes this book land, it's not in dialogue necessarily, it's in, it's in the descriptions of the world, which are harder to convey.
I do remember really loving the guide. Like they do a whole different treatment for the guide and they're all animated and really cool for the guide entries. Um, the TV show, the BBC TV show from the eighties. Is, do you remember, do you remember like the aesthetic that we had when we worked in the whiskey basement and we would just like grab some shit from around the thing and make, make some weird, proper whatever for happy hour show or something?
Yeah. It seemed like the whole thing was done on that kind of budget.
Brad: [00:48:49] Okay That's fair.
Will: [00:48:50] Yeah, like they had, they had, uh, like blank wall sound stages and like it's real low budge. The audio is bad. The costumes are often made of like tinfoil. It looks like, it looks like dr. Who it looks like if they got, what, if they had to make eight episodes of something on the budget they use for like the first act of a doctor who episode
Brad: [00:49:11] I was, I was going to ask you, like, if I have like, basically no experience with like dr. Who or red dwarf for any of that. The genre of like, kind of cheeky British Sifi. But I like, if there's like, this book is definitely part of that tradition, right?
Will: [00:49:24] I, so I'm not a doctor who guy, I never, I bounced off cause I, I like it was on PBS. Which one are they got when the weather was a real specific way when I was a kid. So, um, I never, I don't really have any kind of connection to dr. Who I've never seen red dwarf. I, I don't, it feels very Pythonesque in the kind of British absurdism.
I also know that I do know that science fiction. Was maybe generally as a genre was maybe generally more popular in the UK at that time period than it was here. And specifically like the more that this is hard science fiction, but like harder science fiction, less space opera. So like stuff like, like character driven stuff like star Trek, or like, like things about exploration and stuff like that.
Not zooming around and rescuing space princesses like star Wars.
Brad: [00:50:12] right. Yeah. Lot of, not a lot of big character-driven melodrama type stuff. Um, there's I guess there's a new TV show that Hulu was doing.
Will: Really?
Brad: Yeah.
Will: [00:50:22] Oh, I didn't know that
Brad: [00:50:22] As of looks like, did some, finding some news stories from about a year ago that says they are working on a new one. Uh, Carlton Cuse of lost fame appears to be involved in it.
Will: [00:50:34] I didn't like lost.
Brad: [00:50:35] Well, I've got bad news for you.
Will: [00:50:37] It’s going to be garbage. It's going to be bad.
Brad: [00:50:39] Uh, I don't know that it doesn't look like there's a lot more information about it yet, but it looks like that is probably still in the works.
Will: [00:50:45] Hmm,
Brad: [00:50:46] Uh, so maybe stay tuned for that. Or maybe don't I don't know. Like I said, I might just read the book and be good with this.
Will: [00:50:54] I, if you're gonna, like, if you're gonna engage in two forms of media around hitchhikers, I would read the book, the first book and the second book, and then I would go back and listen to the first radio drama.
Brad: [00:51:07] Okay.
Will: [00:51:08] I think it's on audible is where I found it last. And you can use your audible credit and get the whole thing at one swoop.
So it's like it's it's long.
Brad: [00:51:15] I might have to, I might have to work that Infocom game in there somewhere.
Will: [00:51:19] I do, I, I would totally play the InfoComm game sometime.
Brad: [00:51:23] Is that a text parser based game?
Will: [00:51:24] It is a text. It is an InfoComm text adventure in the vein of Zork
Brad: [00:51:28] Okay. Then I almost definitely want to check that out.
Will: [00:51:31] So we let's let's stream it sometime. Um, on the BBC site, you can play it in a window and I think it's also on archive.org. Uh, when I looked for it last, I played Starship Titanic years later, which is a Douglas Adams written like, like 2d three it's like post mist and seventh guest.
But like still, I think 3D rendered environments in a lot of cases with like some video characters overlaid on top of them. Uh, and it's very funny and very weird. It's about at star ship Obviously that can't crash, that bad things happen to,
Brad: [00:52:07] Of course I would expect no less. Oh, wow. This really is just a text adventure. Isn't it.
Will: [00:52:13] Oh, it is a text ass texted adventure. Yes.
Brad: [00:52:15] Wow. Okay. I assume there were at least some rudimentary graphics involved with this is full on Zork era, huh?
Will: [00:52:22] What's. I think that BBC one adds some, the BBC version adds some text or some graphics to it. Like they draw some stuff
Brad: [00:52:29] like the anniversary additions got like a frame around it or something, but yeah, it's pretty rudimentary. It looks like. So
Will: [00:52:35] a. What did you think about Slartibartfast?
Brad: [00:52:39] it wasn't a reference to something. I was trying to unpack that
Will: [00:52:42] Well, I think Slartibartfast has been like, I, there was always a guy on IRC named Slartibartfast
Brad: [00:52:47] Oh, of course, of course. I, I, I certainly laughed when that name was introduced, but I wasn't sure if there, if there was some, some, some connection that was missing there.
Will: [00:52:57] I assume that's a made up name. I know Douglas Adams liked to steal names from his, his family and friends. Uh, the, the, the earthling who wrote the second worst poetry in the universe is a feminized version of one of his ex roommates. Um, he also used a realtor's name and one of the later books to the point that like the realtor would get angry calls from people saying, Hey, why'd you rip off Douglas Adams?
That's shitty.
Brad: Wow
Will: Yeah. Um, it's pretty good. I love. One last thing to hit on. I love the description of infinity. Yeah. When, when they go into the planet and Magrathea the, uh, the, that it wasn't infinity. And, you know, they go into the hyperspace chamber where they make planets and he says it wasn't infinity.
In fact, infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting looking up in the night sky is looking into infinity distances and comprehensible, and therefore meaningless the chamber into which the air car emerged was anything but infinite. It was just very, very, very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity itself
Brad: [00:54:01] Yes I thought that was a really delightful paradox of like the only, the only way to defect depict infinity is to make it finite.
Will: [00:54:09] It's really, it's really good
Brad: [00:54:09] So it's very clever book. A very, very clever book.
Will: [00:54:13] yeah. I, uh, I remain a fan.
Brad: [00:54:17] I'm glad I know. Now
Will: [00:54:18] Yeah. Now you understand, you're going to keep reading. Brad, are you going to stall out here?
Brad: [00:54:22] Filled in a bunch of blanks for me. I might keep going
Will: [00:54:25] Don’t you want to know what happens to Ford and Arthur
Brad: [00:54:27] I was gonna, I was gonna say like, I'm, especially, especially considering it just kind of leaves a bunch of stuff hanging and just sort of, and just sort of ends. Yeah. Like I literally just need to turn to extra pages, then I'll be into the next one.
So yeah, I think I might've make you going for awhile.
Will: [00:54:41] Cool. Um, well, I guess we've reached the point in the show where we need to thank our patrons who made this possible, uh, everybody who signed up, uh, to get us over for that thousand patron hump. We're now at 1,122 patrons as of this moment when we were recording on Saturday morning. Uh, so thank you all for supporting the show.
We really appreciate it. Um, and especially thanks to our executive producer level patrons, Jacob chapel, Andrew Cotton, and David Allen. Uh, we really appreciate all of you. And, um, if you want to find out how you can back the podcast, back to Patriot and support the podcast, you can go to patrion.com/techpod.
But if you can't, that's fine. We totally appreciate just like posting on Twitter that you like to show and tell, tell us why you like the show. We love that
Brad: [00:55:29] Yeah. Leave, leave an iTunes review. Any of that stuff? Yeah.
Will: [00:55:31] Yeah. Uh, like, and subscribe if we were a YouTube channel, we're not, so you don't have to do that. Uh, but, but definitely, um, if you do back the Patrion and you get access to the discord, which is, uh, just a wonderful respite on an internet, filled with bad, things on the day to day where you can come and like, Dip into other people's weird hobbies and maybe find a new, weird hobby of your own and, and talk about books and talk about the stuff you're enjoying and like the Hades conversations happening in the Hades appreciation slash gaming channel right now are very good.
Brad: [00:56:04] very informative. Now I can, now I can finally enter the aptly named reading room that you've created now that I finished this book and I don't have to worry about seeing people talk about it. Cause I finished it now.
Will: [00:56:13] Yeah. Spoilers is no fear, not for spoilers. Um, but yeah, you can go to, again, that's patrion.com/tech pod. And, uh, we do appreciate anything you can do to help us out. Uh, let other people know about the show because the listeners, it turns out are how people find new podcasts. You tell your friends, Hey, this there's this dope podcast.
Brad: [00:56:32] word of mouth
Will: [00:56:33] Yeah. Word of mouth. It still works.
Brad: [00:56:35] effective. Uh, I'd be curious to hear what people think about this episode. Well, I like us covering a book in some fashion.
Will: [00:56:42] A 40 year old book
Brad: [00:56:43] We had , a couple other ideas in this vein if people like this, but if they hate it, then please let us know. So we don't waste your time on that.
Will: [00:56:50] Uh, and you can send emails if you have a specifically, I'd like to hear things that you think hitchhiker is influenced, uh, to techpod@content.town. That's the email address for emails, which we'll do in like three more weeks. So, um, yeah. Thank you all for listening. I guess. We'll see all next week, Brad, you got any closing thoughts on this one?
Brad: [00:57:10] So long and thanks for all the fish?