One thing audiobooks can be good for is when you want to try out those famous books you've always thought you ought to read but haven't really felt like buying. I know that this function should be filled by library books, but I'm not a very tidy reader (and often read while I'm eating) and library books make me nervous. Audiobooks could be the answer.
True, I still haven't put this pretty theory into practice that much, but one I-really-ought-to-read-this book, or rather set of books, I have started listening to: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The title usually refers to a series of sci-fi novels chronicling the adventures of hapless human Arthur Dent after Earth is blown up in book one (which is the one actually called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy). I've suspected that this book series ought to be up my alley for quite some time. Douglas Adams worked as a script editor on Doctor Who back in the Classic era and penned some adventures himself, and the Hitchhiker's Guide books sounded like a cross between Doctor Who and P.G. Wodehouse - geeky concepts meet witty comedy. Some of my favourite things, then.
So, by now I've listened to the two first novels in the series, and started on number three and - well. It's not that they're not entertaining. They're funny and an easy listen. But I confess I feel a little disappointed. Seeing as this is the Great Text of Geekdom, I expected more.
Perhaps great expectations are part of the problem. Way back, I read a Donald Duck comic, clearly modelled on Adams's books, where Donald had to hitch through the galaxy. He ended up on all sorts of colourful alien worlds, and I remember finding the story a delight. This was the kind of thing I thought the originals would explore too. But a goodish stretch into book one, Arthur hasn't come farther than a spaceship comparatively close to Earth (or where Earth used to be before the spaceship blew it up). Then he is saved from certain death by another spaceship. Lastly, he ends up on a planet where other planets are manufactured, and that's the only alien civilisation he properly gets to in the first book. One of these manufactured worlds was Earth, which turns out to have been a vast computer controlled by interdimensional beings (undercover as white mice) trying to find out the right question to ask concerning life, the Universe and everything (they already know the answer - 42).
Whether The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is for you depends, I'd say, on your reaction to the previous sentence. If you think "what absolute drivel", Hitchhiker's Guide is not for you. If you think "wow, that sounds really inventive and funny", it definitely is. I'm somewhere inbetween. Most of the scenarios Adams dreams up, while enjoyably outlandish, seem to exist mainly as the set-up for jokes. The encounter with alien worlds doesn't create any real sense of wonder. They're mostly there so the author can gently - or sometimes not-so-gently - make fun of phenomena familiar to us Earthlings. A lot of the satire could have worked equally well if the stories were set in a London suburb.
This is where being too geeky comes in. A few years ago I'd never even heard of "world building", and as I'm not generally one for local colour in books - stop describing smelly slums or magnificent vistas of nature and get on with the story! - I didn't think it meant a lot to me. But I'm actually missing the "world building" component, which is usually an important part of sci-fi, in the Hitchhiker's Guide books. I was expecting them to seek out new life and new civilisations in true Star Trek style (only funnier), but there hasn't been much of that so far.
Let's face it, though - the main reason I'm not as sucked into the Hitchhiker's Guide saga as I thought I would be is probably that I'm not geeky enough. When you don't find jokes as funny as is clearly intended, you usually don't imagine your sense of humour to be at fault, but rather the jokes. Leastways, that's how it is for me. Some of Adams's skits don't land for me at all. The whole subplot (in the second novel) where a third of a planet's population with "useless" jobs are suckered into leaving their home, and then make a very poor show of colonising another world, I found vaguely insulting. With that kind of outlook, where does Adams suppose authors fit in? The more utilitarian the society, the higher the suspicion tends to be towards the Arts - a society without hairdressers could easily also be one without storytellers.
Mostly, however, I do find the jokes funny, but think that they are hammered home too incessantly. There are a lot of conversations were someone says something quirky, and then someone else (usually Arthur) indignantly asks "What do you mean [repeats quirky phrase]?" It sometimes takes ages for Arthur's friend Ford Prefect, an alien in disguise who saves him when Earth is doomed, to get a point across to the dense Arthur, which becomes wearying. I find myself longing for Ford to explain clearly from the beginning and for Arthur simply to accept the mind-bending concepts thrown at him. There are also a lot of whimsical asides about how certain things were invented, the thoughts of a sperm whale accidentally created in space etc. Meanwhile the plot meanders and the characters, while amiable, aren't really fleshed out. The flamboyant Zaphod Beeblebrox (I'm relying on IMDB's spelling here) is the only one who can be called colourful.
But almost all of my gripes could boil down to me not being on the right geeky wavelength. Probably, I should stop complaining about plotlessness and embrace the quirkiness and the whimsy. That I'm not quite able to do that (while, as I said, having a good enough time with these audiobooks) may be proof that, Doctor Who and Star Wars interests notwithstanding, I'm really a square.
Which wouldn't come as a surprise to Adams. In the Hitchhiker's Guide universe I, as someone working (broadly speaking) within the civil service, most closely resemble the unspeakable Vogons - mean-spirited, venal creatures who write absolutely appalling poetry. And I'm fine with that.
