The ingenuity of complete fools (Douglas Adams: Mostly Harmless)

“O Sandwich Maker from Bob!” he pronounced. He paused, furrowed his brow and sighed as he closed his eyes in pious contemplation. “Life,” he said, “will be a very great deal less weird without you!” Arthur was stunned. “Do you know,” he said, “I think that’s the nicest thing anybody’s ever said to me?”

Det er mulig at denne tar prisen for tvilsomste plott i serien (skjønt konkurransen er hard), men den er selvsagt likevel minst like morsom og elskelig som resten av serien. Arthur Dent er herlig både som tilnærmet lykkelig smørbrødmester og desperat tenåringsfar, og så er det fullt av skatter som flyservicesystemet som etter et havari begynner å infisere det lokale dyrelivet, og gjøre det om til «some kind of helpless thrashing service industry, handing out hot towels and drinks to passersby».

Aorist rods (Douglas Adams: Young Zaphod Plays It Safe)

Aorist rods were devices used in a now happily abandoned form of energy production. When the hunt for new sources of energy had at one point got particularly frantic, one bright young chap suddenly spotted that one place which had never used up all its available energy—the past.

Aorist rods! Aorist rods! Her ser vi hva en Cambridge-utdannelse virkelig kan gjøre for deg! 

Inexplicable people (Douglas Adams: So Long and Thanks for All the Fish)

Others may wish to skip on to the last chapter which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.

Men om du gjør det, går du også glipp av regnguden Paul McKenna («Let’s be straight here. If we find something we can’t understand we like to call it something you can’t understand, or indeed pronounce.») og Wonko the Sane/John Watson(!), som ikke kunne leve i et univers med detaljerte bruksanvisninger for tannpirkere. 

Men til og med bortsett fra dem syntes jeg det var romantisk, jeg, og det hadde jeg strengt tatt ikke ventet. 

How I hate the night (Douglas Adams: Life, the Universe and Everything)

“I’m afraid,” he said at last, “that the Question and the Answer are mutually exclusive. Knowledge of one logically precludes knowledge of the other. It is impossible that both can ever be known about the same Universe.”

Så det utsøkt fjompete plottet i fjerde bind bringer oss selvsagt ikke noe nærmere en forståelse av livet, universet og hele greia. Men vi får høre Marvins voggesanger, da, det er vel verdt å lese den bare for det. 

Now the world has gone to bed,
Darkness won’t engulf my head,
I can see by infrared,
How I hate the night.

1001 Tense Formations (Douglas Adams: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe)

Most readers get as far as the Future Semiconditionally Modified Subinverted Plagal Past Subjunctive Intentional before giving up,

Douglas Adams var jo i en periode Doctor Who-manusforfatter, og det er kanskje derfor han er en av de få som forstår at det virkelige problemet med tidsreising selvsagt ville vært tempus, modus og aspekt. 

One of the major problems encountered in time travel is not that of accidentally becoming your own father or mother. There is no problem involved in becoming your own father or mother that a broad-minded and well-adjusted family can’t cope with. There is no problem about changing the course of history—the course of history does not change because it all fits together like a jigsaw. All the important changes have happened before the things they were supposed to change and it all sorts itself out in the end. The major problem is quite simply one of grammar, and the main work to consult in this matter is Dr. Dan Streetmentioner’s Time Traveler’s Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations. It will tell you, for instance, how to describe something that was about to happen to you in the past before you avoided it by time-jumping forward two days in order to avoid it. The event will be described differently according to whether you are talking about it from the standpoint of your own natural time, from a time in the further future, or a time in the further past and is further complicated by the possibility of conducting conversations while you are actually traveling from one time to another with the intention of becoming your own mother or father.

Beware of the leopard (Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy)

Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one—more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to Do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Coluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God’s Greatest Mistakes and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

Noe av det aller fineste i verden må være å lese Douglas Adams om igjen fordi trettenåringen din synes referansene dine er for rustne.

Mahalath (Laini Taylor: Strange the Dreamer)

Here was the radical notion that you might help someone simply because they needed it.

Det er ikke lett å skrive om en hovedperson som er tilnærmet perfekt: følsom, empatisk, lidenskapelig, rakrygget osv. osv. Og det er nok det som plager meg mest i Strange the Dreamer – vår helt Lazlo Strange er nærmest plagsomt begavet, eiegod og prinsippfast (det verste man kan si om ham er at han ikke er konvensjonelt ansiktspen). Det er riktignok gode narrative grunner til at han må være sånn, men det er irriterende likevel. I tillegg lider boka av en stil som heller mot det pompøse og sentimentale, og der er jeg ikke særlig tilgivende. Likevel er det for så vidt ingen dårlig bok – det er ganske stilig verdensbygging (men altfor mye eksposisjon), og plottet er bra, og klarer å bruke en Balkan-aktig krigssituasjon på en riktig intelligent måte. Den har også en del bipersoner som er langt mer sammensatte og interessante enn dotten Lazlo. Og spennende er den jo, jeg slukte hele på en lang flytur.