![]() However, it wasn’t as funny as I had hoped. Given the concept is Adams’ and the novel is by Jones, one can expect a certain level of humor and zaniness. In the course of this inaugural voyage of the Starship, she picks up three humans on Earth, is attacked by engineers, is nearly blown up by a bomb that easily loses concentration when counting down, and is home to some very rude service bots. The Starship Titanic suffered a Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure, and the novel tells us how and what happened after, since apparently it is possible to exist afte r suffering a SMEF. This book, however, is written by Terry Jones, best known for his work with Monty Python. Starship Titanic – a book that no one will be celebrating on the hundredth anniversary of its publication.This is a book based on a video game which is based on a throw-away side-note in a very silly science fiction book called Life, The Universe, and Everything by Douglas Adams. The only redeeming features of the book are that it’s a quick read and it highlights the brilliance of Adams’ more mainstream creations. The parallels with the real Titanic are there, but the plot evolves around a forced love triangle and a story arc nearly as thin as the walls fashioned by the shoddy starship builders. ![]() In fact they had economised completely and utterly on them.īut in the world of Adams, maybe a counting down bomb can be negotiated with?įrankly it’s a terrible read. hadn’t skimped on the signs to the life-boats, they had economised on the life-boats themselves. … both and Lucy discovered that while the Star-Struct Construction No. They should head for the life-boats, but they’re in first class (which they’re not allowed into). Lucy, Dan and Nettie find themselves on board – along with ‘The Journalist’ and a parrot – with a bomb to defuse and a Titania to rebuild. While Belfast readers may think of Titania as the new sculpture outside the entrance of the Titanic Belfast centre, Adams’ Titania was the “massive cyber-intelligence system … imbued with emotions, with personality” that was to run the ship.ĭodgy builders, an unfinished vessel, Titania’s bits scattered across the ship, an insurance scam, a botched launch and a crash landing on the Earth all either led to or were caused by a SMEF: Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure. His obsession was the heart of this Starship. ![]() Neuroconnectors … bifurcated into the memory bank and the sensation retrieval system … separators and trans-joiners linking and distinguishing those two vital processes: thought and feeling. It was a ship powered as much by data as by an engine. The reader’s first sign that disaster may be looming comes with the realisation that Leovinus (the ship’s architect and designer) had “got into the habit of supervising the construction of his Starship by virtual reality and telepresence”. While Douglas Adams scripted the Starship Titanic computer game – significantly more advanced than the Infocom text adventure version of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy – it fell to Terry Jones to write up the story as a novel. It seemed an apt time to reacquaint myself with Douglas Adams’ 1997 vision of “the ship that cannot possibly go wrong”. Starship Titanic was one of the paperbacks I lifted out and set aside. ![]() Having moved house in November, I finally got around to opening up the second set of book boxes and filling the shelves of the Billy bookcases.
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