It was the first absurdist book I truly had read. There were sentences like “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.” It’s often used as an example of bad descriptions but I beg to differ. The scenarios, the characters, etc. were so pitch perfect and strange. Perfect for me. Plus a five-book trilogy? Yes, please. I even like the BBC television show with the low-tech special effects — Zaphod Beeblebrox’s second head is clearly a mannequin head. Plus the animations for the Guide were actually really good. Sadly, the recent movie was not up to snuff. The book inspired my Twitter handle that I am still holding on to today — Vogon Troubadour — despite everything. I even co-published some terrible poetry under that pen name recently, as well as made a pilgrimage to Douglas Adams’s gravesite by accident, which I feel is the best way to have done it. (We went to Highgate Cemetery because it sounded interesting and it turns out he was buried there. And so was Karl Marx. Go figure). So naturally, when I hear a book compared to Hitchhiker’s, I am interested in learning more. So here’s a list of books that I feel maintain the spirit of Douglas Adams’s absurdity and imagination. Want more Douglas Adams? Here’s a list of quotations from Hitchhiker’s Guide series. Or if you have ever wondered which character you are, check out this quiz. Peter Jobless likes to take in broken robots, and instead of incinerating them like he is supposed to, he keeps them as friends. When an object arrives at Peter’s door that he does not want or need, he ends up on a quest to try to return it. But how can the perfect system be wrong? It’s like Brave New World and Hitchhiker’s had a baby.
