Product Description

An Englishman’s continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea . . . Arthur Dent’s accidental association with that wholly remarkable book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has not been entirely without incident. Arthur has travelled the length, breadth and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forwards and backwards through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released and colourfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And, of course, he has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe and everything. Arthur has, though, finally made it home to Earth. But that does not mean he has escaped his fate. For Arthur’s chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa are evaporating along with the world’s oceans. Because no sooner has he arrived than he finds out that Earth is about to be blown up . . . again. And Another Thing . . . by Eoin Colfer is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth instalment of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone’s favourite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer and at least one very large slab of cheese

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #117 in Books
• Published on: 2009-10-12
• Released on: 2009-10-11
• Binding: Hardcover
• 368 pages

Review
I haven’t read anything in a long time that made me laugh as much (The Times )

Douglas Adams is reborn in Eoin Colfer’s masterful prose (Observer )

About the Author
Eoin (pronounced ‘Owen’) Colfer secured the largest ever advance for a children’s novel by an unknown author in October 2000. He cast a spell on the publishing world with Artemis Fowl, and hasn’t looked back since. Colfer lives in Wexford, Ireland, with his wife, Jackie, and their two sons.

Customer Reviews

And Yet Another Thing
I've been reading Eoin Colfer's book 'And Another Thing' and I'm pleasantly surprised to discover that I happen to like it. That's a biggie, really unexpected, as I'm one of those people who can't accept the possibility that anyone could measure up to Douglas Adams in his own (reflection of this) universe.

Let's state the obvious, shall we? Eoin Colfer isn't Douglas Adams. If he'd tried to clone Douglas's work, this book wouldn't have floated. Eoin (I think I can call him that, having shaken his hand) hasn't tried to be Douglas Adams, but he has tried to satisfy Douglas's supporters by writing in a very similar style. It reads well without sounding like a cheesy attempt to mimick the original.

I don't want to be hyper-critical (oh, gwaaan, gwaaan), but these are notes on Douglas's style and what's remained the same or changed:

1. Douglas might have been writing about aliens, but he was really talking about us. The Vogons are human bureaucrats, planning officers, for example. Douglas criticised, but never attacked his targets too hard, never losing hearts and minds. Eoin has understood this and does it very well. From an Irish writer, just following the EU's capture of Ireland, this line is Douglas at his cutting best: 'If we win, then you will join our happy group; if you win, then we keep coming back until we win.'

2. Douglas was a script writer and he specialised in dialogue. In the first two books, the proportion of quotes is very high, compared to description. In a novel, the use of witty script makes it read like a fast television show. Eoin does use speech, clearly, but the proportion has moved, i.e. more toward description.

3. The first HHG book used footnotes from 'The Book' at regular intervals and readers loved them. As with Shakespeare, the prologue became a character in its own right. The second book used fewer notes from The Guide and then the rest of the series dropped them. If you ask the fans which books they prefer, you will generally find that they like the books in direct proportion to the number of Guide footnotes they include. Eoin has probably spotted this (or at least enjoys the footnotes) as he's dropped in lots of them. The difference is...

Douglas would write a footnote which was imaginative, surreal and then made a huge arching observation about the nature of the Universe, our perception of life itself or a cutting critique of human nature. He'd ask us to look at the thing from a new perspective, to open our eyes and shine a light in our minds, then he'd follow that with a silly twist at the end (the comedy pay-off). Eoin's footnotes are surreal, imaginative, they even use planet names, species and locations from the original books, but... the guru-like thinking, the great idea, the divine revelation isn't there. the footnote is funny, it's true, but Douglas had more insight into the human condition.

4. Imagination and escapism: Douglas wrote 'alternative world fiction', also called 'alternative reality' or 'what if?' fiction. He based his universe in science, never magic, and tried to find an engineering solution for each piece of alien strangeness. The only exception to the rule, as far as I can remember, was when his characters started flying (mind over physical laws). Eoin Colfer came to HHG as a magic writer (leprechauns etc). He has successfully made the transition to Douglas's way of thinking.

5. Douglas was a cynic and sometimes even depressive. His worst book was Mostly Harmless, in which he blows up the Earth, observes Marvin's death, kills all his characters, turns his back, shakes the blood off his hands and walks away feeling relieved. HHG followers generally didn't like Douglas's final HHG book. Eoin's advantage was that he's an upbeat writer and, as an ex-fan, his book couldn't possibly be as sickening to the loyal readers as Mostly Harmless. We didn't expect him to write something as good as the Hitch-Hiker's Guide, that's too much to ask, but there was hope he couldn't cock it all up (as they did in the film version by dropping all of the best lines). I'm delighted to report that Eoin has produced a book that is much closer to Douglas's best titles than Douglas's worst ones.

I expected 'And Another Thing' to be soul-less, mid range and uninspired, just another commercial fan-fiction vehicle for the characters. I expected it to stray from Douglas's rules of writing. I anticipated that Eoin might not know Adams' universe in any great detail or 'hear the music' in his lilting prose.

Those expectations have been confounded. The book rocks.

Adam Corres

Okay, but why?
The never ending trilogy.

A surprising choice to add to the famous Douglas Adams five part trilogy, the author being a children's/YA writer.

But in order to review this we need to go back in time to when Douglas Adams was to SF what Terry Pratchett was to become to Fantasy. Clever and inventive and a very nice guy. Somewhere at home I have the first three HitchHiker books all signed and I remember how down to earth and friendly Douglas Adams was, despite half the queue being in dressing gowns and holding towels. But those fans will all be about 50 today, so Eoin Colfer had to write to appeal to the nostalgia of that generation but also those younger fans who have discovered the HitchHikers Guide over the years. There is also the point that how will the humour of the late 70's translate 30 years later when having a hand held information provider is no longer science fiction?

Well, in my view, it was okay. It raised a smile now and then as Colfer does manage to replicate some of Adams' style. It was a nice reminder of how fresh and exciting the first few HHGTTG books were but I was not overly grabbed by the story and I did wonder what the point of this actually was. This doesn't really add anything to the five book trilogy (and accepting that the last original book was by far the weakest). I was surprised to find that Colfer was a reasonably safe pair of hands in this endeavour, even if one might question the endeavour itself. I was slightly worried that it might be me, what was so fresh 30 years ago has not dated specifically, but is was 'of a time' and this new addition seems strangely out of place.

So there are some nice touches, but I am not sure it was worth the effort or fuss.

Worth buying - but don't expect Adams
3 or 4 Stars is I think fair, It still is a good book, it's just not up to the originals.

When Eoin is writing in his own style, the book is pretty good and had its own entertaining style. However the main problem is the lack of the single phrase that turns everything on its head that somehow only Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett can do. Also the footnotes/guide extracts are poor, they just aren't funny/suitably bizarre, they just felt like poor attempts at copying. I found myself skipping those parts- when I did that the book improved. I think Eoin would probably have been better off dropping the H2g2 style altogether and just continued the story in his own way.

The other thing that struck me was that Eoin was reusing parts of the earlier books in different situations with different characters - this didnt work for me, but I think that was because I started over-analyzing it.

I read the new Pratchett book unseen academicals straight after and realized that the combination of the two authors really could have produced something that would be at least as good as the originals.

Still worth a read though, if you go in with realistic expectations you will enjoy the book - if you read too many 5 star reviews and think wow its going to be great you probably will be disappointed.