What if, instead of prodding poor Arthur Dent into another adventure, Douglas Adams’s third or fourth attempt at a Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy book had involved a totally different cast of characters doing their thing in another corner of a generally goofy sci-fi universe?
Like I could imagine a couple of books involving the daily lives of the planet builders of Magrathea that could have a similar vibe to Discworld books involving the Unseen Academy, maybe a try at some bumbling space cops who actually have reasons to throw themselves into the teeth of danger, maybe a book about the time Ford Prefect’s terrible research lead him to become the accidental ruler of an entire planet, maybe a story about Scoodlewiff Mazariblan’s attempt to rob the biggest casino on Damogran and the ways it goes horribly, comedically wrong, etc, etc, I am pretty stoned right now and just riffing here, damnit now I wanna live in the timeline where Adams didn’t have a heart attack in his late forties and said “Hey what if I rub the serial numbers off of Ocean’s Eleven, set it in space, made a couple tangential references to the Guide, and left Arthur Dent to live a quiet life well off-stage for once?”
(This comes out of discussing how Pratchett’s first Discworld books were promoted as “like the HHGTTG but for fantasy!”, and thinking about how every single Rincewind-focused story has the same essential problem as all of HHGTTG: a main character whose constant desire is to just find a nice quiet place to slack off instead of “saving the galaxy” or whatever.)
Mirrored from Egypt Urnash.