00:00SPEAKER- Brad?
00:01SPEAKER- Yes?
00:02SPEAKER- I fulfilled a lifelong dream this weekend.
00:04SPEAKER- What's that?
00:04SPEAKER- Well, when I was a little boy, I saw a movie,
00:06SPEAKERyou may have heard of it, it's an indie,
00:08SPEAKERit was a small production by 20th Century Fox
00:10SPEAKERcalled Star Wars, and it was about a young farm boy
00:14SPEAKERwho grew up to save the rebellion
00:18SPEAKERand defeat a fascist empire.
00:20SPEAKER- He fought a war in the stars?
00:22SPEAKER- He flew an X-wing star fighter
00:26SPEAKERand he used it to blow up the bad men.
00:28SPEAKER- Oh, wow. - And I have done that now.
00:30SPEAKERAnd a lifelong dream has been fulfilled.
00:33SPEAKERI put on a virtual reality headset,
00:35SPEAKERit's a new bleeding edge technology.
00:38SPEAKERAnd I got in the cockpit of a star fighter
00:41SPEAKERand I shot up a bunch of TIE fighters
00:42SPEAKERand then got killed over and over and over again
00:44SPEAKERin multiplayer online.
00:46SPEAKER- You sat in the X-wing?
00:47SPEAKER- I have been in the X-wing.
00:49SPEAKER- You went inside the X-wing.
00:50SPEAKER- I have held the flight stick, I have a throttle,
00:53SPEAKERI have done it all.
00:54SPEAKER- Oh, did you go all the way?
00:56SPEAKER- I spent a lot of time finding controls.
00:58SPEAKER- You got fully kitted out on that thing?
01:00SPEAKER- Look, I don't have pedals.
01:01SPEAKERI think pedals might have to be an add-on
01:04SPEAKERat some point in the future if I stuck with this thing.
01:05SPEAKER- Is there a hotas, that's the question?
01:07SPEAKER- I have hotassed all the way down.
01:10SPEAKER- Okay, let's commit.
01:11SPEAKERI'll give it to you.
01:14SPEAKERI figured I would just do the Xbox controller on this one.
01:17SPEAKER- I had the hotass from when I briefly thought
01:20SPEAKERI was gonna get deeply into Elite Dangerous.
01:24SPEAKERAnd then I played enough Elite Dangerous
01:25SPEAKERto realize I wasn't going to get into Elite Dangerous,
01:27SPEAKERbut I was past the return window at that point.
01:29SPEAKER- There you go.
01:31SPEAKER- It turns out the hotass used to be a lot cheaper
01:33SPEAKERthan it is in a post-Microsoft Flight Sim 2020
01:36SPEAKERand X-Star Wars Squadrons world.
01:38SPEAKER- Hang on to that thing.
01:39SPEAKERIt might be a lifeline for you at some point.
01:41SPEAKERYou could trade it for 10 pounds of beans
01:43SPEAKERin our coming future.
01:45SPEAKER- Yeah, you got some tomato seeds,
01:48SPEAKERyou got a little bit of soy.
01:50SPEAKERYeah, I traded you a hotass for that.
01:52SPEAKER- So you could use it as a T-bar over here.
01:54SPEAKER- Is there a term for like,
01:56SPEAKERthat's kind of like actually the main reason
01:57SPEAKERI would want to use a controller in a VR headset
01:59SPEAKERis it's one unified control surface
02:03SPEAKERthat you never take your hands off of.
02:04SPEAKERSo there's no like blind fumbling to find a thing.
02:07SPEAKERLike even- - It's not really a problem.
02:09SPEAKER- Really?
02:09SPEAKERLike even to keep a mouse for me in VR,
02:11SPEAKERI kind of, you kind of just for a second,
02:12SPEAKERif you move your hands, you have to feel around
02:14SPEAKERto get them back to, you know, the home row position
02:16SPEAKERor in the case of like, how many pieces is your setup?
02:19SPEAKERA stick, a hotass, just two?
02:21SPEAKER- A stick and a throttle, yeah.
02:22SPEAKER- Okay, so I guess your hands are kind of planted there,
02:24SPEAKERbut anytime you have like things,
02:25SPEAKERyou have to move your hands back and forth between,
02:28SPEAKERthere's a perception issue.
02:30SPEAKER- So there are buttons.
02:31SPEAKERI feel like I brought the hotass in
02:32SPEAKERwhen we did that rebel galaxy outlaw thing last year,
02:36SPEAKERwhen you had me come in to do a quick look
02:38SPEAKERfor you with that.
02:39SPEAKER- Were you in VR for that thing?
02:40SPEAKER- No, no, no, there's no VR.
02:42SPEAKERThey don't have 3D cockpits, so there's no VR.
02:44SPEAKER- Oh yeah, well that's what I'm talking about.
02:45SPEAKER- But I brought the hotass, it's X 52.
02:47SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:49SPEAKER- It was, it worked like,
02:51SPEAKERso there's buttons, there's like toggle buttons
02:54SPEAKERbelow the stick that you have to kind of hit occasionally
02:56SPEAKERto manage power distribution and stuff like that,
02:58SPEAKERbut it's been fine.
03:00SPEAKERI'm not having to take,
03:01SPEAKERlike I'm not, I'm using the right hat switch,
03:05SPEAKERthe left hat switch, the throttle hat switch
03:07SPEAKERfor targeting stuff.
03:08SPEAKERThe main thumb hat switch is for like power distribution.
03:12SPEAKERSo like one way is shields, one way is weapons,
03:14SPEAKERone way is energy, is engines,
03:16SPEAKERand the other one is rebalance it.
03:18SPEAKERAnd then like shield distribution,
03:20SPEAKERall that stuff is spread out spread along
03:22SPEAKERthe other buttons and it's working pretty well.
03:23SPEAKER- So you're so good at flying an X-wing,
03:25SPEAKERyou could do it blind.
03:26SPEAKER- I mean, I don't know if I could do it blind.
03:28SPEAKERI have my targeting computer on.
03:29SPEAKER- Yeah dude, you heard the man,
03:30SPEAKERturn off the targeting computer.
03:32SPEAKER(upbeat music)
03:50SPEAKER(upbeat music continues)
03:59SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made at TechPod.
04:01SPEAKERI'm Will.
04:02SPEAKER- Hi Brad.
04:03SPEAKER- Hello.
04:04SPEAKER- Hi.
04:04SPEAKER- Hey Brad.
04:05SPEAKER- What's up?
04:06SPEAKER- Anything happening this week?
04:07SPEAKERAnything exciting going on in the world?
04:08SPEAKER- No, just been hanging out.
04:09SPEAKERYou know, it's been like a quiet week around here really.
04:09SPEAKER- Yeah, there's nothing, just no news.
04:10SPEAKERNo news is good news.
04:11SPEAKERThat's what we always say.
04:12SPEAKER- Happening in any category of my life at all.
04:15SPEAKER- No.
04:16SPEAKER- Just steady as she goes.
04:18SPEAKER- Smooth sailing.
04:20SPEAKER- It's a good raconteurous song.
04:22SPEAKERI found out that the president had the coronavirus
04:25SPEAKERwhile I was streaming.
04:26SPEAKER- What?
04:27SPEAKER- Wait, have you not been paying attention
04:28SPEAKERto the news at all?
04:29SPEAKER- Of course I do.
04:30SPEAKER- It's a spoiler.
04:31SPEAKER- Dude, I've done nothing but look at the news
04:32SPEAKERover the last 24 hours.
04:34SPEAKER- I found out while I was streaming
04:35SPEAKERand I'm pretty sure I laughed
04:37SPEAKER'cause I thought it was a joke.
04:37SPEAKER(laughing)
04:39SPEAKERI thought somebody was goofing on me.
04:41SPEAKER- Yeah, you do.
04:42SPEAKER- Yeah.
04:43SPEAKER- All of life is a joke right now.
04:44SPEAKER- But you know what?
04:46SPEAKER- A dark, a sick dark joke.
04:48SPEAKER- You know what is a light, fun--
04:51SPEAKER- A fluffy, airy joke.
04:51SPEAKER- Funny dystopia, yeah, exactly.
04:54SPEAKERIt's something that's full of laughter and joy and mirth.
04:57SPEAKER- Yeah, what's that?
04:58SPEAKER- Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
04:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
05:00SPEAKER- So about a month ago, we promised that we hit
05:03SPEAKERa thousand backers on the old TechPod Patreon,
05:06SPEAKERwhich you can find at patreon.com/techpod
05:08SPEAKERand back for as little as $2 a month
05:10SPEAKERto gain access to the fabulous TechPod Discord.
05:13SPEAKER- That's cool.
05:14SPEAKER- Or $5 a month to get a patron exclusive content,
05:16SPEAKERwhich we posted earlier this week,
05:18SPEAKERwhere we talked about projects that we have in process
05:20SPEAKERand a bunch of other stuff.
05:22SPEAKERBefore the weird thing happened,
05:26SPEAKERwe promised that we would read
05:27SPEAKERHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
05:28SPEAKERwhich is my millionth time and your first time,
05:32SPEAKERwhich is why this is exciting to me.
05:33SPEAKERI'm very excited to hear how you found
05:38SPEAKERyour 50 years-ish after it was written,
05:42SPEAKER45 years after it was written,
05:44SPEAKERhow you found Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,
05:45SPEAKERDouglas Adams' seminal 1979 work.
05:48SPEAKER- Well, it's scarcely more than 45 minutes
05:50SPEAKERsince I finished, it's still pretty fresh on my mind.
05:53SPEAKER- Okay, coming in hot.
05:55SPEAKER- What a peculiar book this is.
05:57SPEAKER- That seems right.
05:58SPEAKER- I don't mean that in a bad way,
05:59SPEAKERbut I just, I wasn't quite, I mean,
06:02SPEAKERwell, there are two ways to put this.
06:05SPEAKERI was not prepared for the way that book is structured
06:09SPEAKERand the general--
06:10SPEAKER- In the complete lack of a traditional three-act structure?
06:13SPEAKERLike the tone of it, the weird like reality bending
06:16SPEAKERkind of metaphysical aspect of it
06:18SPEAKERreally threw me for a loop.
06:19SPEAKEROn the other hand, so much of that,
06:22SPEAKERso much of the details have been absorbed
06:24SPEAKERinto my brain through osmosis over the years
06:26SPEAKERthat like a lot of stuff about it.
06:29SPEAKERShould we talk freely about it?
06:30SPEAKERCan we just assume everybody's listening to this, has read it?
06:33SPEAKER- I feel like 40 years is outside the spoilers.
06:37SPEAKERSo, okay, let's do the full, let's do the warning.
06:40SPEAKER- Okay, 'cause the example I was about to give
06:41SPEAKERis practically the end of the book.
06:42SPEAKERSo just wanna make sure.
06:44SPEAKER- If you haven't read "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,"
06:46SPEAKERabsorbed the radio play, watched the TV series,
06:48SPEAKERread the dramatized audio version,
06:51SPEAKERor watched the movie featuring Sam Rockwell
06:55SPEAKERand Zooey Deschanel and Mos Def.
06:59SPEAKER- We should talk about the movie later.
07:00SPEAKERWe'll be there.
07:01SPEAKER- If you haven't absorbed any of that
07:03SPEAKERand you're concerned about spoilers
07:04SPEAKERfor this 40-year-old property
07:06SPEAKERthat you probably already know every fucking thing about,
07:09SPEAKERmaybe don't listen to this episode
07:10SPEAKERuntil you finish reading the book.
07:11SPEAKER- Yes, yes, you've been warned.
07:12SPEAKERWe'll be here.
07:13SPEAKER- Kinda like I did.
07:14SPEAKERLike I felt like as I read through it,
07:15SPEAKERI knew about half of it already.
07:17SPEAKERThe 42 is the example I was,
07:19SPEAKERobviously the classic example I was about to give of-
07:22SPEAKER- No, the great answer.
07:23SPEAKER- Like the microsecond that anything
07:27SPEAKERhinting at a great question and answer
07:30SPEAKERstarted being talked about,
07:31SPEAKERI like 42 popped into my head immediately.
07:33SPEAKERLike that was just trying to think of some other examples.
07:36SPEAKERLike "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish"
07:38SPEAKERwas something I was very well acquainted with.
07:42SPEAKERMarvin the Paranoid Android.
07:45SPEAKER- Marvin is an eternal character as far as I'm,
07:48SPEAKERZaphod Beboprocks kind of is too.
07:50SPEAKER- Is that?
07:51SPEAKERSo that was actually like maybe my number one question
07:53SPEAKERcoming into this was how you say his first name.
07:55SPEAKER- Zaphod.
07:56SPEAKER- Zaphod?
07:57SPEAKER- Zaphod.
07:57SPEAKER- Is that canonical?
07:59SPEAKER- Canonical, yes, that is from the radio play.
08:01SPEAKER- Okay, okay, well that's as about
08:02SPEAKERas authoritative a source as you can get.
08:05SPEAKERSo it's a technically preceded the book, right?
08:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say for your,
08:09SPEAKERthe reason this book is weird
08:11SPEAKERis that it is an adaptation of a serialized radio drama
08:14SPEAKERthat was a radio comedy that was run on BBC Radio
08:17SPEAKERin the '70s and early '80s.
08:19SPEAKERAnd as a result, each chapter doesn't quite,
08:25SPEAKERbut almost, what is it he says?
08:28SPEAKERHe says it doesn't quite,
08:32SPEAKERit resembles but doesn't quite entirely not resemble tea
08:35SPEAKERor something like that.
08:36SPEAKER- Sure, oh, you mean like a nice brownie
08:40SPEAKERand motion generator.
08:41SPEAKER- Yeah, yes, hold on.
08:43SPEAKERWe get to the brownie and motion generator in this book?
08:44SPEAKER- Like a couple, yeah, that's totally in there.
08:46SPEAKERThat's how they arrived at the infinite improbability drive.
08:49SPEAKER- Oh, that's right.
08:50SPEAKERThe brownie and motion simulator
08:51SPEAKERcomes up in a later book as well.
08:53SPEAKER- I see, I see.
08:54SPEAKER- So it's hard for me to talk about specific plot beats
08:57SPEAKERand stuff in this book
08:58SPEAKERbecause I've listened to the radio dramas a lot
08:59SPEAKERover the years while I was driving back and forth places
09:01SPEAKERand commuting and they're not quite entirely dissimilar,
09:06SPEAKERbut they are like the beats are the same,
09:08SPEAKERbut then there's different,
09:09SPEAKERthere's a whole bit in the first radio play about shoes
09:12SPEAKERthat they just don't get into it all here.
09:14SPEAKERAnd I don't think towels make an appearance
09:16SPEAKERin the radio play.
09:18SPEAKERYeah, towels are very important in this book.
09:20SPEAKER- I thought, well, I thought towels after the initial,
09:23SPEAKERafter the preamble about towels,
09:24SPEAKERI thought that they would figure heavily
09:25SPEAKERinto the actual plot, but they kind of didn't so much.
09:28SPEAKER- See, this is why your Western expectation of Chekhov's gun
09:33SPEAKERdoes not apply in this one
09:35SPEAKER'cause sometimes the payoff for a one-off joke about towels
09:38SPEAKERwill take two or three books to get to
09:40SPEAKERin the world of Hitchhiker's Guide.
09:41SPEAKER- I would believe that.
09:42SPEAKERI'm trying to find, so I've got here the omnibus tome
09:46SPEAKERof all five books in front of me.
09:48SPEAKERIn the introduction,
09:49SPEAKERcheekily titled "A Guide to the Guide,"
09:52SPEAKERsome unhelpful remarks from the author.
09:56SPEAKERHe breaks down the history of this thing pretty exhaustively
10:00SPEAKERand I'm trying to find, I know he listed it in here
10:03SPEAKERand I can't find the list.
10:04SPEAKERHe explains very explicitly which episodes of the radio play
10:09SPEAKERformed the basis of the novel.
10:12SPEAKER- Oh yeah, it's like one, three, five, seven,
10:13SPEAKERand most of 13 or something like that.
10:16SPEAKER- I found the list here of the second book,
10:17SPEAKERwhich is "Stress Around at the End of the Universe," right?
10:20SPEAKERThat book is episodes seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, five,
10:24SPEAKERand six in that order.
10:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
10:27SPEAKER- But I don't see the list of episodes of the first one.
10:29SPEAKERBut yeah, like not exactly
10:32SPEAKERyour typical three-act structure here.
10:34SPEAKERLike it really,
10:36SPEAKERI don't know what I found more discombobulating.
10:38SPEAKERThe fact that-
10:39SPEAKER- Like the weird jumps and the fact that
10:41SPEAKERthere's very little continuity between chapters sometimes.
10:43SPEAKER- Like I don't know if,
10:44SPEAKERI don't know what was more baffling.
10:48SPEAKERThe fact that there was careening
10:50SPEAKERfrom one episode to the next
10:51SPEAKERor the bizarrely deus ex machina-esque way
10:55SPEAKERthat they got there.
10:56SPEAKER- So one of the things that's important to know,
10:59SPEAKERand I feel like this was covered extensively
11:01SPEAKERin Neil Gaiman's first book, ironically,
11:05SPEAKERwhich was a biography of Douglas Adams
11:08SPEAKERand the story of the making of "Hitchhiker's Guide."
11:12SPEAKERIt's called "Don't Panic."
11:12SPEAKERIt's very, if you like "Hitchhiker's Guide,"
11:14SPEAKERit's worth reading.
11:15SPEAKERIt's really funny to read proto Neil Gaiman prose
11:19SPEAKERin a non-fiction setting now.
11:23SPEAKERBut literally there were times on the radio drama
11:26SPEAKERwhere they were recording the first part of an episode
11:29SPEAKERand he was writing the last pages of the episode
11:31SPEAKERwhile the recordings were happening.
11:33SPEAKER- So that was the other thought that occurred to me
11:34SPEAKERas I, especially as I got to the end of the book,
11:37SPEAKERwhich kind of, would you say, I like the book.
11:40SPEAKERI don't want to sound like I'm pooping on it
11:42SPEAKERor anything here.
11:43SPEAKERI enjoyed it quite a bit.
11:44SPEAKERIt's just like, it's just weird.
11:45SPEAKERIt's really, it's just not, it's very unconventional.
11:49SPEAKERSo.
11:49SPEAKER- I mean, it just stops.
11:51SPEAKERHe's literally.
11:52SPEAKER- That's what I was gonna ask you was, is it fair,
11:54SPEAKERdo you think it's fair to say
11:55SPEAKERthe book kind of doesn't have an ending?
11:57SPEAKER- Oh no, the book absolutely doesn't have an ending.
11:59SPEAKER- He even said in interviews,
12:01SPEAKERit may even be in the preamble in the introduction
12:04SPEAKERthat like he blew through three deadlines
12:06SPEAKERand the publisher said, hey, where are you?
12:08SPEAKERAnd then he right here and they're like,
12:09SPEAKERokay, we'll just send that over and we'll publish it.
12:11SPEAKER- That's exactly what I was gonna ask was,
12:13SPEAKERhe says in the intro, they literally said like,
12:15SPEAKERwell, we're just gonna send a car over.
12:16SPEAKERJust give us what you have.
12:17SPEAKER- Like that last line in the book,
12:19SPEAKERthe, oh, let's see, it's where he says,
12:25SPEAKERit's like a Zaphod Beeblebrox line.
12:27SPEAKERAnd it seems like something that was totally just written
12:31SPEAKERby like the editor of the book.
12:33SPEAKER'Cause it doesn't even seem like a Zaphod Beeblebrox line.
12:38SPEAKERYeah, it's okay, maybe hold tight, said Zaphod,
12:42SPEAKERwe'll take in a quick bite at the restaurant
12:43SPEAKERat the end of the universe,
12:44SPEAKERwhich is literally the title of the next part,
12:46SPEAKERwhich is, you know, yeah.
12:49SPEAKERIt's like, it is, it is in terms of like,
12:54SPEAKERthere's so much in here that structurally shouldn't work.
12:56SPEAKERLike there's lines like an expression of deep worry
13:02SPEAKERand concern failed to cross either of Zaphod's faces.
13:05SPEAKERLike that is absolutely not the right way
13:06SPEAKERto write that sentence
13:07SPEAKERif you're writing grammatically correct English,
13:09SPEAKERbut it works.
13:10SPEAKER- Sure, it gets the point across.
13:11SPEAKER- Yeah.
13:15SPEAKERYou know, this is another one of my favorites.
13:17SPEAKERWhen you're cruising down the road in the fast lane,
13:19SPEAKERyou lazily sail past a few hard driving cars
13:21SPEAKERand you're feeling pretty pleased with yourself
13:23SPEAKERand then accidentally change down from fourth to first
13:25SPEAKERinstead of third,
13:26SPEAKERthus making your engine leap out of your hood
13:28SPEAKERin a rather ugly mess.
13:29SPEAKERThat's the first punctuation in that sentence.
13:32SPEAKERAnd then it finishes,
13:33SPEAKERit tends to throw you off your stride
13:34SPEAKERin much the same way that this remark
13:36SPEAKERthrough Ford Prefect office.
13:37SPEAKERHe could have just said,
13:38SPEAKERFord Prefect was mildly confused by this, but like-
13:42SPEAKER- But it's a very evocative way to describe
13:44SPEAKERexactly the feeling that he had.
13:45SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, it's beautiful.
13:48SPEAKERAnd there's like 10 of these,
13:50SPEAKERthere's another one I highlighted on this page
13:51SPEAKERthat is, you know, when Ford meets Zafod for the first time,
13:57SPEAKERand he's like, oh, I said we've met.
13:59SPEAKERAnd Ford is like, what the fuck are you talking about, monkey?
14:02SPEAKERAnd he says, Ford rounded on Arthur
14:04SPEAKERwith an angry flash in his eyes.
14:05SPEAKERNow he felt he was back on home ground.
14:07SPEAKERHe suddenly began to resent having lumbered himself
14:10SPEAKERwith this ignorant primitive
14:11SPEAKERwho knew as much about the affairs of the galaxy
14:14SPEAKERas an Ilford-based Nat knew about life in Peking, right?
14:18SPEAKERIt's just, right.
14:20SPEAKER- The prose is delightful and unwieldy and bad.
14:23SPEAKER- A lot of flourishes in there, for sure.
14:25SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:26SPEAKER- I feel like by the end of like the first chapter,
14:29SPEAKERI started to appreciate why this book
14:31SPEAKERwould be such a like formative experience
14:34SPEAKERor a formative work for a young nerd.
14:37SPEAKER- It was-
14:38SPEAKER- It was, well, sorry, go ahead.
14:40SPEAKER- No, no.
14:41SPEAKER- Like specifically, it was the moment for me
14:43SPEAKERwhere he's laying in the mud,
14:44SPEAKERtrying to prevent the destruction of his house.
14:47SPEAKERAnd he basically outlogics the functionary
14:50SPEAKERwho was there to preside over the destruction of his house
14:53SPEAKERinto laying in the mud for him
14:55SPEAKERand stopping the destruction of his own house
14:57SPEAKERwhile he goes and has a beer.
14:59SPEAKER- Yeah.
14:59SPEAKER- You know, purely through some kind of like logical trap
15:02SPEAKERthat he lays for this guy, you know?
15:04SPEAKERIt's like, all right, I realized it like immediately,
15:06SPEAKERlike, oh, this book is playing fast and loose
15:09SPEAKERwith like the rules of reality and like metaphysics
15:12SPEAKERand logic in a way that like a kid
15:15SPEAKERwho was a little bit too smart for his own grade
15:17SPEAKERwould really get into.
15:18SPEAKER- Well, that makes sense.
15:19SPEAKER- It's funny you say that because one of my dads,
15:23SPEAKERmy parents' friends' second wife,
15:25SPEAKERwho is also one of my parents' friends,
15:27SPEAKERbut she was much younger than them,
15:29SPEAKERhanded me this book when I was probably
15:30SPEAKERsomewhere between 10 and 12.
15:32SPEAKERSo I was like in fifth or sixth grade probably.
15:34SPEAKERAnd she handed me this, she said,
15:35SPEAKER"Do you like Star Wars, right?"
15:36SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah."
15:37SPEAKERShe's like, "You like funny stuff, right?"
15:38SPEAKERAnd I was like, "Yeah."
15:39SPEAKERShe handed me this big book that had a giant,
15:41SPEAKERlike smiley green guy with thumbs up
15:43SPEAKERthat said, "Don't panic" on the cover.
15:45SPEAKERAnd she's like, "Read this, you'll really like it."
15:47SPEAKERAnd I read it and I really liked it.
15:49SPEAKERAnd I read it probably 10 more times
15:51SPEAKERover the next few years, but it was such a,
15:54SPEAKERcompared to the other stuff I had been exposed to,
15:56SPEAKERthe other books that I'd been exposed to,
15:59SPEAKERit was so profoundly weird,
16:01SPEAKERboth in its kind of British colloquialisms
16:05SPEAKERand in addition to talking about foreign,
16:09SPEAKERlike in addition to talking about outer space stuff
16:12SPEAKERthat I actually, I know which star is Beetlejuice, right?
16:15SPEAKERLike I can look at it and find it in the sky.
16:17SPEAKERI don't know where the hell Ilford is, right?
16:20SPEAKERThat could have been a made up place.
16:21SPEAKERWhen he was talking about being on a field
16:22SPEAKERoutside Innsbruck, Austria in the preamble,
16:26SPEAKERthat could have been a made up place
16:27SPEAKERfor all I knew in Northeast Tennessee in 1986
16:30SPEAKERor whatever year it was.
16:32SPEAKERSo it was being exposed to something
16:38SPEAKERthat the prose was both so flourishing and weird
16:42SPEAKERand unsettling in some places even,
16:46SPEAKERreally shaped my search for stuff.
16:50SPEAKERAnd it actually, like I went to the library
16:52SPEAKERand asked the librarian, hey,
16:53SPEAKERI've read the Hitchhiker's Guide book.
16:55SPEAKERAnd she's like, well, you're probably too young for that.
16:56SPEAKERAnd I was like, yeah, it worked out.
16:58SPEAKERSo I was like, do you have anything else that's like that?
17:00SPEAKERAnd then she pointed to me and Mark Twain
17:01SPEAKERand I bounced off of that immediately.
17:03SPEAKERAnd it was like, maybe not.
17:04SPEAKER- It's from a different era, I get where they maybe
17:07SPEAKERsaw some overlap there.
17:10SPEAKERI found it to be pretty, I don't know,
17:13SPEAKERpretty perceptive around certain like sociological
17:16SPEAKERand economic topics and stuff too,
17:17SPEAKERabout like the wealth hoarding of, God, what is it?
17:23SPEAKER- Magrathea. - Magrathea.
17:24SPEAKER- Magratheans. - Yes, yes.
17:25SPEAKERThe collapse of the galactic empire
17:27SPEAKERdue to the wealth hoarding of the Magratheans.
17:30SPEAKERThe kind of- - Seems a little prescient.
17:31SPEAKER- The kind of the cynical nature
17:33SPEAKERof like self-serving politicians
17:35SPEAKERwho just sort of prioritize like aesthetics
17:38SPEAKERover substance and policy, you know?
17:41SPEAKER- You see, it's safe on people rocks is a parable
17:44SPEAKERand not winning for our time, yes.
17:46SPEAKER- Totally, except kind of like a benign,
17:49SPEAKERlike a goofball one, you know?
17:51SPEAKER- Like I mean, I'm sure that the president thinks
17:53SPEAKERhe's a benign goofball too.
17:55SPEAKER- Yeah.
17:57SPEAKER- Yeah, that stuff was very, like a lot of like,
18:02SPEAKERone of the interesting things reading this now
18:03SPEAKERis how much of the stuff that I missed
18:06SPEAKERor just completely glossed over
18:08SPEAKERwithout understanding at all,
18:11SPEAKERyou know, now versus, then versus now.
18:16SPEAKERReality TV, like in a lot of ways,
18:19SPEAKERthe stuff that they're talking about
18:21SPEAKERis a straight precursor to,
18:24SPEAKERlike when Deep Thought gives the philosophers,
18:28SPEAKERtells them, "Hey, you got $7 million years to make bank,"
18:32SPEAKERwhile I think about this, just yell at each other enough
18:35SPEAKERand people will keep watching.
18:37SPEAKER- Oh God.
18:37SPEAKER- That was, for something written in the 70s,
18:39SPEAKERlike late 70s, early 80s, holy cow,
18:42SPEAKERit was before Jerry Springer, it was before Donahue, really.
18:44SPEAKER- Or I mean, you know, or even, you know,
18:45SPEAKERbefore like the combative style
18:47SPEAKERof like 24/7 cable political programming, right?
18:52SPEAKER- There was no Real Housewives
18:53SPEAKERthat he was watching in 1980 that he was like,
18:55SPEAKER"Oh yeah, this is good, people are yelling at each other,
18:57SPEAKER"people love that shit."
18:58SPEAKER- Right, or you know, that was like not that long
19:01SPEAKERafter the, when was the famous, the Gore Vidal, Bill Buckley?
19:08SPEAKER- Oh, the debate thing?
19:09SPEAKER- That debate, yeah, the thing that kind of was the like,
19:12SPEAKERGenesis of Fox News and stuff like that,
19:14SPEAKERlike that's kind of,
19:15SPEAKERkind of echoes that a little bit, right?
19:18SPEAKERLike just, you know, a couple of philosophers getting rich
19:22SPEAKERby just yelling at each other
19:23SPEAKERand disagreeing endlessly on television.
19:26SPEAKER- All you have to do is yell enough
19:27SPEAKERand anybody can be famous.
19:29SPEAKER- Thanks for the Kardashians, Douglas Adams.
19:33SPEAKERNo, so in terms of the structure in this book though,
19:35SPEAKERone of the things that struck me is there is a lot of,
19:38SPEAKERVince Gilligan has said that their writing process
19:41SPEAKERfor Breaking Bad often was to like,
19:45SPEAKERwrite themselves into a corner and then look,
19:47SPEAKERlook at like, look around at the set
19:49SPEAKERand see what kind of tools were available to the characters
19:53SPEAKERthat could get them out of this trouble
19:54SPEAKERthey found themselves in.
19:55SPEAKERIt's how like, it's how they ended up
19:58SPEAKERwhen they had captured a guy
19:59SPEAKERand they didn't know how to capture a guy
20:01SPEAKER'cause they were new to the criming.
20:03SPEAKERThey used a U-lock and like U-lock the dude around the neck
20:07SPEAKERto the pole in a basement.
20:10SPEAKERAnd that was because they knew that he'd have a U-lock
20:12SPEAKER'cause there was a bicycle in the garage
20:14SPEAKERthat was in an earlier shot in one of the earlier scenes.
20:16SPEAKERAnd there's a lot of that here too.
20:18SPEAKERLike the difference is that where the Breaking Bad
20:22SPEAKERwriting staff would like, you know,
20:24SPEAKERuse something from reality,
20:26SPEAKERDouglas Adams would just lop off the whole inconvenient
20:28SPEAKERcorner and move on to the next thing.
20:30SPEAKERYeah.
20:32SPEAKER- Yeah, he really gives himself a lot of just like,
20:34SPEAKERvery convenient sort of logical exits
20:36SPEAKERfor a lot of situations, right?
20:38SPEAKER- Well, but it's, I mean, it's an interesting situation
20:40SPEAKER'cause like the technology,
20:42SPEAKERthe way he presents space technology,
20:46SPEAKERand this happens more in the later books,
20:47SPEAKERbut even in this one, there's a broad range of what people,
20:50SPEAKERyou know, there's like hyperdimensional,
20:52SPEAKERsuper intelligent mice that have infinite technology.
20:55SPEAKERAnd then there's like, you know,
20:57SPEAKERthe rich white people equivalent in the current galaxy,
20:59SPEAKERlike Zapod Beaver Box that have the super duper ship.
21:02SPEAKERAnd then there's just like the normal chuds
21:04SPEAKERthat we don't see a lot of,
21:05SPEAKERbut like the cops have low end gear.
21:09SPEAKERAnd when Marvin over depresses their ship,
21:13SPEAKERthe computer stops working, those guys just croak
21:15SPEAKERbecause you know, their low budget hardware stops working.
21:19SPEAKER- Sure.
21:20SPEAKER- It's like, I mean, you could say
21:25SPEAKERa lot of the outs are Deus Ex Machina's,
21:29SPEAKERbut I mean, it's a world of,
21:32SPEAKERit's the Arthur Clark thing about, you know,
21:34SPEAKERsufficiently advanced technologies
21:35SPEAKERindistinguishable from magic.
21:36SPEAKERSo, you know, is it plot armor?
21:38SPEAKERIs it magic technology?
21:40SPEAKER- The way that they arrived
21:40SPEAKERat the infinite improbability drive,
21:42SPEAKERI think is like the best example of that
21:44SPEAKERbecause the logical progression was basically like,
21:48SPEAKERwhat was it they said?
21:49SPEAKERLike the guy who invented it basically just said like,
21:52SPEAKERwell, if they say it's a virtual impossibility,
21:54SPEAKERthen that means it's actually a finite improbability.
21:57SPEAKER- Improbability, yeah.
21:58SPEAKER- So I just need to calculate exactly what those odds are
22:00SPEAKERand then feed them into this machine
22:02SPEAKERand like flip the switch and it'll just come right out.
22:04SPEAKERAnd sure enough, it did.
22:05SPEAKER- The description of the parties
22:08SPEAKERthat they use the technology for,
22:10SPEAKERthe thing about making the hostesses undergarments
22:17SPEAKERleap three feet to the left or something
22:20SPEAKERis just the kind of delightful science oversimplification.
22:30SPEAKERIt's the equivalent of using liquid carbon dioxide
22:33SPEAKERor liquid nitrogen to make your drink bubble
22:36SPEAKERat a chemistry party in college and that was, yeah.
22:43SPEAKERThe thing that I love about this book
22:45SPEAKERis that every time you start to think
22:47SPEAKERyou have an understanding of what's going on,
22:49SPEAKERunlike every other science fiction thing
22:51SPEAKERwhere there's some primitive earthling thrust
22:54SPEAKERinto a larger galactic world,
22:56SPEAKERthat Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov
22:59SPEAKERand all of those folks were writing prior to this,
23:06SPEAKERthese books are aware that this whole universe
23:11SPEAKERis gonna seem absurd.
23:13SPEAKERAnd the idea of an infinite universe
23:15SPEAKERwhere there is some life forms that look like Bic pens
23:18SPEAKERand some life forms that are like hyper intelligent shades
23:22SPEAKERof the color blue is going to be inherently absurd
23:26SPEAKERto anyone who as recently as 50,000 years ago
23:30SPEAKERwas hanging out in trees and wasn't using any kind of tool.
23:41SPEAKER- I find it to be utterly delightful.
23:44SPEAKEREven the other thing that struck me
23:46SPEAKERis how little it's dated.
23:49SPEAKER- Yeah, I was making notes
23:51SPEAKERof some of the depictions of technology in there
23:53SPEAKERand I was like, there's a couple of spots
23:55SPEAKERwhere it does feel very seventies,
23:57SPEAKERbut like it envisions-
23:58SPEAKER- Digital watches, there's a lot about digital watches.
24:01SPEAKER- The digital watch stuff stands out
24:02SPEAKERin that context for sure.
24:03SPEAKERBut I mean, the ones that seemed pretty prescient to me
24:06SPEAKERwere like, there's like the flying camera drones
24:09SPEAKERfor the TV news around when the unveiling ceremony
24:13SPEAKERfor the magic spaceship.
24:15SPEAKER- Yeah.
24:16SPEAKER- Like there's straight up cameras mounted to drones.
24:20SPEAKERIn the bridge of the heart of gold,
24:22SPEAKERthey talk about how like switches and knobs
24:24SPEAKERfor traditional control surfaces and spaceships
24:26SPEAKERhad evolved into touchscreens.
24:28SPEAKERAnd then those had just evolved
24:30SPEAKERinto gesture based kind of motion controls.
24:33SPEAKER- And also like he nailed the problem with connect.
24:36SPEAKERLike if Douglas Adams lived long enough to see connect,
24:39SPEAKERlike the problem with this
24:40SPEAKERis that you move your head the wrong way
24:41SPEAKERand all of a sudden the spaceship veers off to the left.
24:43SPEAKER- The line was something about like,
24:45SPEAKERonce you find a station that you like with that interface,
24:47SPEAKERyou just have to sit infuriatingly still.
24:51SPEAKERBut then, so we started talking about this
24:53SPEAKERbefore the episode and then you started to correct me.
24:55SPEAKERAnd so I wanna hear your answer here
24:56SPEAKERbecause you mentioned that you felt like the guide itself
25:00SPEAKERor the physical depiction of the guide in the book
25:03SPEAKERis kind of like a smartphone.
25:05SPEAKER'Cause it is-
25:06SPEAKER- The guide is depicted as something
25:08SPEAKERthat like if you were comparing it to a piece of hardware
25:10SPEAKERthat people will probably be familiar with
25:12SPEAKERwho were listening, probably like a Blackberry.
25:14SPEAKERSo it's like a screen with a whole boatload of buttons
25:16SPEAKERon the bottom.
25:17SPEAKER- Yes, that's how it's described.
25:18SPEAKERSo like the point I started to make
25:19SPEAKERbefore we started recording was
25:21SPEAKERhe came up with touchscreen interfaces
25:23SPEAKERand he came up with a pocket computer
25:25SPEAKERwith like functionally infinite information,
25:28SPEAKERbut he didn't think to marry those two
25:29SPEAKERand produce the actual modern smartphone.
25:32SPEAKERBut then you started to say that you had a reason for that.
25:35SPEAKER- Well, I mean, I think he was looking,
25:37SPEAKERI think he felt like the buttons were more practical, right?
25:40SPEAKERI think he felt like the touchscreen
25:41SPEAKERwas somewhere on that spectrum
25:43SPEAKERbetween the hardware buttons
25:47SPEAKERand the having to sit infuriating still
25:48SPEAKERto avoid changing the channel by accident.
25:51SPEAKERAnd like the interesting thing about the guide to me
25:55SPEAKERis that it was basically,
25:57SPEAKERit's basically just like an internet connected
25:58SPEAKERWikipedia terminal, which somebody made.
26:00SPEAKERI feel like that was a product
26:01SPEAKERthat somebody released in like 2005 or 2008.
26:06SPEAKERBut yeah, the buttons,
26:08SPEAKERlike the whole point of the guide
26:10SPEAKERis in his description of it.
26:12SPEAKERAnd this may be from a further book
26:13SPEAKERor from the radio play or something,
26:14SPEAKERbut it's supposed to be non-threatening.
26:16SPEAKERIt's supposed to be friendly.
26:16SPEAKERIt's supposed to make you feel better about where you are.
26:18SPEAKERAnd it's, remember it's for hitchhikers.
26:20SPEAKERSo it's for the pores.
26:21SPEAKERIt's not, this isn't,
26:23SPEAKERthis isn't some cutting edge touchscreen technology.
26:25SPEAKERThis is-
26:26SPEAKER- So democratizing gateway to the galaxy's information.
26:29SPEAKER- Yeah, five Voltairian dollars a day.
26:31SPEAKER- Yes.
26:35SPEAKER- It's amazing.
26:36SPEAKERIt was also amazing to me kind of how much of this,
26:40SPEAKERhow much of this book,
26:44SPEAKERparticularly the book impacted the like late nineties,
26:48SPEAKERearly two thousands internet monoculture.
26:51SPEAKER- Yes.
26:51SPEAKER- ThinkGeek sold a ringer,
26:54SPEAKERa blue ringer t-shirt in like the fallout colors
26:57SPEAKERwith the number 42 on it.
26:59SPEAKERFor years, I own one.
27:01SPEAKERIt became Gina's favorite nightgown.
27:02SPEAKERAnd I bought that before we moved out here.
27:04SPEAKER'Cause like it came from Tennessee with us.
27:06SPEAKER- Sure.
27:08SPEAKERWhere does the green guy come from?
27:09SPEAKERLike it's on the cover of my omnibus edition,
27:12SPEAKERlike the little dot kind of dude
27:13SPEAKERwith the tongue and the arms.
27:16SPEAKER- Who knows?
27:17SPEAKER- Really?
27:18SPEAKER- Never shows up.
27:19SPEAKER- Right, I was like, I was starting to racking my brain
27:21SPEAKERafter I finished the book,
27:22SPEAKERtrying to figure out where that cover art comes from.
27:24SPEAKERAnd I don't think it does.
27:26SPEAKER- This is an informed guess, but my guess is that,
27:28SPEAKER'cause it's not on,
27:29SPEAKERit wasn't on the UK publisher original versions.
27:32SPEAKER- Yeah, I Googled some other alternate cover arts
27:34SPEAKERfrom different editions.
27:35SPEAKERAnd it's not on every edition of the book by any means.
27:37SPEAKER- It just says don't panic on the UK ones.
27:40SPEAKERAnd my guess, I don't know for sure,
27:42SPEAKERbut my guess is that somebody in the UK,
27:45SPEAKERin the US publisher's art department said,
27:47SPEAKER"Hey, you know, books sell better
27:48SPEAKERif they have a face on them."
27:50SPEAKER- Ironically, it's only like half a face
27:52SPEAKER'cause there's no nose or eyes.
27:53SPEAKERIt's just a mouth.
27:55SPEAKER- But that guy was on the version I got in like 1985.
27:57SPEAKER- Really?
27:58SPEAKER- Yeah, he's been on all of the,
27:59SPEAKERhe was on the audio books.
28:00SPEAKERHe was on the, all of that stuff.
28:03SPEAKER- Interesting.
28:03SPEAKER- I feel like maybe he was supposed to be on the cover
28:05SPEAKERof the guide saying don't panic.
28:07SPEAKER- Okay.
28:08SPEAKER- It's unclear to me.
28:08SPEAKER- I would believe that, sure.
28:10SPEAKER- I think of him as the hitchhiker's guide
28:11SPEAKERto the galaxy blob.
28:13SPEAKER- Yeah, I can see it.
28:15SPEAKER- I don't know if it was, I don't remember if that,
28:16SPEAKERit's been a long time since I read the Neil Gaiman book,
28:19SPEAKERbut I don't know if they covered that at all in there.
28:22SPEAKER- Yeah, but yeah, like by the same token
28:23SPEAKERthat I was going through and recognizing
28:25SPEAKERa bunch of the traits of this book
28:27SPEAKERthat have permeated popular culture,
28:28SPEAKERI was also looking, I was also finding all these references
28:31SPEAKERthat have been appropriated by other things.
28:34SPEAKER- Oh yeah.
28:35SPEAKER- Like the second that the character of Trillian
28:37SPEAKERwas introduced, I was like, really?
28:38SPEAKERIs that where that came from?
28:39SPEAKERBecause I used that IM client for however long it existed.
28:43SPEAKER- Late '90s monoculture.
28:45SPEAKER- Yeah, totally.
28:46SPEAKERI was an avid Trillian user and I never had any idea
28:48SPEAKERwhere in fact, no, maybe I'm mixing.
28:51SPEAKERI was gonna say, wasn't the icon of Trillian
28:53SPEAKERlike a green dot or am I mixing that up with something else?
28:56SPEAKER- You could make the icon of Trillian a green dot
28:59SPEAKERfor your online status if you want it,
29:00SPEAKERbut I don't remember.
29:01SPEAKER- Okay, maybe I'm mixing that, yeah,
29:02SPEAKERthat might be a little bit too much.
29:03SPEAKER- I feel like it was like a blobby logo-y looking thing.
29:06SPEAKER- Too much overlap, but I have to assume
29:08SPEAKERthat's where they got the name of that IM client from.
29:11SPEAKER- Oh, 100%.
29:12SPEAKER- As soon as I saw "Paranoid Android,"
29:14SPEAKERI obviously thought of the Radiohead song.
29:16SPEAKER- The Babblefish?
29:18SPEAKERRemember Google Translate was originally called
29:19SPEAKERthe Babblefish. - Yes, okay, thank you.
29:21SPEAKERIt was killing me.
29:22SPEAKERI was trying to make a list of these before we started here
29:24SPEAKERand I knew there were at least a couple.
29:25SPEAKERI was forgetting Babblefish was a huge one.
29:27SPEAKER- Oh, no matter if all people do
29:33SPEAKERin this week's episode part of the TechPod Discord
29:36SPEAKERis talk about the things that are the same,
29:39SPEAKERthat this caused to be named something.
29:42SPEAKER- Details of this book that have leaked out
29:44SPEAKERinto product naming. - It'll be pages and pages.
29:46SPEAKER- I would love to hear more that I,
29:48SPEAKERI'm glad you thought of Babblefish.
29:50SPEAKERI noticed, I mean, I know the concept
29:52SPEAKERof the Googleplex exists outside of Google, the company,
29:55SPEAKERbut it's just a math, yeah, thing, right?
29:57SPEAKER- Right, but I do wonder if the inclusion of that term
30:00SPEAKERin this book maybe helped inform them.
30:02SPEAKER- Clearly, Sergey and Larry or somebody there early on
30:05SPEAKERwere fans, right? - Yes, right.
30:09SPEAKERThere were even like little,
30:12SPEAKERjust kind of like manners of speech in here
30:14SPEAKERthat I recognize from people I used to talk to on IRC
30:17SPEAKERback in the late '90s.
30:18SPEAKER- Oh, yeah.
30:19SPEAKER- Like just like little kind of verbal ticks almost,
30:21SPEAKERlike ways of truncating words and stuff like that
30:24SPEAKERthat I was like, huh, that explains-
30:25SPEAKER- For example?
30:26SPEAKER- Like the one that really comes to mind
30:28SPEAKERis the way that people shorten because, the word because.
30:32SPEAKER- Oh, the C-O-Z?
30:33SPEAKER- C-O-S is the one in the book that I read
30:36SPEAKERbecause like the, at least in America,
30:37SPEAKERI think that the most common way on the internet,
30:40SPEAKERmaybe not so much these days,
30:40SPEAKERbut definitely back in the kind of late '90s,
30:43SPEAKERthe most common way to truncate that word was C-U-Z, 'cause.
30:47SPEAKEROr at least in my experience. - Oh, no.
30:48SPEAKER- Really? - Oh, I think
30:49SPEAKERthat might be a regional one.
30:51SPEAKER- Okay, maybe so.
30:51SPEAKER- Anyway, like I really, I never saw,
30:54SPEAKERI saw a C-A-U-S-E with an apostrophe.
30:56SPEAKER- Oh, yeah, yeah, that one, well, that's-
30:58SPEAKER- So that hardly saves you any characters.
30:59SPEAKER- A little too formal for me, thank you.
31:01SPEAKERYeah, if you use the apostrophe,
31:02SPEAKERthat's only saving yourself one character stroke.
31:05SPEAKER- I always thought if you see C-U-Z,
31:06SPEAKERpeople are talking about their cousin.
31:07SPEAKER- Well, that was another use for it, sure,
31:09SPEAKERbut I definitely saw, anyway, like I knew somebody who,
31:12SPEAKERit's funny, all the overlap here.
31:14SPEAKERI knew somebody who spelled it C-O-S on IRC.
31:17SPEAKER- Okay.
31:18SPEAKER- They were also a big Radiohead fan.
31:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
31:21SPEAKER- They were also, I think, probably a Tiger's Guide fan.
31:23SPEAKERLike, I don't know, whatever.
31:24SPEAKERIt's just a bunch of little details from my life
31:26SPEAKERthat I picked out of this book and thought like,
31:27SPEAKERoh, that's where, that maybe is exactly where that came from.
31:30SPEAKER- Well, the weird thing about this to me is that
31:32SPEAKERI don't know, like, I don't fully understand.
31:38SPEAKERLike, I know that a lot of times,
31:39SPEAKERbecause Britain is a little bit smaller
31:40SPEAKERand because at the time there was more of a monoculture,
31:43SPEAKERyou know, there was radio, there was TV,
31:44SPEAKERbut there weren't 50 million channels
31:46SPEAKERand Netflix and all that stuff.
31:48SPEAKERLike, I don't know how much of a phenomena,
31:50SPEAKERI know that this was presented
31:52SPEAKERin "Don't Panic" as a phenomena,
31:54SPEAKERbut I don't know what a radio drama phenomena meant in 1980.
31:59SPEAKERLike, even in the UK, I don't know if that meant
32:01SPEAKERthat everybody had listened to this
32:02SPEAKERor if like a double digit percentage of the country
32:05SPEAKERhad listened to this, or if, you know,
32:07SPEAKERa million people had listened to this.
32:09SPEAKERAnd I wonder how much, like,
32:14SPEAKERthis felt a little bit like a counter-cultury
32:17SPEAKERkind of niche thing in the US right up until the point
32:20SPEAKERthat I got on the internet.
32:21SPEAKER- And then you were like,
32:22SPEAKER"Oh, wait, everybody I know has read this."
32:24SPEAKER- I was like, yeah, all these people have been,
32:25SPEAKERthey all know that, yeah,
32:26SPEAKERthere's a "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" mud.
32:29SPEAKERThere's an info, I didn't know there was an Infocom game,
32:31SPEAKERI should get that, I should play that.
32:32SPEAKER- Have you played that?
32:33SPEAKER- I've never played it.
32:34SPEAKER- Really?
32:35SPEAKER- No.
32:36SPEAKER- We should check that out maybe sometime.
32:37SPEAKER- I've been saving it, yeah, I would, yeah.
32:39SPEAKER- I mean, you know, he goes into that in the introduction
32:41SPEAKERthat he basically makes it sound
32:42SPEAKERlike every different manifestation of this work
32:45SPEAKERhas been pretty different from every other one.
32:48SPEAKERSo, have you listened to the radio play?
32:51SPEAKER- Yes, multiple times, it's very good.
32:52SPEAKER- Is it that different?
32:56SPEAKER- The thing that he said about it being like chapters one,
32:58SPEAKERthree, five, seven, and most of 14 is absolutely correct,
33:01SPEAKERyes.
33:02SPEAKER- Okay, it was kind of hard to tell in the introduction
33:03SPEAKERif he was just being self-deprecating.
33:04SPEAKER- No, but yes, but also it was true.
33:07SPEAKER- I think the phrasing is something like,
33:09SPEAKERthe novel bore very little resemblance to the radio play
33:11SPEAKERand then the computer came,
33:13SPEAKERbore very little resemblance to the novel.
33:15SPEAKER- So, for example, in the radio play,
33:18SPEAKERwhen the cops are shooting at the computer bank
33:20SPEAKERthat they're on, the computer bank blows up
33:24SPEAKERand they all think that they're dead,
33:27SPEAKERbut they're not, they're just at the restaurant.
33:29SPEAKERAnd that happens at almost exactly the same,
33:32SPEAKERlike as they're leaving Magrathea.
33:34SPEAKERBut like, there's a whole lot of confusion
33:39SPEAKERabout what's going on and it is the biggest plot jump,
33:41SPEAKERI think, in the whole series.
33:44SPEAKER- So they just skip right over Marvin convincing
33:47SPEAKERthe cop's spaceship to commit suicide?
33:49SPEAKER- Oh, they get to it.
33:50SPEAKER- Okay.
33:51SPEAKER- I don't actually know if they get to the,
33:52SPEAKERMarvin convincing the, yeah, you're right.
33:54SPEAKER- That was maybe one of the darker moments in that book,
33:56SPEAKERI thought.
33:57SPEAKER- Like, there's the, so Marvin, I think,
33:59SPEAKERwas originally supposed to be a throwaway character
34:01SPEAKERwho people ended up liking on the radio show,
34:03SPEAKERso he got to hang around.
34:05SPEAKERAnd Marvin ends up hanging around a lot in the books.
34:09SPEAKER- Interesting.
34:10SPEAKER- Like, a whole, Marvin is very good.
34:13SPEAKERMarvin's one of my favorites.
34:14SPEAKER- Well, I keep saying they,
34:14SPEAKERbut it's obviously, it's just Douglas Adams.
34:16SPEAKERDoes he run with some of the dangling threads
34:19SPEAKERat the end of this book?
34:20SPEAKERLike, what happened with Zaphod?
34:21SPEAKERAlso, I, and I'll have to cut myself off,
34:24SPEAKERI'm not used to saying Zaphod yet.
34:26SPEAKERIn my head, my head, it was Zaphod.
34:28SPEAKER- Oh, no, Zaphod.
34:29SPEAKER- Or I even wondered, I didn't think this,
34:32SPEAKERbut I even wondered if somebody might pronounce it
34:33SPEAKERlike Zapod or something like that.
34:35SPEAKER- Zaphod?
34:36SPEAKER- Yes, something like that, but Zaphod.
34:38SPEAKER- Zaphod Beeblebrox invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
34:41SPEAKER- Yes, like the mystery of whatever he did to his own brain?
34:45SPEAKERWhatever's locked in his brain?
34:47SPEAKERLike, do they revisit stuff like that?
34:49SPEAKER- There's five more books, Brad.
34:51SPEAKERIt'll work, you'll get there.
34:53SPEAKER- Okay, are they worth it?
34:55SPEAKER- Yeah, so we talked about "Dune" a couple of weeks ago,
34:59SPEAKERand my advice on "Dune" is that the first book
35:01SPEAKERis a transformative work of science fiction written,
35:04SPEAKERone of the best pieces of science fiction
35:05SPEAKERwritten in the 20th century.
35:08SPEAKERAnd each subsequent book is worse
35:10SPEAKERthan the one that precedes it.
35:11SPEAKER- It sounds like if you prize your experience
35:13SPEAKERwith that first book, you should safeguard it
35:15SPEAKERby not reading anymore.
35:16SPEAKER- Maybe the second and third books,
35:18SPEAKERif you really, really feel the need to get more,
35:20SPEAKERbut just walk away.
35:21SPEAKER- But that's not the case here.
35:23SPEAKER- These books, even the books,
35:24SPEAKERso like the fifth and the sixth books,
35:25SPEAKERthe sixth book was published posthumously.
35:28SPEAKERThe fifth book is fine.
35:31SPEAKERLike it's, but like, even the ones that are bad
35:34SPEAKERhave delightful bits in them.
35:35SPEAKERLike the fifth book has this amazing bit.
35:40SPEAKERThere's two things in it that I really love.
35:41SPEAKERI loved enough that I bookmarked them years ago.
35:45SPEAKEROne of them is this, and I'll read it.
35:50SPEAKERWhen it's about technology and failing,
35:55SPEAKERand he talks about this thing that he invented
35:57SPEAKERcalled the great ventilation and telephone riots
35:59SPEAKERof SRDT 3454, that all mechanical, electrical,
36:04SPEAKERor quantum mechanical, or hydraulic, or even wind steam,
36:06SPEAKERor piston driven devices are now required
36:08SPEAKERto have a certain legend emblazoned on them somewhere.
36:11SPEAKERIt doesn't matter how small the object is,
36:12SPEAKERthe designers of the object have got to find a way
36:14SPEAKERof squeezing the legend in somewhere,
36:15SPEAKERbecause it is their attention that is being drawn to it,
36:18SPEAKERrather than necessarily that of the users.
36:20SPEAKERThe legend is this.
36:23SPEAKERThe major difference between a thing that might go wrong
36:25SPEAKERand a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
36:27SPEAKERis that when you, a thing that cannot possibly go wrong
36:29SPEAKERgoes wrong, it usually turns out to be impossible
36:32SPEAKERto get at or repair.
36:35SPEAKER- But that's a very Douglas Adams.
36:38SPEAKER- Yes. - Passage.
36:40SPEAKER- There's also a fantastic bit about sandwiches
36:42SPEAKERin that fifth book that is worth reading.
36:45SPEAKERBut look, the first, second, and third books
36:49SPEAKERwere written all kind of in the same timeframe.
36:52SPEAKERThey tell a really specific story.
36:53SPEAKERThe fourth book was added on later.
36:56SPEAKEREach of them wraps up loose ends.
36:57SPEAKERSome of the loose ends are wrapped up
36:59SPEAKERin the bad Star Wars way, where you find out
37:02SPEAKERthat the guy in the background at the cantina on Tatooine
37:06SPEAKERwas a bounty hunter or some wanted criminal or some bullshit.
37:10SPEAKERSome of them are written wrapped up
37:11SPEAKERin the Star Trek good way, where Khan shows up
37:16SPEAKERin the second movie and you're like, "Oh, okay, it's okay."
37:20SPEAKERSo, he pays your money and he takes your chances, I guess.
37:25SPEAKER- Was he, do you know if he was still actively
37:27SPEAKERworking on this stuff?
37:28SPEAKERI mean, I guess if the last book was posthumous,
37:30SPEAKERI guess he was.
37:31SPEAKERIf he was still actively trying to extend the series
37:35SPEAKERwhen he passed away, or was he trying to wrap things up?
37:37SPEAKER- I would, I don't, I never had the chance to meet him,
37:42SPEAKERwhich was a bummer, 'cause I was just getting to the point
37:44SPEAKERthat I might've been invited to some game thing
37:46SPEAKERthat he worked on when he died.
37:49SPEAKERI feel like the maybe apocryphal stories
37:53SPEAKERabout him having problems actually being a productive writer
37:58SPEAKERare such that I would say he continued working on it
38:00SPEAKERin spite of his best efforts.
38:03SPEAKERSo, he wrote these six, five and a half books, six books.
38:07SPEAKERHe wrote two books in the Dirk Gently's
38:10SPEAKERHolistic Detective Agency series that are also very good
38:13SPEAKERand absurdist, but on earth with a little tinge of mysticism.
38:18SPEAKERThey're fantastical books set in the real world,
38:21SPEAKERis the right way to describe them,
38:23SPEAKERbut not like swords and elves and shit like that.
38:26SPEAKERIt's just like math is weird,
38:27SPEAKERand when you do weird math, weird things happen.
38:30SPEAKER- Sure.
38:31SPEAKER- And then he wrote a non-fiction book
38:33SPEAKERcalled Last Chance to See,
38:34SPEAKER'cause he was a really committed environmentalist
38:36SPEAKERand worked with the World Wildlife Federation
38:38SPEAKERand a bunch of places like that and went,
38:41SPEAKERbasically went to Africa to see
38:43SPEAKERa bunch of endangered animals and kind of use his platform
38:47SPEAKERto spread the word and let people know
38:50SPEAKERthat there's stuff worth saving.
38:51SPEAKER- Yeah, that's interesting 'cause the reason I ask
38:54SPEAKERis that in the foreword in this big tome that I've got
38:58SPEAKERby Neil Gaiman, he implies pretty strongly
39:01SPEAKERthat Douglas Adams never set out to be a writer
39:03SPEAKERand in fact, maybe didn't even enjoy being one.
39:08SPEAKER- I think that's right.
39:08SPEAKERI mean, if you look at who the author proxy
39:11SPEAKERin his books are, Dirk Gently is not the author proxy,
39:15SPEAKERFord Prefect and David B. Bulbrox aren't.
39:17SPEAKERHe's Arthur Dent, right?
39:18SPEAKERHe's a guy that's always in a little bit over his head.
39:20SPEAKER- Fish out of water.
39:21SPEAKER- Yeah, and I feel like that's absolutely the case.
39:26SPEAKER- A little down on his luck, a little, yeah.
39:28SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, kind of a little bit of a schmuck,
39:30SPEAKERa guy who's like a little swept up in events
39:32SPEAKERoutside of his control.
39:33SPEAKER- Yeah, but like he's trying to do right, right?
39:36SPEAKERLike that's the defining characters of Arthur Dent
39:38SPEAKERis that he often tries to do the right thing
39:43SPEAKERand it ends up tragically not working out for him.
39:47SPEAKER- Sure, you know, I should revise what I just said.
39:49SPEAKERI don't think it's that he didn't want to be a writer.
39:51SPEAKERI don't think it's that he didn't want
39:53SPEAKERto be a novelist necessarily.
39:54SPEAKERLike I think the foreword kind of painted him
39:57SPEAKERas like he was looking to follow in the steps
39:59SPEAKERof like Monty Python and people like that.
40:01SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, he wrote "Doctor Who" episodes.
40:03SPEAKER- Right, right, so it's like he seemed like he wanted
40:04SPEAKERto be more of a comedy and TV writer type
40:07SPEAKERand sort of fell into writing books.
40:10SPEAKER- I don't know, I like if, yeah, like it's funny,
40:14SPEAKERif I ever met Neil Gaiman, I think the thing I would talk
40:16SPEAKERto him about most is Douglas Adams rather than.
40:19SPEAKER- It's like-- - It's fair.
40:20SPEAKER- Yeah, it's-- - You know what, I mean,
40:22SPEAKERthat is like, whatever, not to get off on a tangent here,
40:24SPEAKERbut like, and I don't meet a ton of famous people
40:25SPEAKERall the time, but like I think that's a good strategy
40:27SPEAKERfor meeting your heroes or meeting famous people
40:30SPEAKERis to talk to them about something other than themselves.
40:34SPEAKER- For most people, I think that is a very good strategy.
40:36SPEAKER- Having a pre-made or ready conversation topic
40:42SPEAKERif that is something they're interested in
40:43SPEAKERrather than their own work is, it's a good strategy.
40:47SPEAKER- Exactly, so I won't spoil things for you for the future,
40:52SPEAKERbut yes, there are almost every single thread in this book
40:57SPEAKERis picked up at some point.
40:58SPEAKER- Okay, that's good enough. - The next book picks up
41:00SPEAKERexactly where this left off, right?
41:03SPEAKERYou literally come back to the heart of gold
41:05SPEAKERas they're going to get lunch, so.
41:08SPEAKER- You know, it's really, I think it's really just a result
41:10SPEAKERof the way things played out that I'm even interested in,
41:12SPEAKERlike what his life goals and stuff were,
41:14SPEAKER'cause if he was still with us, like,
41:16SPEAKERI wouldn't spend two seconds-- - You'd have a podcast.
41:18SPEAKER- Right, I wouldn't spend two seconds thinking about like,
41:20SPEAKERoh, what was he like and what were his ambitions and stuff,
41:22SPEAKERbecause he'd still be around and it just wouldn't be
41:24SPEAKERthat interesting, but because his untimely demise
41:28SPEAKERdoes give the arc of his career a little bit
41:31SPEAKERof like a tragic undertone.
41:33SPEAKER- Well, it's, yeah, and it's interesting because like,
41:38SPEAKERhe's, we all know the people, we all know people like him,
41:41SPEAKERlike he was a guy who was into computers, right?
41:43SPEAKERHe was into, he was, even when he didn't have anything
41:46SPEAKERreally he could do with a Mac, he had a Mac or an Apple II
41:49SPEAKERand was like always noodling with that
41:51SPEAKERand was sending files back and forth,
41:53SPEAKERand like we know what's, there's a Neil Gaiman,
41:58SPEAKERI think Terry Pratchett collaboration book
42:01SPEAKERwhere they made an Amazon series out of a few years ago,
42:04SPEAKERbut it's basically, they were sending a floppy disk
42:07SPEAKERback and forth in the mail, so like Neil would write
42:10SPEAKERone chapter and he would save it to the floppy disk
42:12SPEAKERand then he'd mail the floppy disk to Terry Pratchett
42:14SPEAKERand Terry would read what he wrote
42:15SPEAKERand then write the next chapter,
42:17SPEAKERand they were alternating POVs throughout this book,
42:20SPEAKERand that was the kind of stuff,
42:21SPEAKERlike he was, Douglas Adams was really excited
42:24SPEAKERabout how technology was gonna grow,
42:28SPEAKERand at the same time, like I look at how my views
42:33SPEAKERabout technology in general have been shaped
42:36SPEAKERby reading this book at a formative age,
42:40SPEAKERand it's always, I don't wanna say it's cynical
42:48SPEAKER'cause it's not, but it's like carefully metered
42:55SPEAKERexcitement always, 'cause like there's always two sides
42:58SPEAKERof every technological coin,
43:00SPEAKERwhether it's splitting the atom for the first time
43:03SPEAKERor everybody carrying a location-aware,
43:09SPEAKERalways on microphone, spying device in our pockets
43:12SPEAKERall the time, like you have to think about
43:14SPEAKERhow all of this stuff is gonna be used,
43:16SPEAKERand he gets, he spends a lot more time
43:18SPEAKERthinking about the, like it turns out
43:20SPEAKERthat the heart of gold is an ecological disaster
43:22SPEAKERfor reasons that they won't get into for like five bucks.
43:25SPEAKER- Interesting, okay.
43:28SPEAKER- And there's all sorts of interesting stuff
43:29SPEAKERthat comes along with his kind of take on tech in general.
43:33SPEAKER- Yeah, that's just, it's kind of sad looking back
43:35SPEAKERthat somebody with that kind of perspective
43:37SPEAKERwasn't around for longer.
43:39SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, I remember it was,
43:42SPEAKERhe died when I was working at Maximum PC.
43:44SPEAKER- Yeah, I was gonna say, I think it was 2001, was it?
43:47SPEAKER- It was early 2000s, for sure.
43:49SPEAKERHe was 43 years, 42 or something, 34.
43:51SPEAKER- 42 to 49?
43:53SPEAKER- He was born on the day they invented,
43:54SPEAKERthey discovered DNA, announced the discovery of DNA.
43:57SPEAKER- 49.
43:58SPEAKER- 49, yeah.
43:59SPEAKER- Yeah, was that like huge news?
44:00SPEAKERI just, I wasn't really aware of him at the time,
44:01SPEAKERso it didn't catch my eye.
44:04SPEAKER- I probably found out about it on Slashdot
44:06SPEAKERor something like that, so it was substantial.
44:09SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:10SPEAKER- You know, it was enough that we,
44:12SPEAKERenough people at the office were fans
44:14SPEAKERthat like people were bummed in talking about it
44:17SPEAKERat the water cooler and stuff like that.
44:19SPEAKER- Sure.
44:20SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:21SPEAKER- How's the movie?
44:22SPEAKERHave you seen the movie?
44:23SPEAKERI wanna say, I think it might be in the introduction
44:25SPEAKERthat he mentions in there something about
44:27SPEAKERthere's like an idea for a movie
44:29SPEAKERor like talk of there being a movie,
44:31SPEAKERbut like it has just been in some kind
44:34SPEAKERof development hell forever.
44:35SPEAKER- Yeah, so it finally came out in like 2013 or 2014, I think.
44:39SPEAKER- Yeah.
44:40SPEAKER- The movie's fine, like the movie,
44:43SPEAKERit's, I mean, when you take something
44:45SPEAKERthat's as unabashedly weird
44:47SPEAKERas Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is
44:50SPEAKERand try to transmogrify that into a movie,
44:53SPEAKERit's a challenge.
44:54SPEAKER- I was thinking that the whole time I was reading the book,
44:56SPEAKERI was just like this book,
44:57SPEAKERthe mental image that you paint of the events of this book
45:00SPEAKERis so fuzzy to begin with because the book itself
45:03SPEAKERhas such a like tenuous grasp on the rules of reality
45:07SPEAKERthat like having to depict that
45:08SPEAKERin some tangible form on screen, A, would be very hard
45:12SPEAKERfor the person having to do it.
45:13SPEAKERB, I don't think I would want to put such like rigid imagery
45:17SPEAKERto the kind of open-ended like imagination
45:20SPEAKERthat goes along with this book, does that make sense?
45:21SPEAKER- Yeah, no, like what does sleek like a running shoe
45:24SPEAKERlook like when you're talking about a spaceship, right?
45:26SPEAKERLike you can't make it look like a shoe,
45:29SPEAKERbut like that is, there's a very specific kind of curve
45:31SPEAKERthat you think about with running shoes.
45:33SPEAKER- Or like every time the Heart of Gold like bends reality
45:37SPEAKERor remakes reality in some way,
45:39SPEAKERlike having to make the depiction of that like finite
45:44SPEAKERand rigid on screen, as opposed to just the like
45:47SPEAKERendless weirdness that can be conjured in your head
45:49SPEAKERwhen you read that stuff.
45:50SPEAKERLike I almost don't think I would want to see that.
45:52SPEAKER- Well, yeah, like when they're talking about the waves
45:55SPEAKERat Guilford removing, the buildings moving up and down
46:00SPEAKERagainst the waves at Guilford, I was like,
46:02SPEAKERI wish I knew what Guilford looks like.
46:04SPEAKER'Cause of course, it's not like how you just go to Google
46:06SPEAKERimage search or Street View or something and see
46:09SPEAKERwhat this beach side town in England looks like, right?
46:14SPEAKERI feel like they did, I feel like the production design team
46:17SPEAKERdid a really good job of capturing the raw essence
46:21SPEAKERof what these things look like.
46:23SPEAKERLike the Zaphod Beeble Rock's head
46:25SPEAKERhas some pretty garbage CG on Sam Rockwell's second head.
46:29SPEAKER- Oh, so I was gonna ask who some of the casting,
46:32SPEAKERoh God, Martin Freeman is in it?
46:33SPEAKER- Martin Freeman is Arthur Dent.
46:35SPEAKER- Okay. - He's very good.
46:36SPEAKER- Okay.
46:39SPEAKER- If that movie was released in a vacuum
46:41SPEAKERwithout the other 12 different media
46:43SPEAKERthat this product had come out in,
46:45SPEAKERit would have been a delight
46:46SPEAKERand people would have been really excited about it.
46:48SPEAKERLike they've launched something into this huge fandom
46:53SPEAKERand it's fine, I'm glad it exists.
46:57SPEAKERHow's that? - Yeah, sure.
46:59SPEAKER- It didn't take anything away from Hitchhiker
47:01SPEAKERand in a franchise that is so relentlessly
47:07SPEAKERcross media, I don't think it hurt.
47:11SPEAKERYeah, it's fine, I haven't watched it.
47:13SPEAKERI only watched it once or twice.
47:15SPEAKERI should go back, I'm kind of curious
47:17SPEAKERhow they handed the whale and the petunia
47:19SPEAKERwhen I think about it 'cause that's such a profoundly weird
47:23SPEAKERand disturbing, like the whole internal monologue
47:28SPEAKERof the whale when I was 12 years old
47:30SPEAKERwas fucking hilarious, right?
47:33SPEAKERBut now it's like, oh, this is a really horrible existence
47:36SPEAKERfor this whale, this is not okay, man.
47:39SPEAKER- Yeah, but also how you would communicate
47:40SPEAKERall of that on film, I have no idea.
47:43SPEAKER- Yeah, right, like do you just have,
47:45SPEAKERis it just a third person shot of the whale
47:48SPEAKERfalling toward the ground?
47:49SPEAKERIt was like an internal monologue running?
47:52SPEAKERI don't know. - I guess that would work.
47:53SPEAKERTwo stars said Roger Ebert, for what it's worth.
47:56SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, he thought video games weren't art,
47:59SPEAKERso why would he know? - He said it's
48:01SPEAKERwhat may confuse novices.
48:04SPEAKER- Oh, it's too smart.
48:05SPEAKER- To be fair, I suppose I could see.
48:07SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, and that's the thing is like,
48:10SPEAKERif you think about a lot of the language
48:11SPEAKERthat makes this book land, it's not in dialogue necessarily,
48:15SPEAKERit's in the descriptions of the world,
48:17SPEAKERwhich are harder to convey.
48:19SPEAKERI do remember really loving the guide,
48:22SPEAKERlike they do a whole different treatment for the guide
48:24SPEAKERand they're all animated and really cool
48:26SPEAKERfor the guide entries.
48:29SPEAKERThe TV show, the BBC TV show from the '80s is,
48:34SPEAKERdo you remember the aesthetic that we had
48:38SPEAKERwhen we worked in the whiskey basement
48:40SPEAKERand we would just grab some shit from around the thing
48:42SPEAKERand make some weird prop or whatever
48:44SPEAKERfor a happy hour show or something?
48:46SPEAKERYeah, it seemed like the whole thing
48:47SPEAKERwas done on that kind of budget.
48:49SPEAKER- That's fair.
48:50SPEAKER- Yeah, they had blank wall sound stages
48:55SPEAKERand it's real low budge, the audio's bad,
48:58SPEAKERthe costumes are often made of tinfoil,
49:01SPEAKERit looks like Doctor Who.
49:04SPEAKERIt looks like if they had to make eight episodes
49:07SPEAKERof something on the budget they used
49:09SPEAKERfor the first act of a Doctor Who episode.
49:12SPEAKER- I was gonna ask you, I have basically no experience
49:15SPEAKERwith Doctor Who or Red Dwarf or any of that genre
49:19SPEAKERof kind of cheeky British sci-fi,
49:20SPEAKERbut this book is definitely part of that tradition, right?
49:25SPEAKER- So I'm not a Doctor Who guy, I bounced off
49:27SPEAKER'cause it was on PBS, which one of they got
49:32SPEAKERwhen the weather was a real specific way when I was a kid.
49:34SPEAKERSo I don't really have any kind of connection
49:38SPEAKERto Doctor Who, I've never seen Red Dwarf.
49:41SPEAKERIt feels very Python-esque
49:42SPEAKERin the kind of British absurdism.
49:44SPEAKERI do know that science fiction was maybe generally,
49:48SPEAKERas a genre, was maybe generally more popular in the UK
49:52SPEAKERat that time period than it was here.
49:55SPEAKERAnd specifically, the more,
49:58SPEAKERnot that this is hard science fiction,
49:59SPEAKERbut harder science fiction, less space opera.
50:02SPEAKERSo stuff like character-driven stuff like Star Trek
50:06SPEAKERor things about exploration and stuff like that,
50:09SPEAKERnot zooming around and rescuing space princesses
50:12SPEAKERlike Star Wars.
50:12SPEAKER- Right, yeah, not a lot of big character-driven
50:15SPEAKERmelodrama type stuff.
50:17SPEAKERI guess there's a new TV show that Hulu is doing?
50:20SPEAKER- Really? - Yeah.
50:22SPEAKER- Oh, I didn't know that.
50:22SPEAKERIt looks like they're finding some new stories
50:25SPEAKERfrom about a year ago that says they are working
50:27SPEAKERon a new one.
50:29SPEAKER- Interesting.
50:29SPEAKER- Carlton Cuse of Lost fame appears to be involved in it.
50:33SPEAKER- I didn't like Lost.
50:35SPEAKER- Well, got bad news for me.
50:37SPEAKER- It's gonna be garbage, it's gonna be bad.
50:39SPEAKER- I don't know, it doesn't look like
50:40SPEAKERthere's a lot more information about it yet,
50:42SPEAKERbut it looks like that is probably still in the works.
50:46SPEAKERSo maybe stay tuned for that, or maybe don't.
50:49SPEAKERI don't know, like I said, I might just, you know,
50:52SPEAKERread the book and be good with this.
50:55SPEAKER- If you're gonna, like, if you're gonna engage
50:57SPEAKERin two forms of media around hitchhikers,
51:02SPEAKERI would read the book, the first book and the second book,
51:04SPEAKERand then I would go back and listen to the first radio drama.
51:07SPEAKER- Okay.
51:08SPEAKER- I think it's on Audible, is where I found it last,
51:11SPEAKERand you can use your Audible credit
51:12SPEAKERand get the whole thing in one swoop.
51:14SPEAKERSo it's like, it's long.
51:16SPEAKER- I might have to work that Infocom game in there somewhere.
51:19SPEAKER- Dude, I would totally play the Infocom game sometime.
51:23SPEAKER- Is that a text parser based game?
51:24SPEAKER- It is a text, it is an Infocom text adventure
51:27SPEAKERin the vein of Zork.
51:28SPEAKER- Okay, then I almost definitely want to check that out.
51:31SPEAKER- So let's stream it sometime.
51:34SPEAKEROn the BBC site, you can play it in a window,
51:38SPEAKERand I think it's also on archive.org
51:40SPEAKERwhen I looked for it last.
51:42SPEAKERI played Starship Titanic years later,
51:44SPEAKERwhich is Douglas Adams' written, like,
51:48SPEAKER2D, it's like Post-Mist and Seventh Guest,
51:52SPEAKERbut still think, I think, 3D rendered environments
51:56SPEAKERin a lot of cases, with some video characters
51:58SPEAKERoverlaid on top of them.
52:00SPEAKERAnd it's very funny and very weird.
52:02SPEAKERIt's about a starship, obviously, that can't crash,
52:06SPEAKERthat bad things happen too.
52:07SPEAKER- Of course, expect no less.
52:10SPEAKEROh wow, this really is just a text adventure, isn't it?
52:13SPEAKER- Oh, it is a text as text adventure, yes.
52:15SPEAKER- Wow, okay, I assumed there were at least some
52:18SPEAKERrudimentary graphics involved,
52:19SPEAKERbut this is full-on Zork era, huh?
52:22SPEAKER- Well, so I think the BBC one adds some,
52:25SPEAKERthe BBC version adds some text, some graphics to it.
52:28SPEAKERLike, they draw some stuff.
52:29SPEAKER- The anniversary edition's got like a frame around it
52:32SPEAKERor something, but yeah, it's pretty rudimentary,
52:34SPEAKERit looks like, so.
52:36SPEAKER- What did you think about Slartibartfast?
52:39SPEAKER- Is that a reference to something?
52:40SPEAKERI was trying to unpack that.
52:42SPEAKER- Well, I think Slartibartfast has been,
52:45SPEAKERthere was always a guy on IRC named Slartibartfast.
52:47SPEAKER- Oh, of course, of course.
52:48SPEAKERI certainly laughed when that name wasn't introduced,
52:51SPEAKERbut I wasn't sure if there was some connection
52:56SPEAKERI was missing there.
52:57SPEAKER- I assume that's a made-up name.
52:58SPEAKERI know Douglas Adams liked to steal names
53:01SPEAKERfrom his family and friends.
53:04SPEAKER- Okay.
53:04SPEAKER- The Earthling who wrote the second worst poetry
53:09SPEAKERin the universe is a feminized version
53:12SPEAKERof one of his ex-roommates.
53:14SPEAKER- Okay. (laughs)
53:16SPEAKER- He also used a realtor's name in one of the later books
53:19SPEAKERto the point that like the realtor would get angry calls
53:22SPEAKERfrom people saying, "Hey, why'd you rip off Douglas Adams?
53:24SPEAKERThat's shitty."
53:25SPEAKER- Wow.
53:26SPEAKER- Yeah.
53:28SPEAKERIt's pretty good.
53:29SPEAKERI love, one last thing to hit on,
53:31SPEAKERI love the description of infinity
53:34SPEAKERwhen they go into the planet in Magrithia,
53:37SPEAKERthat it wasn't infinity.
53:39SPEAKERAnd, you know, they go into the hyperspace chamber
53:40SPEAKERwhere they make planets because it wasn't infinity.
53:43SPEAKERIn fact, infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting.
53:45SPEAKERLooking up in the night sky is looking into infinity.
53:47SPEAKERDistance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless.
53:50SPEAKERThe chamber into which the air car emerged
53:52SPEAKERwas anything but infinite.
53:53SPEAKERIt was just very, very, very big.
53:56SPEAKERSo big that it gave the impression of infinity
54:00SPEAKERfar better than infinity itself.
54:01SPEAKER- I thought that was a really delightful paradox
54:03SPEAKERof like the only way to depict infinity
54:06SPEAKERis to make it finite.
54:08SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:09SPEAKERIt's really, it's really good.
54:10SPEAKER- It's a very clever book.
54:11SPEAKER- A very, very clever book.
54:13SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:14SPEAKERI remain a fan.
54:16SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:17SPEAKERI'm glad I know now.
54:18SPEAKER- Yeah.
54:19SPEAKERNow you understand.
54:20SPEAKERAre you gonna keep reading Brad?
54:21SPEAKEROr are you gonna stall out here?
54:21SPEAKER- Filled in a bunch of blanks for me.
54:23SPEAKERI might keep going.
54:25SPEAKER- Don't you want to know what happened?
54:26SPEAKER- I think yes.
54:27SPEAKERI was gonna say like, I'm especially,
54:29SPEAKERespecially considering it just kind of leaves
54:31SPEAKERa bunch of stuff hanging and just sort of ends.
54:34SPEAKERYeah.
54:35SPEAKERLike I literally just need to turn two extra pages
54:37SPEAKERand I'll be into the next one.
54:38SPEAKERSo yeah, I think I might keep going for a while.
54:41SPEAKER- Cool.
54:43SPEAKERWell, I guess we've reached the point in the show
54:44SPEAKERwhere we need to thank our patrons who made this possible.
54:48SPEAKERTo everybody who signed up to get us over
54:51SPEAKERthat thousand patron hump, we're now at 1,122 patrons
54:55SPEAKERas of this moment when we were recording
54:57SPEAKERon Saturday morning.
54:59SPEAKERSo thank you all for supporting the show.
55:01SPEAKERWe really appreciate it.
55:03SPEAKER- Yes, thank you.
55:04SPEAKER- And especially thanks to our executive producer
55:07SPEAKERlevel patrons, Jacob Chappell, Andrew Cotton,
55:10SPEAKERand David Allen.
55:11SPEAKERWe really appreciate all of you.
55:13SPEAKERAnd if you want to find out how you can back the podcast,
55:17SPEAKERback to Patreon, support the podcast,
55:19SPEAKERyou can go to patreon.com/techbot.
55:21SPEAKERIf you can't, that's fine.
55:23SPEAKERWe totally appreciate just like posting on Twitter
55:26SPEAKERthat you liked the show and tell us why you liked the show.
55:28SPEAKERWe love that.
55:29SPEAKER- Yeah, leave an iTunes review, any of that stuff.
55:31SPEAKER- Yeah, like and subscribe if we were a YouTube channel
55:34SPEAKERor not so you don't have to do that.
55:36SPEAKERBut definitely if you do back to Patreon,
55:40SPEAKERyou get access to the Discord,
55:41SPEAKERwhich is just a wonderful respite on an internet
55:46SPEAKERfilled with bad things on the day-to-day.
55:48SPEAKER- Yeah.
55:49SPEAKER- Or you can come and like dip into other people's
55:51SPEAKERweird hobbies and maybe find a new weird hobby of your own
55:54SPEAKERand talk about books and talk about stuff you're enjoying.
55:58SPEAKERAnd like the Hades conversations happening
56:01SPEAKERin the Hades appreciation slash gaming channel right now
56:03SPEAKERare very good.
56:04SPEAKER- That's very informative.
56:05SPEAKERNow I can finally enter the aptly named reading room
56:09SPEAKERthat you created now that I finished the book
56:10SPEAKERand I don't have to worry about seeing people talk about it
56:12SPEAKER'cause I've finished it now.
56:14SPEAKER- Yeah, spoilers is no, fear not for spoilers.
56:18SPEAKERBut yeah, you can go to, again, that's patreon.com/techbot
56:21SPEAKERand we'd appreciate anything you can do to help us out
56:24SPEAKERand let other people know about the show.
56:26SPEAKER- Yes.
56:26SPEAKER- 'Cause the listeners, it turns out,
56:28SPEAKERare how people find new podcasts.
56:30SPEAKERYou tell your friends, "Hey, there's this dope podcast."
56:32SPEAKER- Word of mouth.
56:33SPEAKER- Yeah, word of mouth, it works.
56:34SPEAKER- It's still effective.
56:36SPEAKERI'd be curious to hear what people think about this episode.
56:39SPEAKER- Yeah.
56:40SPEAKER- Like us covering a book in some fashion.
56:42SPEAKER- A 40 year old book.
56:43SPEAKER- Yeah, we had a couple other ideas in this vein
56:45SPEAKERif people like this, but if they hate it,
56:47SPEAKERthen please let us know so we don't waste your time on that.
56:51SPEAKER- And you can send emails if you have,
56:53SPEAKERspecifically I'd like to hear things
56:54SPEAKERthat you think Hitchhiker has influenced
56:57SPEAKERto techpod@content.town.
57:00SPEAKERThat's the email address for emails,
57:01SPEAKERwhich we'll do in like three more weeks.
57:03SPEAKER- Yep.
57:03SPEAKER- So yeah, thank you all for listening.
57:05SPEAKERI guess we'll see y'all next week.
57:07SPEAKERBrad, you got any closing thoughts on this one?
57:09SPEAKER- So long and thanks for all the fish.
57:11SPEAKER(upbeat music)
57:33SPEAKER[BLANK_AUDIO]