Review: The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is ridiculous and sublime.

A short time after reading the classic The Hobbit for the first time, I just finished Douglas Adams’ famous The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s odd, witty, surprising, quite compelling and rather short.

Coming in at just over 150 pages, it’s not a huge tome, but it is an engaging one, following the hapless Arthur Dent as he lurches from one bypass disaster to another, ably assisted by his alien friend Ford Prefect. It’s quite hard to describe events beyond that without spoiling things, but suffice to say the pace is swift, the writing is charming, the strange, surreal sense of humour is fantastic, and it’s really good.

So give it a read, if you haven’t already.

Thaddeus

Review: The Book of Jhereg, by Steven Brust

I first read this something like a decade and a half ago, and have vague memories of liking it. But tastes can change.

This book is actually a three-in-one deal, with the stories Jhereg, Yendi, and Teckla included. All follow the first person dramas of Vlad Taltos, human assassin in a world of Dragaerans (elves), with rich and powerful friends, and usually rich and powerful enemies too.

My reading speed has tended to be on the slow side lately, but I made surprisingly rapid progress with both the start and end of the book (well, books). The writing style is fast-paced and dialogue heavy, with less in the way of description and more in the way of things happening. That’s not to say the plot twists are overdone, just that the story keeps ticking over nicely (in this regard it’s the opposite of the pros and cons of Tad Williams’ Memory, Sorrow, and Thorn series).

Whilst there’s backstory to the world the action almost entirely occurs within a single city, in which Vlad’s an underworld figure who inherited a title his father bought with the family fortune, such as it was, enabling him to have some status among the Dragaerans. The stories are set apart in terms of time and don’t progress in chronological order. I didn’t have an especial problem with this, although it’s a perhaps unusual choice.

The first, Jhereg, sees Vlad tasked with an extremely tricky assassination, with potentially dire consequences if he can’t achieve it quickly (not least his own impending death). The second, Yendi, occurs before this, and has Vlad facing a threat from a rival underworld boss with rather more backing than he’d expected. And the last, Teckla (perhaps my favourite), sees Vlad’s wife getting caught up with some revolutionaries amongst the lowest ranking elves and humans. I don’t want to get into more detail than that, but I did end up reading about half the last book in a single sitting I found it so engaging.

If you’ve never tried Steven Brust’s stuff I can recommend this as an introduction. The only thing stopping me getting more is that I already have a comically enormous to-read list. But when it’s time to buy something new this series will be one of the things I consider.

Thaddeus

First Thoughts: Stellaris (PS4)

Stellaris is a real time with pause strategy game that’s been out for quite some years now, especially for PC. Being a console peasant, I’ve only just gotten around to getting it. So, is it mind-bendingly complicated or easy to get into?

Yes.

It’s complicated. There are multiple resources/currency types, huge timescales, diplomacy, internal political factions, bureaucratic limitations and various policies, as well as racial bonuses and disadvantages you can give yourself.

And yet despite that, I haven’t had too much difficult so far with my first game. The tutorial tips are really useful, and, although complex, everything seems to make intuitive sense. I’ve made some mistakes, which is to be expected for a complicated game the first time it’s played, but nothing horrendous (probably should’ve built more starbases and fewer districts).

Let’s start at the beginning. There are preset races/civilisations you can play as, or you can make your own. I toyed with being Cosmic Dragons or a reptilian version of Rome (may create those later) but decided to go with the British Space Empire, exporting tea, cricket, and intergalactic violence to anyone who crosses me. There’s a range of cosmetic stuff you can play with, as well as gameplay mechanics such as boosting how adaptable your species is (handy for colonising more worlds). Another cool feature is that empires you create may then appear in your future games as AI civs (you can enable or disable this feature as you like for each individual empire).

Start up the game and you’ve got your homeworld, a small military force, and civilian ships. These last ships are the most immediately useful. Constructions ships create mining facilities, and can build starbases in other systems, claiming them for your empire and enabling the constructions of mining operations. Science ships fly about surveying everything so you know which systems are worth claiming. They also analyse anomalies which can yield significant benefits (mostly scientific, but one example of something different would be that found a ship way more advanced than anything I had, trapped in the gravity of a planet. I tried and succeeded to retrieve it, substantially boosting my military capacity).

It’s a really laid back game. Mostly. The vast distances can mean that if you get caught short militarily you end up unable to defend if your ships are too far from the action.

Other empires can have wildly varying attitudes towards you, based on xenophobia/xenophilia and how similar/far away you are from them. Butter them up with trade deals (or gifts), or crack some skulls and go to war (I did this and claimed two systems from the Figyar Star Commonwealth, including a natural bottleneck to stop them annoying me in the future).

The speed can be varied from slow to average to fast, as well as pausing possible pretty much any time you like. There’s a really nice level of creative writing with the varied anomalies and special research projects that I appreciate. Still relatively early days (I’ve been playing for less than a week), but right now I’m enjoying it a lot. Recently formed a federation with my best alien friends, and a third member just joined, putting us in what I hope is pretty good shape.

I have to admit to a perverse desire to try playing it in German. I’ve played quite a few games that way, and it’s the only reason I can remember more than a handful of words.

Thaddeus

Review: The Hobbit, by JRR Tolkien

Tiny bit late to the party, but I was glad to finally get around to reading this classic, decades after checking out Lord of the Rings and The Silmarillion. Didn’t go into entirely blind as info is not only revealed through the Lord of the Rings but I also saw this at the theatre (although that was probably over 20 years ago. My main memory was of Bard having a powerful voice).

I’ve got to say I rather enjoyed it. The slightly old-fashioned adventure, allowing for moments of fear and trepidation without wallowing in grimdark woe, and some clever twists and turns combine with a charming storytelling style and rapid pace to make it quite the page-turner.

The story, you may be shocked to learn, involves a hobbit, which is a chap or lady even smaller than a dwarf (which you likely know already). Also known as halflings, they tend to keep to themselves, but one, Bilbo Baggins, finds himself whisked away by Gandalf the Grey and a dozen or so dwarves intent on reclaiming a huge mound of treasure.

There’s just one or two problems. The treasure is miles away and a perilous journey is required. And the treasure is guarded by a dragon called Smaug, who prefers murder by the bucketload to equitable distribution of wealth.

And so we follow Bilbo, a kind-hearted fellow and altogether a fish out of water, as he travels with Gandalf and the dwarves far from his comfortable home, facing numerous woes I shan’t spoil here. It’s a good read and faster paced, as you would expect, than its famous (and perhaps slightly fat) cousin, The Lord of the Rings.

I’d recommend it to fantasy fans, and suspect it’s more accessible than either the large LOTR, or The Silmarillion (which I like a lot but know the style isn’t to everyone’s taste).

Thaddeus