Quote:
Originally Posted by Namekuseijin
many people just mindlessly repeat the many well-known geeky jokes but thoroughly forget the best Adams comes very subtle in the author commentary poking fun on our very own sillyness interspeced in the narration of foreign events. Finesses satire that people often fail to acknowledge in the face of space theme and geek jokes.
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I think many people don't
notice the satire, never mind "fail to acknowledge" it- which is one of the things that makes this a good book. Because it's not
just satire, it's also a darn good story with lots of good jokes. Again, like Swift- I first read "Gulliver" in a collection of children's stories when I was about 8 and had no clue there was such a thing as social satire. It's multi-layered, and can be enjoyed as just a story. Some of Swift's other writings, they're pure satire, not story, and nobody reads them nowadays unless they're English lit majors. But the story of Gulliver endured. I think it's the same thing with Adams. You
can read HHG just as a fun story and feel clever throwing around the geek jokes, and there's nothing wrong with that. And if you "get" the satire, you can feel even more clever.