Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic
Terry Jones
241 p.

Pan Books, 2003
(first published 1997)

Back cover blurb:

At the centre of the galazy, a vast, unknown civilization is preparing for an event of epic proportions, the launch of the greatest, most gorgeous, most technologically advanced spaceship ever built - the Starship Titanic.

An Earthling would see the ship as something really, really big, but rather less provincial onlookers would recognize it as the design of Leovinus, the galaxy’s most renowned architect. Before the launch Leovinus is having one last little look round and begins to find that things just aren’t right; poor workmanship, cybersystems out of control, robots walking into doors. How could this have happened? The Starship Titanic is THE SHIP THAT CANNOT POSSIBLY GO WRONG…

While the galaxy’s media looks on the following morning, hugely, magnificently, the fabulous ship eases away from the construction dock, picks up speed, sways a little, wobbles a bit, veers wildly and just before it can do untold damage to everything around it, appears to undergo SMEF (Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure). In just ten seconds, the whole, stupendous enterprise is over. And our story has just begun…

I like Douglas Adams. Douglas Adams is funny; he’s good. I like Terry Jones. Terry Jones is funny; he’s good; he’s part of Monty Python. Somehow, due to this immense liking of both of the “creators” of this novel (the original idea comes from Douglas Adams, who at the same time was doing a computer game with a similar plot - Terry Jones was pulled in after voicing one of the characters), one might expect that I wouldn’t like this book. However, I do. Of course, there are moments when I feel that Jones is trying too hard, and not all the jokes are funny. The main part of the jokes are funny, and that is the point. It doesn’t have the strongest plot ever, but again, it is not the plot that’s the point. Admittedly, I can’t say what is the point.

The characters are all very funny and actually interesting. In many books with lots of humour you might expect extremely flat characters. The characters in Starship Titanic are definitely not flat. They are amusing and they change throughout the course of the book. The ensemble is rather small, with only six important characters. Of course, four or these might be considered as main characters. Still, they are different enough to not be mixed together.

When I read this book, I had a lot of fun. It was an easy book to read, and it went quick. My smile seldom faded.