So, these are the slides for the first optional discussion of the optional extra material on Douglas Adams, along with some additional notes that I used while discussing it. Today's discussion focuses on the Hitchhiker's Guide itself; my overarching attempt is to situate the novel (and the series) theoretically at the intersection of several literary traditions. Our next discussion will develop these concepts by focusing on the excerpts from the next three novels in the series.

And what's happened to the Earth?

Ah. It's been demolished.

Has it, said Arthur levelly.

Yes. It just boiled away into space.

Look, said Arthur, I'm a bit upset about that.

Ford frowned to himself and seemed to roll the thought around his mind.

Yes, I can understand that, he said at last.

Understand that! shouted Arthur. Understand that!

Ford sprang up.

Keep looking at the book! he hissed urgently.

What?

Don't Panic.

I'm not panicking!

Yes, you are.

All right, so I'm panicking, what else is there to do? (39; ch. 5)

Discussion: how is this similar to and different from other apocalypses that we've seen so far?

Several observations: Well, first off, what does the apocalypse get for Arthur Dent? Perhaps most notably, it gets him out of his rut. As we've discussed in several contexts this quarter, the understanding of "the world" is integrally tied to individual notions of identity. Adams presents a much more positive examination and consideration of the apocalypse than, say, McCarthy; Arthur Dent is a stodgy sort of Everyman who is liberated from his (stereotypically British) sense of who he is by being forced out of his day-to-day habits and understandings (you might think of Heidegger's notion of "the World" and the way in which it is constructed of references and practices). Of course, it is also a much more entertaining and amusing apocalypse than the others we're looking at this quarter, and my hope is that those of you who are following along the Adams track will find it to be a relief from what can otherwise seem to be the unmitigated horror of the apocalypse.

Just a quick summary of some of the more prominent features of the SF genre. Theoretically, much more could be said, but I take these to be the major features with which we need to be concerned in our discussion of Adams. A bit more specific situation is coming in a few minutes.

If you're going to be around during summer session B this year, and have an interest in these matters, I will be teaching a course on SF.

Again, thinking of the world as he [Prosser] knew it sets up a potentially interesting set of observations about the world. Prosser's world is not the earth itself, nor is it the Galaxy to which Arthur is about to be exposed, but is rather that set of ideas and people and references with which he is accustomed to interacting.

Looking at the first quote is a worthwhile way, I think, of looking at humor as Adams understands and deploys it. Things are not always what they seem is, of course, a proverb that is deployed so often that it has become a truism, an observation that functions as a unit in a discursive situation — a vacuous appeal to the authority of its own past deployment that is not evaluated as a logical proposition but which is supposed to be taken on faith as a nugget of wisdom. Of course, it is in fact true in many ways that things are not what they seem — you might look to our forthcoming discussion of Althusser for examples of how this is the case — but the phrase, when deployed, demands either immediate agreement or disagreement, not reasoned debate, because it has been deployed in so many different situations that it has ceased to have a fresh meaning; it is simply a conglomerate block. Moreover, the phrase as it stands is not obviously applicable to any particular situation; there are no criteria specified for determining whether any particular thing or situation is one of those things which are not always what they seem.

At first glance, Adams seems simply to be deploying this truism. On a closer reading, however, he subverts it in a subtle way, by playing off two different ascriptions. Note that Adams does not simply assert that things are not always what they seem, though this assertion is embedded in his sentence. Let us treat the phrase things are not always what they seem as a proposition, P. In this case, Adams's assertion has a logical form much like P is an important and popular fact. Adams is not (merely) evaluating this proposition, P, with regard to its truth value; rather, he is describing the proposition by assigning two attributes to it: it is important, and it is popular. What is the relationship between these two ascriptions (important, popular)?

Again, there are several pertinent observations that could be made, but I'll content myself with two. To say that P is important is not to assert that it is true, but merely that it has utility of some sort — perhaps social utility. Adams is himself observing here that the proposition is not generally evaluated with regard to its truth-value, but rather that it serves a discursive function unrelated to its logical evaluability. The second ascription — that P is a popular assertion — is also unrelated to P's truth-value, but rather to the degree to which it has been successfully deployed as a meme.

These two observations are not unrelated, but operate in different ways. What is worth noting is that my reduction of Adams's sentence to the form of a logical proposition and its ascriptions (P is an important and popular fact), above, distorts it — not in terms of its literal meaning, but by changing the way in which the reader parses it. Adams's own phrasing (It is an important and popular fact that …) creates a sense of micro-level suspense in the reader, causing him/her to wonder how the assertion is concluded. It is necessary, after the sentence is read in its entirety, to consider it retrospectively to understand it; and on this retrospective reading, the ascription important brushes against the ascription popular in complex ways, causing both to set up a dynamic, unstable triad with the assertion the the logical proposition P is a fact, and bringing to mind a number of other proverbs that involve some or all of these elements (e.g., the assertion from the inspirational poster so common in California elementary schools, What is popular is not always right; what is right is not always popular).

Slartibartfast's statement, the middle one in the slide above, parodies the assertion that a revelation will occur in a satirical way, and is probably best dealt with in connection with the observations on satire, below.

Again, I'm just situating Adams in relation to a specific set of generic traditions. Do look at the full version of the painting and find Adams on there for a diagram of how he fits into the tradition and what he's developing from and working with.

Again, I'm just pointing out a few things that Adams is explicitly working with and parodying.

These bullet points are excerpted and adapted from a lecture for English 140 during summer term of 2012. Slightly more information is available from that slide show, although it's focused differently. Adams, of course, is working explicitly within this English-language tradition of satire, and I'd like to focus on two specific objects of his satiric focus.

One of these targets of Adams's satire — and this is true throughout the Hitchhiker's Guide series — is bureaucracy. Here, Adams does not merely assume that the reader shares his viewpoint: there are a number of people, of course, who are likely to identify with Prosser, as the spokesperson for progress and development. (Note, here, that Adams is also parodying the general progressivist stance of science fiction, a topic that we'll move on to in a few minutes.) Adams here re-frames the situation by expanding its scale — the demolition of Arthur's house is a small-scale version of the demolition of the Earth (Adams goes to great lengths to make this painfully obvious), and the Vogon destruction of the Earth puts Prosser in the same position as Arthur (and thereby reveals him to be a hypocrite).

Is Muad'Dib's death to be followed by the moral suicide of all men? Is that the inevitable aftermath of a Messiah?

Then you admit him Messiah! the voice from the crowd shouted.

Why not, since I'm the prophet of his times? The Preacher asked. (Frank Herbert, Children of Dune, 223-24)

---

I spare not a single unit of thought on these cybernetic simpletons! he boomed. I speak of none but the computer that is to come after me!

Fook was losing patience. He pushed his notebook aside and muttered, I think this is getting needlessly messianic. (Hitchhiker's Guide 113; ch. 25)

Another object of Adams's parody is the generic tropes of the science-fiction tradition — I have chosen Frank Herbert's Dune series as one of several explicit objects of parody, though there are other possibilities. (Dune has been described as the best-selling science-fiction novel of all time, and its five sequels were also — though decreasingly — successful; Herbert's son continues to make money from the franchise.) Herbert's work fits firmly within the SF tradition and takes its ideas quite seriously. Here, I'm just pointing out the way in which Adams incorporates elements from traditional SF novels while subverting and redirecting them for his own purposes.

Fascinating trade, said the old man, and a wistful look came into his eyes, doing the coastlines was always my favorite. Used to have endless fun doing the little bits in fjords … so anyway, he said, trying to find his thread again, the recession came and we decided it would save a lot of bother if we just slept through it. So we programmed the computers to revive us when it was all over.

The man stifled a very slight yawn and continued.

The computers were index-linked to the Galactic stock-market prices, you see, so that we'd all be revived when everybody else had rebuilt the economy enough to afford our rather expensive services.

Arthur, a regular Guardian reader, was deeply shocked at this.

That's a pretty unpleasant way to behave, isn't it?

Is it? asked the old man mildly. I'm sorry, I'm a bit out of touch.

He pointed down into the crater.

Is that robot yours? he said.

No, came a thin metallic voice from the crater, I'm mine. (102-03, ch. 22)

There are two things I find of primary interest here. One is that Adams's discussion here is a humorous critique of speculative capitalism in a form that is particularly relevant in our current financial situation. The Magratheans, like the speculative financiers of our own time, have drained the economic network by appropriating all available value — in fact, the economic redistribution has been so complete that the economy itself has collapsed entirely. (You might profitably think of this in comparison with the extraction of all value inside the asylum by the inmates of the third ward in Blindness.) Like the speculative capitalists who crashed the economy in 2008, the people actually causing the problem are immune from suffering its effects, and manage to ride out the problems that they have caused for everyone else.

One of the factors governing the selection of chapters from Adams was my desire to highlight Marvin and give a fair trajectory of what he has to say in the series. In this particular excerpt, Marvin serves to highlight one of the basic questions that are concerning us throughout the quarter: What does it mean to be human? Though Marvin is, of course, a robot, he serves as a boundary figure who invites the reader to consider which characteristics of "the human" are relevant in considerations of rights and how we deal with other conscious beings.

Our next optional lecture will deploy the frameworks that we have considered today in a consideration of the excerpts from the next three novels in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy.