Mike's Reviews > Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic: From the Minds Behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python

In his introduction, Douglas Adams explains how‘Starship Titanic’ came about as a result of a throwaway line in the HHGG. Much later, when writing a videogame around the premise of a titanic starship that disappeared, his publishers wanted a novel to coincide with the game’s release. Adams didn’t have the time so ex-Python Terry Jones was asked to do it instead. Okay, I’ll be charitable and assume some of the plot holes were due to the novel’s structure having to run parallel to a videogame, but that still doesn’t excuse the embarrassingly childish SF, the irritating characters, or the juvenile humour. Worse still, open the book at a random page and you’ll see lines of dialogue ending in exclamation marks. It’s like everyone is shrieking all the time. Maybe it’s just me but ye gods those exclamation marks were annoying, especially when they were married to the previously mentioned weaknesses. If the book had been a physical copy rather than an ebook I’d have drop-kicked it into the nearest bin.