For a long while you’re not actually sure what species the characters are, what their defining features are, if they even have gender, and/or how many limbs they have.
You just know what they’re like from their cutting remarks to one another.
It’s a series that focuses solely on plot and has a very loose definition of identity (and it’s awesome)
90s_hacker@reddthat.com
on 14 Jul 13:20
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The first one instantly made me think of Douglas Adams
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
on 14 Jul 13:32
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I can see the similarity but IMO this isn’t that close to Douglas Adams.
Edit: did DA make a lot of puns and wordplay? Specifically taking well-known phrases but using their literal interpretation?
Sekoia@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 14 Jul 18:17
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Well, in the first bit of the Hitchhiker’s guide, there’s:
“You’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
Which does fit, even if it’s not necessarily a “well-known phrase”
NeatNit@discuss.tchncs.de
on 14 Jul 19:41
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His dark green rubbery skin was thick enough for him to play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics, and play it well, and waterproof enough for him to survive indefinitely at sea depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.
Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape
something like these, perhaps? There are probably better examples, I just skimmed through the first couple chapters of Hitchiker’s Guide to the galaxy
This is Tiffany, walking back home. Start with the boots. They are big and heavy boots, much repaired by her father and they’d belonged to various sisters before her; she wore several pairs of socks to keep them on. They are big. Tiffany sometimes feels she is nothing more than a way of moving boots around.
Then there is the dress. it has been owned by many sisters before her and has been taken up, taken out, taken down and taken in by her mother so many times that it really ought to have been taken away.
A few pages later
She ran out of her hiding place with the frying pan swinging like a bat. The screaming monster, leaping out of the water, met the frying pan coming the other way with a clang.
It was a good clang, with the oiyoiyoiyoioioioioinnnnnnggggg that is the mark of a clang well done.
Terry Pratchett — The Wee Free Men
And Corporal Nobbs… well, anyone like Nobby had unlimited reasons for not wishing to be seen by other people. You didn’t have to think hard about that. The only reason you couldn’t say that Nobby was close to the animal kingdom was that the animal kingdom would get up and walk away.
It is said that the gods play games with the lives of men. But what games, and why, and the identities of the actual pawns, and what the game is, and what the rules are — who knows?
Best not to speculate.
Thunder rolled…
It rolled a six.
Terry Pratchett — Guards Guards
I think Douglas Adams might fit even better though.
The major problem—one of the major problems, for there are several—one of the many major problems with governing people is that of whom you get to do it; or rather of who manages to get people to let them do it to them.
To summarize: it is a well-known fact that those people who must want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it.
To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.
Douglas Adams — The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
I love Douglas Adams and HHGttG probably did more to inform my politics than any other single source, and it feels completely relevant today. If anything, Adams wasn’t cynical enough when writing Zaphod.
LilB0kChoy@midwest.social
on 14 Jul 20:03
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Christopher Moore as well! Let me go find some snippets.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
threaded - newest
Everyone counting legs, nobody counting arms.
My lady had a limb for every day of the week!
Don’t ask what the Friday limb was…
Is there an author that writes like this? I would like to read an entire book of this.
Check out Ann Leckie’s Ancillary Justice series.
For a long while you’re not actually sure what species the characters are, what their defining features are, if they even have gender, and/or how many limbs they have.
You just know what they’re like from their cutting remarks to one another.
It’s a series that focuses solely on plot and has a very loose definition of identity (and it’s awesome)
The first one instantly made me think of Douglas Adams
I can see the similarity but IMO this isn’t that close to Douglas Adams.
Edit: did DA make a lot of puns and wordplay? Specifically taking well-known phrases but using their literal interpretation?
Well, in the first bit of the Hitchhiker’s guide, there’s:
“You’d better be prepared for the jump into hyperspace. It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.”
“What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?”
“You ask a glass of water.”
Which does fit, even if it’s not necessarily a “well-known phrase”
I’ll take it, and I stand corrected.
something like these, perhaps? There are probably better examples, I just skimmed through the first couple chapters of Hitchiker’s Guide to the galaxy
Terry Pratchett Discworld books? From memory the ones about witches at least had a good bit of it.
A few pages later
Terry Pratchett — The Wee Free Men
Terry Pratchett — Guards Guards
I think Douglas Adams might fit even better though.
Douglas Adams — The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
I love Douglas Adams and HHGttG probably did more to inform my politics than any other single source, and it feels completely relevant today. If anything, Adams wasn’t cynical enough when writing Zaphod.
Christopher Moore as well! Let me go find some snippets.
Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal
Noir
Fluke: or, I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings
Bloodsucking Fiends
Depending on what specifically appeals to you, you’d probably like Literary nonsense aithors or Absurdist fiction authors.
Someone’s been playing Sons of the Forest