Newsgroups: alt.fan.douglas-adams
Subject: Re: Young Zaphod
From: fenick1@husc10.harvard.edu (Sharon Fenick)
Date: 13 Aug 92 09:02:36 EDT
Organization: Harvard University Science Center

In article <1992Aug11.184502.29984@u.washington.edu> ichabod@carson.u.washington.edu (Mark Hancheroff) writes:
>Could someone please explain Young Zaphod Plays it Safe. Who were the designer people. What the hell did it mean. It totally went over my head.
>
>Thanks.

A simple answer to your first question is "no."  I doubt anyone can really
satisfactorily explain this story.  As a matter of fact, when all the
"which book will _Mostly Harmless_ be?" arguments are bandied about, the 
thing that really gets on my nerves is when people count "Young Zaphod..." as
the 5th book.  It's not a book.  It's a story.  That's why I call it "Young
Zaphod..." instead of _Young Zaphod..._ and of course, since I know how to post
to this news group, my opinions must be the standard to which all others are 
compared.  Isn't that the way it works?

Anyway, I'd like to consider it a book, and if I had read it through the tenth
time and not thought "What the hell did it mean?" (see? you're not alone.) I
might consider it a book, but as it stands, it's a story.

It's not a bad story, even though I can't conceive of flying filing cabinets,
and this last time through I came up with a few observations that might
have been gone over several billion times before I joined this group, and if
so, I humbly apologize.

The first thing, is that in terms of the time frames, this seems to be a 
"prequel" because Zaphod doesn't seem to be head of the galaxy at all, and
hey, Mr. Adams might have been saying this big time by putting that "Young"
in the title, whereas I used to think that he was just being silly and 
cryptic.  Then again, he probably was, and I'm probably being silly.  I tried
to think about this time-frame-wise, I mean, the easiest story to write and
add to the HHG corpus would be one that happened way before the main four
books, or on that happened after, to different people, to avoid contradictions.
The before, I'd venture, is "Young Zaphod..." and from what I hear the after
might be _Mostly Harmless_.

Anyway, apart from a few thinly, almost transparently veiled political messages
(substitute for "stealing resources from the past" the idea of "stealing
resources from the future" and you've pretty much got it, I'd say) the story 
is basically Adams showing us, again, how well, and humorously he can write,
and how he can play around with language at the same time as he plays around
with our minds.  The three people who escape to our sector of space are 
obviously intended to be three actual people around at that time, one of
whom is obviously Reagan, babbling about the Shining City on a Hill, and I'd
really love to hear any other suggestions as to the identities of the others.

The story is just Adams being Adams, writing and embellishing, and if you
get the plot [rescue operation and it's results, basically] then that's about
all you can do.  I mean, I suppose one could read any of the first 4 books
of the trilogy and ask, "What the hell did it mean?" and the closest you could
come to an answer is 42, and that really doesn't work very well. 


In any case, hope this was at least a bit lucid, and I'd welcome further comments,
either to me via email or to the group about this story.

Sharon Fenick

"There's an actor who hopes to fit the bill
Sees a shining city on a hill
Step up close and see he's blind, wined and dined..."
	George Harrison, who is awesome and didn't deserve the idle
	trashing he got in _Last Chance to See_.
Newsgroups: alt.fan.douglas-adams,rec.arts.drwho