Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic

by Terry Jones, Douglas Adams

Genres: Action & Adventure; Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure

Synopsis

Read by Bill Nighy.

From the minds of Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy) and Terry Jones (Monty Python) comes Starship Titanic, the hilarious novelization of the third-best adventure game of 1999.

Welcome on board the Starship Titanic.
The Ship that Cannot Possibly Go Wrong.

At the centre of the galaxy, 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 following morning, while the galaxy’s media looks on, 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 . . .

Release date: December 18, 2007

Publisher: Ballantine Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

None of them could have told you how long the attack went on for, but it seemed like several lifetimes to the three figures huddled on the Captain's Bridge. The noise, the vibration, the crashing and bucking of the giant Starship went on and on. . . .

When it was all over, they waited and then stood up, trembling and shaking. The first wave was returning to the main fleet; meanwhile, a second wave was peeling off.

"Here they come again!" yelled Dan, and he and Lucy ducked down once more beneath the console. But The Journalist remained standing, with a curious expression on his face.

Lucy and Dan braced themselves for the gunfire . . . but it didn't come. Instead there was an odd "rather unmartial" banging on the hull of the ship.

"Yassaccans!" muttered The Journalist. Both Lucy and Dan assumed this was another alien expletive and remained under cover, but then The Journalist nudged Dan and said: "Look!"

Dan cautiously put his head above the console and peered out of the window: the second wave of spaceships had pulled up all around the Starship, and an army of short and stocky spacesuited figures were swarming over the hull, hammering and welding as they went.

"What the blazes?" asked Dan.

"They're repairing the damage," explained The Journalist. "Yassaccans are like that! They hate injuring hardware!"

Meanwhile the voice boomed out over the loudspeakers again: "We shall recommence our attack as soon as the first damage has been repaired! If you do not surrender, we shall board and dispose of everyone we find!"