I finished that series a few weeks ago and I still crave that kind of humor

  • Rottcodd@lemmy.ninja
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    1 year ago

    Well… yes and no.

    I’ve never read anything else that combines humor, wit, philosophy and phrase-turning in quite the same way.

    Some that are at least similar in one or another way:

    Lots of Terry Pratchett’s stuff - I’d especially recommend Guards! Guards! or Monstrous Regiment.

    Tom Robbins, and especially Jitterbug Perfume

    A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole

    Kurt Vonnegut, and especially Cat’s Cradle or Sirens of Titan.

    Most anything by Carl Hiaasen. He writes in a completely different genre, but with a very similar sense of the absurd.

    Will Save the Galaxy for Food by Yahtzee Croshaw.

    Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch

    • revelrous@sopuli.xyz
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      1 year ago

      ^ This is a good list. I’ll add Christopher Moore’s Lamb or A Dirty Job and the comment that imo the Rivers of London series starts a bit skeevy with how women are written, but the author shakes it out by book 2 or 3, and it’s got a great voice actor for the audio.

      • Rottcodd@lemmy.ninja
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        1 year ago

        Yeah - Lamb and A Dirty Job were both pretty good, and I liked Practical Demonkeeping too.

        I also thought after I posted that that I should’ve mentioned Tom Sharpe’s Wilt.

  • kingludd@lemmy.basedcount.com
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    1 year ago

    Well, there’s Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and The Salmon of Doubt, by the man himself.

    • ZagnutInSpace@literature.cafe
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      1 year ago

      I second this. This book is hilarious and a fantastic base for a sci-fi series. On the other hand trying to tell people about this book in public draws some strange looks. Worth it though.

  • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    If you want the same type of humor, Douglas Adams also had the Dirk Gently books.

    Terry Pratchett had a similar humor overall, particularly in his discworld series and the book Good Omens that he co-wrote with Neil Gaiman.

    But sci-fi wise, I can’t think of any.

    If you go back to fantasy, you might be okay with Robert Aspirin’s myth series. The humor there isn’t as close, but it isn’t totally different either.

    John DeChancie did the Castle Perilous series that, like the Myth series, has a similar enough vibe to the humor that it might work for you

    Sometimes the Phase series from Piers Anthony clicks in a similar enough way, but it’s a stretch to recommend for this tbh. But Piers Anthony is sometimes a hard read in any of his series, no matter how good they are

    But Adams is the only one I know of that did that absurdist, dry British humor in that exact style. People have tried, but failed, because they set out to imitate it, which is a fail from the beginning. And I haven’t run across anyone doing it in a sci-fi style that’s scratched the same itch at all

      • southsamurai@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        Discworld is a very unique set of works tbh. It ranges from absurdist slapstick with rinsewind, to poignant delicacy in the Tiffany Aching sections, with everything mixed up in between.

        It’s all set in the same world, but progresses over time and has distinct sub-series with their own tone. But there’s Pterry’s wit and sense of delight all throughout. I never read the full series until I was an adult, only a book there and there, spaced out over years since the local library didn’t have everything. But it still managed to engender a childlike sense of joy and wonder for me. There’s not much that can do that at my age lol.

  • davefischer@beehaw.org
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    1 year ago

    Stanislaw Lem sometimes wrote very serious (Solaris) and sometimes very humorous. In particular, he wrote a series of comedic stories about a pair of inventors who were always trying to outdo each other with ridiculous inventions. In one story, another inventor builds an probability amplifier, to create dragons. (Which, apparently, are real but so rare that one would never naturally occur in the history of the universe.) Strange things result.

    The probability generator story (“The Dragons of Probability”) was in the collection “The Cyberiad”, translated to English in 1974, four years before the earliest version of HHGtTG (the radio play). Adams claimed he was not aware of the Lem story when he wrote Hitchhiker’s Guide.

    Image

    Anyways, Lem is fantastic. I think “The Futurological Congress” is a good starting point, if you haven’t read anything by him before.

  • dognaut@literature.cafe
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    1 year ago

    The Discworld books by Terry Pratchett get compared to Hitchhiker’s Guide a lot – if Hitchhiker’s Guide is a sci-fi parody, Discworld is a fantasy parody. HHG I think is a bit zanier/more absurdist but they both are super witty with a side of social commentary.

  • BougieBirdie
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    1 year ago

    You might want to check out the works of Tom Holt. I’ve read The Outsorceror’s Apprentice and When It’s a Jar, and highly recommend them.

    It’s British fantasy with a healthy dose of satire, there were a couple times I was thinking the passage I read sounded like Douglas Adams