Space Humor

It happened long ago, in the dark ages of CRT monitors, when I first received a short forum message with :-) at the end. I stared at the message for a long minute(s) before giving up on decoding its meaning. It came from a well-respected friend of mine, so I responded with a short reply:

"What!?"

"You have to turn your screen 90 degrees clockwise." The answer came promptly.

My CRT was large and heavy, and it looked way too dangerous to tilt it that way, so after a little brainstorming of the problem, I concluded there's a better way of achieving the same goal.

I tilted my head 90 degrees anticlockwise.

"Aaaaaah!!!" I said promptly, and after realizing the picture, the big smile on my face slowly morphed into loud laughter. So I typed back:

"Wow!"

I didn't have to wait long for the next message:

"LOL!"

"What!?" I quickly copy/pasted my earlier message but realized I was too uninformed about new internet fashion, so I canceled the message and opened a new Netscape window instead, called www.altavista.com, and 'googled' new internet words. Ever since then, LOL has been at the top of my list of favorite acronyms. Along with all those cute ASCII faces. ;-)

In my case, and probably with many people as well, laughter is one of those most powerful cures for everything. The almighty vaccine for all diseases. Especially boredom and poor moodiness. LOL moments somehow come naturally with live social occasions and in movies, but in books they have one extra dimension. I really can't explain why that is. Perhaps funny moments in the written world often come unexpectedly and are more genuine. Take, for instance, Andy Weir's "The Martian." The hilarious parts in the book were genuinely funnier than in the film. At least with me... Well, nevermind that. So, to get to the chase, last month I read three extraordinarily funny books in the realm of science fiction and space exploration. So here they are in this short review, sorted by the count of LOL moments I had during reading. In descending order, of course.

The first one was "Where the Hell is Tesla?" by Rob Dircks. I stumbled on this one by accident, and boy, I am glad I did. Nikola Tesla is one of my favorite men in the history of people, science, and engineering, and here in Serbia, especially during my childhood, Tesla was idealized and always portrayed in a too serious manner. Anyhow, when I saw the title with Tesla playing the major role in the comedy story, I couldn't resist, and I didn't regret a single penny. It was by far the funniest book I read in a while. It had it all: decent science fiction based on cutting-edge scientific theories of the multiverse, the romance and friendship within different storylines, cute aliens, sci-fi battles of enormous proportions, great style of writing, Nikola Tesla in the most entertaining meaning of the word, and of course... Chip. I am not going to spoil the reading for you, but I will tell you this. On one occasion, I almost dropped my Kindle on the hard floor because of one of the strongest LOL moments. Enough said.

The second is "Jazz of Artemis." In the context of today's post, this is how I would name the book if I were Andy Weir. Of course, his new book is not a comedy per se. But it is not "The Martian" as well. However, in the realm of the funny moments, it is a decent sequel. Way better and much funnier. Jazz is... let me find the right word... an extraordinary girl on multiple levels. I enjoyed her adventures fully, and I do hope for the real sequel this time. I mean, with Jazz around, what can go wrong on the Moon? I really hope there will be a movie after this one as well, but not solely because of the entertainment part and all the LOL moments, especially with that Svoboda guy and his ability to manufacture various devices that do or do not belong to ESA blueprints and worksheets.

But seriously, what Andy Weir did with creating a fully functional city on the moon with both working technology and society organization is amazing and also extraordinary. It definitely deserves the motion pictures, and I am sure filming the movie that takes the entire story and action on the moon is another challenge. I am sure Ridley Scott is buzzing his mind with this as we speak.

Finally, and to use the cliché, last but not least comes the good old British humor. Something I grew up with was all the great TV shows like "Monty Python" and "Only Fools and Horses" or short comedy sketches and skits by Dave Allen, Benny Hill, Rowan Atkinson, and others. But in the flashlight of the parody novels, the throne is still with Douglas Adams and his "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". This was the first book I experienced LOL moments with, way before the LOL acronym was ever invented. "The Worst Man on Mars" by Mark Roman and Corben Duke was probably the most similar novel I read in a long while.

This is also a parody, but not really as much as its famous predecessor. This book follows plausible science fiction and doesn't go into wild imagination, like the restaurant at the end of the universe or "42". I really did like many technological backgrounds inside, like artificial intelligence or a space elevator, for example. But the humor with this one comes first, and the robots in their sitcom on Mars are something I do recommend warmly.

:-)

Refs:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25053578-where-the-hell-is-tesla
http://www.andyweirauthor.com/books/artemis-hc
https://www.amazon.com/Worst-Man-Mars-Mark-Roman/dp/1536930970
http://www.milanzivic.com/2013/06/dave-allen.html
https://www.space.com/38725-artemis-andy-weir-author-interview.html

The Funniest Book

Have you ever felt sick (medically or ... some other way) and tried to find all the symptoms online? Desperately searching to find what's wrong with you and to catch the disease by its name and to seek for the ultimate cure on the net? If you did, don't worry, you are not alone. The Internet is the smartest thing ever invented, so it's only logical to check your smartphone every time you need it, and everything will be fine.

Or it seems... Well...

Sometimes what you find online is too vague or written with too scholarly words... Other times it looks like you have symptoms of multiple diseases. Sometimes the cure you found online can only be bought on the other side of the planet. And in most cases not in regular or even legal pharmacies... What to do? Well, don't worry, there is a way out. Do what you did before the internet. Make the appointment with your doctor, and if he or she is your good friend, you will get out with the ultimate cure for every single disease out there.

The three men in a boat preview*

Yep, there is one. Here is the recipe:

"1lb beefsteak, with 1 pt bitter beer every 6 hours. 1 ten-mile walk every morning. 1 bed at 11 sharp every night. And don't stuff your head with things you don't understand."

And try to laugh on as many occasions as possible. Laughter is the best medication of all time. The other day after I read one of the thriller books with a great adventurous plot and good characters behind a very well-written script, I thought I needed to get a break from "serious" stuff, and the time came for something lighter and funnier. Therefore, I decided to stop by the nearest bookshop to search their comedy section. Imagine my disappointment after I found out there is no such shelf, even though this was one of the biggest bookstores in the town.... I didn't know what to do... If only I could remember to whom I gave that book about those men in a boat I had and read a decade or so ago. It was the last comedy book I read, and believe me, I'm not exaggerating when I say that I never had more laughter tears on my face with reading any book before. On a couple of occasions it went that far away, so I needed to stop reading in order to go and wash my red face made out of loud laughter! Well, as it happens, and almost immediately after I gave up searching for funny novels online and went to our small library downstairs to get another thriller, I saw it hiding between two James Paterson's Alex Cross books. It never left the shelf in the first place! You can only imagine my happiness. I grabbed it the same moment, cleaned the dust away, and started reading for the second time, and judging by the acquired date inscribed inside, there were more than 12 years between the first encounter of the 19th-century classic, written by Jerome K. Jerome, and the more than promising title "Three Men in a Boat. To say nothing about the dog".

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy**

And yes, the all-diseases-cure recipe I mentioned above is one of the quotes from this very book, and along with all the funny moments inside, I recommend it for the same purpose. This book will trigger the cure for any troubles you possibly have, and believe me, if you are really a fan of true English humor like I am, you will be surprised that you can laugh that hard. Not to mention all the chuckles that are coming out from almost all sentences. Yesterday, while reading a chapter with Uncle Podger hanging a picture frame on the wall, I wasn't aware of all the sounds I emitted in the air, and in one moment, Viktor, my son, sneaked behind me, glimpsed the book on my lap, then looked at me with his most sympathetic expression and said, "What is wrong with you?"

It is really one extraordinary book and one of those that will last forever and be enjoyed by all generations. Whether or not this is really the funniest book ever written depends on your hedonistic inner being, and it is, of course, a highly subjective matter, but nevertheless, over the period of one century by now, it is indeed located highly on numerous top lists of the genre. Well, whatever book it's on the very top being the funniest one ever written, I know for sure which one would score second place. No doubt this place is reserved for the legendary "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams and the equally legendary quote about the number 42, which was calculated by an enormous supercomputer over a period of 7.5 million years to be "The Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything". To me, there is no better science fiction parody ever written, and following Marvin, the Paranoid Android, for the first time sometimes approaches a dangerous level of continuous laughter that can't be stopped easily. Don't panic. Nobody died from laughter ... well ... except for that one guy who died laughing by watching a donkey eating figs. True story. Google it.

Cyrillic vs Latin***

Finally, and almost completely unrelated to the topic, I think it is a good place to share some thoughts about the relation of Cyrillic vs. Latin alphabets that are widely in use in nowadays Western civilization. Contrary to most other nations, Serbians have this privilege of using both letters. Indeed, in the very first grade of the primary school, we learn to read and write in Cyrillic, and in the second one, in the Latin alphabet. It's hard to tell which one is used most often. Officially, the number one alphabet is Cyrillic, but Latin is catching up, especially in recent decades withworldwide globalization and technical education with more usage of modern technologies, especially the internet.

Keeping that in mind, and especially when it comes to paper printing books, magazines, and newspapers, Cyrillic is losing the battle rapidly. Thanks to non-proportional Latin letters, such as "i, l or j" which need little space on the paper, the same text occupies less paper space than if printed in Cyrillic. Therefore, it is hard to find books in Cyrillic today even though, directly inherited from the Greek alphabet, Cyrillic letters are fully proportional and don't require fancy fonts in order for any publication to be eye-catching, and even the reading, from my subjective point of view, is more pleasurable than reading the same text in Latin. That was why, when the other day I opened "Three Men in a Boat" and saw it was printed in Cyrillic, I was twice excited to read it again. Check the difference in the above image with the small Latin snippet in English from Jerome's book and its Cyrillic translation.

I know reading a book has a special magic, but English humor is almost as good in motion pictures as well. If you liked "Only Fools and Horses" and "Monty Python's Flying Circus" before, I am sure you will feel the same with "Three Men in a Boat".

* Three Men in a Boat Comic Book
http://pt.slideshare.net/campfiregn/the-three-men-in-a-boat-preview
http://bearalley.blogspot.com/2013/06/three-men-in-boat-part-1.html

**The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker's_Guide_to_the_Galaxy
http://www.northernsoul.me.uk/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy/

***Cyrillic vs Latin Alphabet
http://www.belgradian.com/useful-information/cyrillic-vs.-latin-alphabet/