Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic cover art

Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic

From the Minds Behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Monty Python

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Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic

By: Terry Jones, Douglas Adams
Narrated by: Bill Nighy
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About this listen

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 . . .

Adventure Fiction First Contact Humorous Literature & Fiction Science Fiction Interstellar Funny Witty Comedy

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Critic reviews

An absurd, rollicking space adventure
All stars
Most relevant
I enjoyed this book very much,liked the story, enjoyed Bill Nighy reading it.
it was a winner for me,I hope it will be for you.

won't be disappointed!

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I've loved it, I read it myself many years ago and have played the game multiple times (and want to play it again now!), so glad to experience it again

My only negative is; I love Bill Nighy and I can't imagine trying to give voice to multiple characters, but I found the voices of the women a little weak and quite waring (sorry Bill!), not much more he could do mind!

Jones, Adams, and Nighy, what a combination.

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The constant sexism in the book and icky descriptions of women started to take away from the otherwise quite funny and cleverly silly story.

Funny and problematic

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everything.... especially Mr Nighy's voice and acting skills. Brought the book to life for me. I am looking forward to more

brilliant story told brilliantly by Mr Nighy

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Based on the computer game that Douglas Adams developed. He couldn’t be bothered to write the novel version, so Terry Jones did it for him…in the nude! It’s quite a horny book (probably because Terry Jones was naked at the keyboard). Amusing and definitely woven through with Adams’s sense of humour and preoccupations with technology. Expertly narrated by Bill Nighy, who is a great hang. Typical of Adams’s work in that it’s not a compelling plot; more a series of amusing scenes and characters. Probably one of those books that had more of a commercial than a literary imperative and slightly adjacent to but not divorced from the Adams cannon.

Slightly adjacent to but not divorced from the Adams cannon

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