The winner this week is Jim Haley. The title he submitted would never fit on a DVD case, but he scores extra points for hitting Douglas Adams’ entire Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, including “Young Zaphod Plays It Safe”:

The Hooker’s Guide to Servicing Aliens at the Truckstop at the End of the Universe, Avoiding His (Her/Its) Wife, Her Purse, and Everything in It, and Knowing When It’s Time to Say, So Long, You Were a Quite a Dish (with the addendum Young Bods May Not Like to Play It Safe, But They’re Mostly Harmless Anyway)

And if that wasn’t enough, he submitted a number of other good titles, including:

The Unzip My Fly Effect

and

So LONG… But It Smells a Little Like Fish

The closest runner-up was Mike Wolffe, for his fabulous entry:

Butt Pirates of the Perineum: At Girl’s End

(I might have awarded Mike the contest, if I didn’t eliminate him for reasons of nepotism. I’ve actually known Mike since we both stood out in deep right field in a softball game in fifth grade and let fly balls fly by us. Go read Mike’s blog, if you want to see some great photography, deviant humor of the Butt Pirates of the Perineum sort, left-wing politics, general deep thoughts, and lots of Calvin and Hobbes. But I should warn you, this is a guy who still likes Guns N’ Roses.)

As for other runners-up… Stephen Stull came close to the grand prize with an entry that made me grin. Although in the end, I thought Titus Groans was a little too — well, obvious.

GormenghASSED Revisited: Titus Groans… Again.

Dave Crampton submitted a few good entries as well, but the one that really made me giggle was:

Anansi Boys on Boys

Very simple and elegant. Neil Gaiman would be proud.

Update, July 14 @ 10:20 AM: A few late-arriving entries from Geoffrey Allan Plauche that, while not eligible for the contest, are still worthy of inclusion on the honorable mentions list:

Joe Hadaman’s The Forever Whore
Joe Abercrombie’s Before They Are Banged
John Scuzzi’s Old Man’s Whore
Fred Pole’s Man Plus Man
David Louis Edelman’s Hoquake: Book One of the Hump 269 Trilogy

* * *

For this week’s contest, due to popular request (and due to this blogger wishing to get more contest entries so as to not look foolish), I’m opening up entries to the entire world. Yes, that means you, in Zimbabwe! And you, in Portugal! And you, in the Cayman Islands! Not to mention you, in the United States.

I’m also going to lower the decency bar back down where it belongs, in deference to all of the Internet censors in your foreign countries. In fact, I’m so interested in getting your input that I’m going to let you influence the course of the next U.S. presidential election.

Your task is this: pick a comic book superhero to run as either Barack Obama’s or John McCain’s running mate this fall. And then tell me why said superhero would be an asset to the ticket. You can be funny — or heck, if you can really think of some good, solid reasons why Obama should choose Wolverine as his vice president or McCain should be stumping through Idaho with Nick Fury, I’ll be willing to reward a thoughtful enough entry with the prize.

Example: “John McCain should choose Spider-Man as his running mate in ’08, because 1) his punchy one-liners could really liven up McCain’s stump speeches, 2) who knows, underneath that costume, Spidey might be a black guy too, and 3) his New York residency might actually help win the state for the GOP.”

Same contest rules apply as before. Email your response to dedelman@gmail.com with the subject line “Summer Giveaway Contest 3″. Entries are due Sunday, July 20 at 11:59 pm Eastern Time. Submit as many entries as you like. Winning entry gets:

• One signed copy of the Solaris mass market of Infoquake
• One signed copy of the Pyr trade paperback of MultiReal
• One signed copy of The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two (containing my story “Mathralon”)
• One signed copy of the new Overlook Press edition of Mervyn Peake’s Titus Alone (containing my introduction)

Update, July 21 @ 10:10 AM: The winner of this week’s contest has been announced.

Douglas Adams’ fifteen minutes of fame as the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series came to a close years ago. Why, then, should he suddenly add another installment to the humor/sci-fi story when he’s moved on to more ambitious projects?

After reading Mostly Harmless, the series’ fifth book, it seems plausible that Adams simply needs the money. Although the book definitely has its moments, Adams has apparently grown bored and cynical about the entire concept. The result is a moderately funny but extremely unnecessary book with Elvis jokes you can see coming four gazillion light-years away.

For those not familiar with the Hitchhiker series, the premise is this: an extremely dry Englishman named Arthur Dent escapes from the Earth seconds before it is blown up to make way for a new Intergalactic Hyperspace Bypass. He ends up cavorting through time and space with a group of droll aliens, having adventures that brazenly defy any logical connection. The first three Hitchhiker books gathered a large cult following through their intense mockery of science fiction, philosophy, and British snobbery.

Mostly Harmless picks up the story from several different angles. Dent and his Hitchhiker pals Ford Prefect and Trillian have somehow found themselves in different parallel universes. In addition to this, they find that the ground rules of their lives have radically changed. Dent returns to Earth to find it inhabited by distinctly unhuman creatures who communicate by biting each other on the thigh. Prefect discovers that his employers are concocting a plot to sell their pan-galactic traveler’s handbook to everyone in several dimensions at once. And there are two Trillians wandering around, one of whom has had a daughter with Arthur Dent — without his knowledge, of course.

Adams works best when he tries to lightly poke holes in the concept of rationality. (The author did, after all, once work with the comedy troupe Monty Python.) One of the book’s cleverest bits comes in its opening scene, when a spaceship computer frantically tries to recall its mission after a passing meteor blows out its stored memories. The ship’s crew, without any recollection of what it was supposed to do, ends up latching on to the first passing mission it can find — astrology — and sticking to it with the utmost tenacity.

If this all seems very confusing, it must have been doubly so to the author. Adams’ response to the jumble he has created is the most curious of all. He wraps up all of the book’s sub-plots in one final scene that sourly places the Hitchhiker series into what seems to be a permanent retirement. It’s an unexpected shift of gears from Adams’ normal light comedy into utter misanthropy. Nothing seems to have come of all the chaos, and the impression the reader gets is that the puppetmaster has tossed his puppets out the window in annoyance.

Somewhere buried in the mess is a moral about learning how to feel at home in a chaotic universe. Unfortunately, Adams’ skills at conveying serious messages are nowhere near on a level with his skill at conjuring up non sequiturs, and the idea gets buried.

When an author is cynical about his own work, that should be a clear enough signal. Fans of the Hitchhiker’s series may still find things to chuckle at in Mostly Harmless, but few would want to invest in more than the paperback version. Others who are curious would be better suited borrowing the book from a friend.