We entered a science-fiction bubble comparing two stellar reads: Douglas Adams’s classic The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and Randal Graham’s newly published Beforelife (ECW Press), a novel in which an average guy finds himself navigating an alternate reality against his will.
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ALU Editor
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If you’re a fan of Douglas Adams’s dry, quick British humour and the whimsical world of his science fiction series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, you’ll want to pick up a copy of Randal Graham’s debut novel Beforelife.Beforelife follows the post-mortem misadventures of Ian Brown and the quirky friends he makes during his quest to prove the beforelife is real. Similar to The Hitchhiker’s Guide, the novel sees its protagonist — your run-of-the-mill, average, boring everyman —swept up against his will into a whirlwind journey in an alternate world.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide’s Arthur Dent is whisked away to outer space to be saved from the destruction of Earth, which is slated for demolition to make way for an intergalactic hyperspace bypass. Knowing he can’t go back to his old life on Earth, Arthur must learn to live in the strange new world of the outer galaxy — though all he wants is some peace and quiet. Beforelife’s Ian Brown is killed on the first page by a train at Toronto’s Union Station, and finds himself washed up on the shores of a place called Detroit. It’s not really Detroit, Michigan, but a massive city in an afterlife where everyone is immortal, the citizens worship the mayor, Abe the First, and those who retain memories from pre-incarnation are sent to be cared for at the local mental institution for suffering from the “Beforelife Delusion.” All Ian wants to do is find his wife, Penelope, but when he is egged on by fellow hospice residents and beforelife believers, he sets out to prove that something much bigger is at work behind Detroit’s closed doors — and it’s all connected to his memories.In the witty, rambling style of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide saga, author Randal Graham pens Ian’s adventure with plenty of action, absurdity, colourful characters, literary references, and light, self-deprecating humour. Readers can easily put themselves in the shoes of Ian and Arthur as they try to make sense of their new fantastical worlds. Beforelife possesses the familiar sci-fi trope of the “what if” scenario that fans of The Hitchhiker’s Guide will recognize and love. * * *Thanks so much to Stephanie Strain at ECW Press for sharing the connections between these two books. For more literary comparisons, click here.
