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My father, sadly for him, read Vonnegut before Douglas Adams, and felt that Hitchhiker's was just trying to emulate him.

I didn't inherit this gene, happily for me, and enjoy all three authors a great deal.

If anyone wants to recommend something else in this vein, please do; I'll probably like it.



I read José Saramago and at times felt his writing similar to Vonnegut. Perhaps you’ll like it. Blindness is a good first read.


HHGTTG was absolutely trying to emulate The Sirens Of Titan. They're both great though.


Douglas Adams disagrees with you: https://scifi.stackexchange.com/a/60015


Adams doesn't say he wasn't influenced by Vonnegut in those quotes.

Also, here's another quote[1]:

> "I've read The Sirens of Titan six times now, and it gets better every time. He is an influence, I must own up. Sirens of Titan is just one of those books – you read it through the first time and you think it's very loosely, casually written. You think the fact that everything suddenly makes such good sense at the end is almost accidental. And then you read it a few more times, simultaneously finding out more about writing yourself, and you realise what an absolute tour de force it was, making something as beautifully honed as that appear so casual."

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070302103312/http://www.darker...

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But I suppose there is a difference between "influenced by" and "trying to emulate" isn't there, and I absolutely should have said the former. They are books that have some similarities, each in their own style.


I find Adams more whimsical than Vonnegut.




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