> People whose first book was Hitchhiker followed the trajectory of reading the same book hundreds of times
I have never met anyone meeting that description. Back in my day, nerdy pursuits were not very tribal. A franchise did not form someone's identity mostly because there wasn't enough content about it to devote oneself to. You watched a movie, read a book or whatever and liked it. A superfan would be someone who sought out a game or a graphic novel but it gives you only a few extra hours in the world at most. A fan club would be a yearly magazine or something. You had to find other things to entertain you.
My friends were pretty core Hitchhiker generation with very similar background/humour to DNA. It was a pretty common early book. We might have reread it, played the infernal video game, loved the radio show, and could recite the famous bits but there really wasn't anything you could fall into some solipsistic hole about. There isn't enough there. It would be something to obliquely reference as an in-joke but wasn't something that could even sustain a conversation other than complaining about that game.
Hitchhiker fans were also likely Python fans, Tolkien fans, Pratchett fans, Harry Harrison, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, graphic novels, Red Dwarf, Warhammer or like DNA, very much into the birth of the home computer which really was a bottomless pit of discovery and conversation.
I have never met anyone meeting that description. Back in my day, nerdy pursuits were not very tribal. A franchise did not form someone's identity mostly because there wasn't enough content about it to devote oneself to. You watched a movie, read a book or whatever and liked it. A superfan would be someone who sought out a game or a graphic novel but it gives you only a few extra hours in the world at most. A fan club would be a yearly magazine or something. You had to find other things to entertain you.
My friends were pretty core Hitchhiker generation with very similar background/humour to DNA. It was a pretty common early book. We might have reread it, played the infernal video game, loved the radio show, and could recite the famous bits but there really wasn't anything you could fall into some solipsistic hole about. There isn't enough there. It would be something to obliquely reference as an in-joke but wasn't something that could even sustain a conversation other than complaining about that game.
Hitchhiker fans were also likely Python fans, Tolkien fans, Pratchett fans, Harry Harrison, Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, graphic novels, Red Dwarf, Warhammer or like DNA, very much into the birth of the home computer which really was a bottomless pit of discovery and conversation.