Conkers is just a childhood reference, like "pocket money" but one that doesn't translate very well globally.
"Marbles" might work as a replacement? Something you valued greatly as a child, so if you were holding up a spacecraft as a wayward youth you would demand it as a ransom.
Interesting... It never made sense to me that a spaceship captain just would happen to have chestnuts on board his ship, so I guessed it might be something like candies. A generic term for things that amuse children works too. I still feel like Adams was referring to something specific.
It's my personal blog, with no ads, and I didn't submit this post to HN. I just used H2G2 as that's what came to mind as I was typing the title. Not everyone is out for eyeballs.
Conkers are definitely the chestnuts, they are ubiquitous in England, where Adams spent a lot of time, and a well understood reference to a childhood game here. A film that recently did the unlikely events driving the plot device very well was Everything everywhere all the time. It never occurred to me that they could have been inspired by Douglas Adams.
Surprisingly few people know about the web site https://h2g2.com, which was started by Adams. It's encyclopædiaish in the way that Ford Prefect's book is, rather than being like Wikipedia (and it happens to be a couple of years older). Worth the occasional browse.
10 comments
[ 0.22 ms ] story [ 18.8 ms ] threadHe even wrote for the UK version of MacUser
He claims Adams bought the first two.
"Marbles" might work as a replacement? Something you valued greatly as a child, so if you were holding up a spacecraft as a wayward youth you would demand it as a ransom.
Though I'm more likely to click knowing it--or perhaps I don't know it enough and everyone else knows H2G2.