| Product: |
Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy Series - Douglas Adams in general |
| Date: |
13/09/01 (7632 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Extremely funny, very entertaining and very well written
Disadvantages: No movie, and the sad news of Douglas Adams?s death
I wouldn't say Douglas Adams was a hero of mine but I love the way he wrote and the ideas he came up with, it wasn't until his death in may 2001 that it really came home to me of how much a part he played in my life, he will be very missed.
The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy is a humorous science fiction series, one of the first of its kind, but unlike shows such a Red Dwarf and 3rd Rock From The Sun, its genuine science fiction - which is also funny, its full of extremely funny lines/jokes/scenes, there are so many ideas crammed into each line that's its mind blowing, every line has an original idea that you could base a new story upon.
Douglas Adams- The Man
Being 6'5' the same height as John Cleese and Peter Cook and many other comedy stars, Douglas maintained that Graham Chapman being only 6'3' was therefore four percent less funny, he once owned 8 wardrobes (at one time and all in his bedroom), and has had some very strange luck, he became famous for the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy, and moved with his wife and daughter to America a couple of years ago to be near to Hollywood to help to get the movie version made, he was extremely intelligent and very talented, and also very bad at keeping deadlines.
Though 'most famous for Hitchhikers', he has also written three stories for Doctor Who and been script editor for a year, he's written two Dirk Gently books (Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea Time Of The Soul), co wrote 'Last Chance To See' - a zoology book - also a radio series + CD ROM, co-wrote 'The Meaning Of Liff', done TV and radio shows about the Internet and computers, talks on Apple Computers (he bought the first two sold in Britain), and numerous other things, more detail and info on the Douglas Adams web site - http://www.douglasadams.com/, he also named Pink Floyd's album 'The Division Bell' (his friends - they offered t
o make a donation to one of his favorite charities if he gave them a name).
History
Born on the 11th March 1952, and named Douglas Noel Adams (DNA, and also known as bop ad), he was considered a strange child and a little slow (walking into lampposts and taking a while to learn to talk). He was 12 when he first got anything into print that being a short story in the Eagle, about a man who losses his memory (echo's of this can actually be seen in other of his writings later on). He performed in school plays and 'had' to go university in Cambridge, that's where footlights and where all the comedy writers/performers of the time were.
He hitchhiked over Europe and eventually came back quite ill not before though, having been lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck, and having a copy of the Hitchhikers guide to Europe on him, and looking at the stars, it occurred to him that someone should write a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy.
He went to university and was very disappointed with footlights, he and a couple of friends set up a review 'Admas-Smith-Adams', and he worked with many, now famous, comedy stars. After university he worked with Graham Chapman, and they managed to get a TV comedy show made. Called 'Out Of The Trees', it involved a man picking a flower, to which the police complain, then the fire brigade turn up, then the army and so on until the world blows up. He also worked on several other projects, and among other things he submitted sketches for the Burkiss Way, Monty Python and Weekending.
The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy
The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy was Douglas's last attempt to get somewhere in his writing, he proposed the idea for a radio series, called 'The Ends Of The Earth', each episode would end with the destruction of earth in a different way. In writing the first episode he remembered the idea of the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy, and based the fi
rst episode on that, it was then that he thought about the consequences of the earth blowing up and followed the idea through (good job too).
While waiting for the go-ahead to write further episodes of Hitchhikers, and needing work, Douglas sent the Hitchhikers script to the Doctor Who office, to see if he could get commissioned for a Doctor Who story, which indeed he got, unfortunately he got commissions for both Hitchhikers and Doctor Who in the same week, which meant that he would have to write the first four Hitchhikers scripts, break off and write the four Doctor Who scripts, and then return to Hitchhikers (see what I mean about his luck). By the time he got back to writing the Hitchhikers scripts, he felt 'written out' and asked his friend John Lloyd to help write the remaining two scripts.
Using 'Journey Of The Sorcerer' a track from an Eagles record (One Of These Nights), as the theme tune, it stared Peter Jones as the book, Simon Jones as Arthur, Mark Wing-Davies as Zaphod, Stephen Moore as Marvin and many, many other people.
It first aired on radio four on the 8th March 1978, and soon became a huge hit, it was followed by a Christmas special episode and a further 5 episode series. Douglas also did a novelisation, which spawned 4 sequals, wrote the computer game, (and also another computer game Bureaucracy), a TV series was made, an LP, there's also been a towel, an appreciation society (ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha (http://www.zz9.org/ )), a comic book adaptation, a Web site based on the idea (H2G2 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/)), now a part of the BBC web site, which also boasts a Hitchhikers page (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/index.shtml ), another computer game Starship Titanic (based on a paragraph in the 3rd book), a rather strange jazz CD, stage plays and so much more.
The Story Itself
Arthur Dent's house is about to be knocked down to make way for a bypass when his friend Ford tells
him that he is in fact from another planet, and that the earth is about to be destroyed to make way for a hyper space bypass. Ford and Arthur 'hitchhike' a lift on the spaceship sent to destroy the earth, Arthur learns that Ford is a researcher for the Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, an electronic book, the standard repository of all knowledge in the universe, and after being thrown out of the air lock into deep space they get picked up by Fords semi cousin Zaphod, on a stolen ship, then..........
OK there's so much in the 'plot', that literally you can't go into it, the thing is that there isn't a plot, more of a series of events, they travel to the restaurant at the end of the universe, to prehistoric earth, a mythical planet and all sorts of places. The episodes aren't self contained, meaning that to enjoy the radio or TV series its best to watch them in order, to understand what's going on, although each of the episodes are very enjoyable in themselves.
As a radio series the show needed a narrator, and such is/was the style of 'Hitchhikers' and Douglas Adams's writing, there was a lot of background information, and extra asides thrown in which needed to told. In comming to the TV version, Douglas found it was impossible to remove these parts as they were so integeral to the story and so these parts became 'the book' - The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy - in the TV series and likewise in the novel.
The story continues through the books, besides the first,
The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy, there is
The Restaurant At The End Of the Universe,
Life, The Universe And Everything,
So, Long And Thanks For All The Fish,
Mostly Harmless.
You could also include Starship Titanic, the novel of the game by Terry Jones, as this is based on the paragraph in Life The Universe And Everything,
Each version of Hitchhikers is different, the story varie
s depending on the medium, there was due to be a second TV series but due to Douglas's dislike of the producer it never happened. Also a third radio series, based on 'Life The Universe and Everything' had been mentioned, but the fact that Douglas hadn't the time to do the script, and what the BBC came up with wasn't liked by Douglas, this also never happened (at least not at this time), although a German and Finnish third series have been done. There was a making of the raido series which was made to celebrated the 20th anniversay of the series, it has been available to buy on tape and CD, called The Guide To The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy.
The Movie
Has also never happened, Douglas Adams spent a lot of time trying to get it off the ground, and wrote many versions of the film script, however it never got going, now that Douglas has died, the fans are 'as ever' confidently expecting it to be done literally any decade now.
You can buy the radio series's on CD and TV series on DVD (includes a making of), also is the book of the original radio scripts (receintly updated), readings of the books by Douglas and Stephen Moore, a book about Douglas, 'Don't Panic' by Neil Gaiman (receintly updated), a book about Hitchhikers 'The Pocket Essentials Completely And Utterly Unofficial Guide To The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy' By M J Simpson, a video of Douglas reading parts from the books, A video documantary about Douglas Adams called 'Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams', another biography called 'Hitchhiker', by MJ Simpson, and another is on the way called 'Wish You Were Here' by friend Nick Webb. And lots more (you'd have to check to see if its all still available).
And if you're in any doubt, its great, fantastic, superb, one of the best, really enjoyable. some of the jokes?,
'Probability factor of one to one we have normality........
anything you still can't cope with is therefore your own problem',
'Yeah you go to pieces so fast people get hit by the shrapnel'
'I?m so hip I have trouble seeing over my pelvis, I'm so cool you could keep a side of beef on me for a month'
"I eventually had to go down to the cellar in the dark.........' 'The lights had probably gone"...."So had the stairs"
The last novel Douglas was writing (which was due out several years ago) has been published, however, with Douglas's reputation for deadlines (on one of his previous books 'Dirk Gently's.....', the very, and absolute finale deadline had passed and they sent someone out to help him, and at the time he'd only written one line!), don't expect a lot to have been much written. In fact there is about 80 pages, 11 chapters, it hasn't been completed by anyone, and is in the state in which they were written - one chapter leaps into the first person which probably wouldn't have been like that if Douglashad finnished it. Also included are a couple of short stories, interviews, articles, letters and loads of interesting peices that are a joy to read.
Its been said that radio is more enjoyable than TV, because the pictures are so much better, and I found myself saying when I learned of his death that 'The worlds he created are the best I've ever imagined' and its true. In a tribute to Douglas Adams on radio four, they mentioned an idea Douglas had for the third radio series which was 'The river which has a very strange attitude to time' sound great, but now (sadly) we'll never know.
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