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New HHGTTG Radio Show Gets Douglas Adams' Voice
trellick writes "The BBC has not only announced that they are to make radio adaptations to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy's final three books: Life, The Universe and Everything; So Long and Thanks For All the Fish; and Mostly Harmless. Also, Douglas Adams is to himself provide the voice of Agrajag, the character constantly being reincarnated and dying at the (inadvertent) hands of Arthur Dent, since Adams 'always intended to play the part of Agrajag and recorded himself in the part a few years ago.' Wonderful stuff!"
isn't it, that the inventor of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe should project his voice back across time and death? I can't wait to hear this, one of my best memories of late childhood is hearing the Hitchiker's Guide radio series on the BBC.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
It just seems fitting that Douglas Adams had the forsight to record the lines for a character who always dies, so that he himself could be re-incarnated in a way.
Lets just hope he does'nt mind coming back as a potted plant at some point
Where are we going, and why are we in this hand cart?
Star Wars when I was 6...
Space Camp in 9th grade...
Reading 4 book H2G2 trilogy straight through 2 times in a row in high school...
This movie better kick ass. ^_^;;
particlesphere.com - quantum
...said Agrajag. Now let's all yell : "Oh yes ! Once again !"
I just finished re-reading the whole collection.
Or even the original post... "...they are to make radio adaptations..."
The only other case I know of, where an author has gained additional heights of immortality through recordings is J.R.R. Tolkein, who recorded himself reading extracts from The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, plus assorted elven poems.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
I asked Douglas Adams sign a book for a friend. When he had asked about it, I said "it's for a friend"... he gave me a sad look and I felt like a heel.
Meanwhile my wife had him sign the Apple II version of "Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy" Infocom game. His reaction to her was "oh, wow, I've never signed one of these".
(sigh)
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
The Bush Administration announced today that the next State of the Union Address will be delivered using Ronald Reagan's voice.
Unknown host pong.
I really want to hear the later books acted out on radio, the voices were so good and the fx imaginative. Only Adams could have the genius and foresight to record the part before he died and when it wasn't planned to dramatise those later books.
I wish to remain anomalous
In the introduction to the collection of the first four books (and short story) Douglas Adams explained why every version of HGTTG controdicted every other version. Is the BBC going to maintain this tradition, or are they going to follow the books?
Good, inexpensive web hosting
I just finished over 160 hours of driving alone.
Rather than listen to the same 20 current "top hit" songs play for approximately 120 times each, I loaded all of the Douglas Adams audio books onto my trusty Creative Nomad 60 gig player (hey, why support the iPod -- every cent goes to the enemy! Viva la Microsoft!)
It was the most enjoyable trip I've ever taken. I had no road rage, I smiled, I laughed, I cried. Those are great books, and I can't wait to hear them all remade again.
If you have to drive/train/bike/job/skydive to work, you might try some audio books... they really take the edge off.
-Hell hath no fury like that of a woman scorned for
Get a lif.... errr.... never mind.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Douglas Adams, the Tupac of British humor
Karma Whoring Tactic #152:
Note: This tactic works best if you're one of the first dozen posts. Simply gloss over the front page blurb (don't waste your time RTFAing) and tap out a sentence or two paraphrasing the blurb. Bonus points for pointing out obvious ironies. Then, in another sentence or two, state your undying, deep-rooted love or hatred for the subject of the article. Finally, watch the +1 Insightfuls and Interestings roll in!
(Taken from the Karma Whore's International Bible, without permission)
I'm so please that Adams will be doing his voice, because I thought of all the clever plot devices and inadvertancies in the series, Agrajag was one of my favorites. The idea that such a thing could come full circle, literally, so many times and so many ways is just too much--so much that it's a good thing!
Any connection between your reality and mine is purely coincidental.
Anybody know if there are any plans to adapt Life the Universe and Everything to the big screen? I always wondered what ultra-violent and infradead looked like...
#define CLUE 0
President Washington began this tradition in 1790 after reminding the nation that the destiny of self-government and the "preservation of the sacred fire of liberty" is "finally staked on the experiment entrusted in the hands of the American people."
For our friends in the press who place a high premium on accuracy, let me say: I did not actually hear George Washington say that.
Sorry, got a little over excited, cause I've heard they were making a movie.
particlesphere.com - quantum
Adams returns to Life, the Universe and Radio 4
2 636,12 44053,00.html (registration required)
by Jason Deans.
The voice of Douglas Adams, creator of hugely successful comedy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, will reach out from the grave in a new BBC Radio 4 adaptation of the three sequels to the original story that have never before been dramatised on radio or TV.
BBC producers will use his voice from earlier recordings of the sequels in which Adams, who died in 2001, provided the voice for Agrajag, an alien who is always being accidentally killed by the main character, Arthur Dent.
These recordings have been incorporated into Radio 4's six-part dramatisation of Life, the Universe and Everything, which is to be broadcast in September.
Another yet-to-be-recorded eight-part series is planned for next year, adapting the two remaining books, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish and Mostly Harmless.
Life, the Universe and Everything features all the surviving members of the main original cast, with Simon Jones reprising the role of the hapless Dent, Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect, Susan Sheridan as Trillian, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Stephen Moore as Marvin the Paranoid Android.
Richard Griffiths takes over from the late Richard Vernon as Slartibartfast, Roger Gregg provides the voice of Eddie the computer following the death of David Tate, and in the narrator role of the Book, the voice of William Franklin will be heard instead of the late Peter Jones.
There are also cameos from a host of stars, including Leslie Phillips, Joanna Lumley and plummy-voiced cricket commentator Henry Blofeld.
The new Hitchhiker's adaptation has been written and directed by Dirk Maggs, who first talked to Adams about dramatising the three remaining books in the series nearly 10 years ago and has stuck closely to the late author's instructions on how it should be done.
Maggs said he had first discussed a new adaptation of the Hitchhiker's books with Adams in 1993, but at that time the rights situation surrounding the property was complex and would have required considerable legal fees to sort out.
"In the end it just ran out of steam. So we said 'let's shelve it and come back to it'," he added.
The pair returned to the idea of a new Hitchhiker's radio show in the late 90s, but Adams did not fancy going back to adapt the books he had written, according to Maggs.
"It would have been like writing something twice. It didn't appeal. But to set the tone, he actually wrote half an hour of the series, which appears in episodes one and two. So there's half an hour of totally original stuff," said Maggs.
"I wanted to adapt as closely as possible [to what Douglas would have wanted]. We had discussed a game plan for the first series," he added.
"He always said he wanted Hitchhiker's to sound like a 'rock album for ears'. He was very big on cinema effects and music."
But plans for the new Radio 4 Hitchhiker's drama did not really start to come together until after Adams death, aged just 49, in May 2001.
Maggs and Bruce Hyman, the producer of the new Hitchhiker's adaptation who runs independent radio production company Above The Title, met at Adams memorial service and began discussing how they would approach the project.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004
http://media.guardian.co.uk/radio/story/0,1
Ah skip the books...
Everything you need to know about anything, including the universe, can be represented thru the equation:
100-58=X where X=answer_to_life_and_the_universe
What was the question again?
/* TAANSTAFL */
In high school senior year brit lit, I wrote my thesis paper on the HHGttG series. In the course of my study, I (re)read the entire series in about a week and a half. The concentration of DA's work in such a short time made me a very strange person to be around for awhile... I can't think of any sort of parallel for the experience. I'll be sure to get a copy of the radio broadcast if i can though ;-) DA was a genius.
I submitted this story last night, and it didn't get posted.
Hopefully they'll also make available over internet stream, though.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Let's just hope Douglas doesn't pull an L. Ron and start publishing books again.
WWJD? JWRTFA!
Obviously you meant:
;-)
"Great! Just when I finished re-reading the whole collection!"
Agrajag is my favourite character. Life, the Universe, and Everything was so boring unitl Agrajag came along. The bes part is when his face starts getting all lacerated by his own teeth everytime he moves his mouth.
My sig is finally relevant to the story!
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Strangely, the only thing to go through the mind of the tape recordings as they fell was "oh no, not again." It is believed that if we knew why the recordings thought this, we would know a lot more about the way the universe works.
My site: Free Nature Pictures
You can get all the books in the HG2G series in unabridged audio form, read by the man himself. They were my first purchase on audible.com and they have lived happily on my iPod ever since (in converted mp3 form).
The meek shall inherit the earth, in 3 by 6 plots. - Lazerus Long
If you get into an audio book, you don't want to leave your car, until the book/chapter/section is over.
Fight Spammers!
Is two minutes really that big a deal?
Linux: Free if your time is worthless.
Douglas Adams had a website that he posted on. One of his last posts (less than a month before his death) I thought had an interesting connection to /. and electronic forums in general:
"If anybody has any suggestions of features they'd like to see added (or taken away) please say so. We will of course completely ignore them. That's how the new electronic democracy works."
- Douglas Adams talking about updating his website
Hopefully they'll also make available over internet stream, though.
Quite probably - both live and through my favouritest thing ever, Listen Again.
RealAudio, but pretty high quality...
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Just now Radio 4 is airing a version of Terry Pratchets 'Mort'. This is available, so I guess H2G2 will be also
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/
In related news...
A resident of Tibet by the name of Dug lah-sa Dams was reported to have screamed "Oh no, not again!" before being accidentally run over by a bus load of tourists. The driver of the bus, one Arthur Dent, originally from England, is being held for questioning.
+1 Insightful, -1 Troll. What can I say, I'm an Insightful Troll.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
For my wife, it would be a big deal...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
On Tuesday 21 September 2004 at 6.30pm
If a first you don't succeed, your a programmer...
Trust me, you don't *really* want to see the TV series. Badly let down by production values. Though the book's animated graphics were quite nice (hand animated)
They are.
The article even says that "[Douglas] Adams had been working on a film version for more than a decade, but it had never got past the planning stage." In the posthumous book The Salmon of Doubt it is said that the movie will come out "any decade now".
However, the project finally seems to be getting somewhere. The cast is known, and Slashdot even covered an interview that the screenwriter had with himself.
The movie won't be released tomorrow, though. The first episode of the new radio series will. (Actually, today from where I'm posting.)
Who deserves modding down, the guy who knows he's going off-topic, and states as much, or the folk who reply to the off-topic portion of the post?
Not casting stones, but I allways think it amusing that a poster can correctly predict his down modding, and it never seems to extend to those people who justify the off-topic post with replies...
I just think it is funny, especially since you siezed on the portion (in retrospect, I honestly didn't even consider the corollary) and if anything, you'll probably get modded up, even though you replied to something off-topic, which in turn spawned this (which diverges even farther from the topic)
Maybe I'll put together a bunch of shite like this for an O'Reilly book... ...Maybe "An Introduction to Slashdot Moderation and Rebuttal."
Of course, you have to announce the release on slashdot, which ought to be an interesting series of posts in and of itself...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
British Summer Time, which is UTC + 1.
You can listen to BBC Radio 4 live on the Internet, and you can listen to the last episode of every programme, which means you'll probably be able to listen to the first episode of the new series all week.
If you're in the United Kingdom, you can actually use your radio to listen to BBC Radio 4. 92 MHz or 95 MHz FM, or 198 kHz AM (LW).
is 42 in DNA code.
FreeSpeech.org
For the UK you forgot DAB Digital Radio (and Sky Digital, Freeview and probably Cable). Listing the ways to receive BBC national radio services is quite a chore nowadays. :-)
"For the UK you forgot DAB Digital Radio."
Yes, it's a good idea to.
graspee
The BBC mini-site for the new series is here, and includes a short making-of video as well as an audio montage of the new stuff.
The first of the new series (The Tertiary Phase) has been completed, and the rest are yet to be recorded.
... Don Adams instead.
Would you believe it - 42.
I find that hard to believe.
Would you believe 40.
I don't think so.
How 'bout 3 vouchers and a mouldy chocolate.
...is that 'So Long, And Thanks For All the Fish" not only sucked (when a writer of humour inexplicably starts swearing somewhere in the middle of a series, it's a bad sign), it showed the limitations Adams' would show later-on as writer (unfinished story threads, complete breakdown of narrative, etc..) of the Dirk Gently books. I can't imagine ever wishing to hear SLaTFAtF put to another format, although conceivably it could only make the experience better.
This is not flamebait - I treasure the experience of reading the first three books, but honestly, even "Life, The Universe, and Everything" became plodding after a while, despite the ingenious ideas he hatched up (ie the hair dressers).
I will always remember Adams' books, but let's not needlessly enshrine everthing the chap wrote, eh?
This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible. This was terrible with raisins in it. - Dorothy Parker
Just imagine it's being performed live on stage, not in a studio.
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I mean, who else is going to know what it's like?
And it's so,,,, so... Douglas Adams.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
I once reverse-engineered the "What do you get when you multiply... " equation in HHGTTG.
Try it in Base 13.
No he's not dead, I saw him in Area 52 in the cellar next to where Elvis and his flying saucer is kept ..
Is there any example of a radio station web site that posts everything, more or less forever? The only one I know of is KPFTarchive.org, which currently sports over 2000 public affairs mp3 recordings and counting. Yeah, ok, this is my site, but it's for a non-profit high power FM station in Houston, TX. It's an all volunteer thing.
That's cool, but altogether different than listening to quality radio drama.
...IS the answer to the question that Arthur and Ford got by pulling letters out of the Scrabble bag: "What do you get when you multiply 6 by 9?".
In base 13. I always knew there was something screwy about the universe.
Ignore the other reply post - the tv series is great!
The Arthur Dent actor is perfect in the role, and the others are okay too. Instead of seeing the low production values as a bad thing, think of them as adding a lot of charm to the series.
It seems everyone wants everything to be top-notch in terms of special effects and set design nowadays - but in comedies such as HHGTTG, having a small budget goes perfectly with the overall premise... and really helps to bring out the whole British feel of the piece.
Definitely see it - you won't regret it.
The long wave signal (198kHz) can be heard across parts of europe.
The transmitter is near Birmingham in the Midlands and has a range of about 300-400 miles / 500-600km as I know you can pick it up about 2/3 the way down France (listining to the test match on holiday).
So our european mighbours could pick it up if the web stream gets saturated
Oooh 'eck DM!
They've been sitting on it for some time considering that Adams died 11-May-2001 (2 months after his 49th birthday) of a heart attack.
I generally view the last two Hitchhiker books not so much as novels, but as a protest from Adams. He never liked writing (other than the Liff books), and he always hated being pigeonholed as the writer of the Hitchhiker series. Furthermore, he himself recognized the flaws in the last two books and blamed them, at least partially, on a turbulent personal life.
They're not great books (though you can find great fragments of writing within them--even Mostly Harmless had some killer dialog and a few cutesy ideas), but I think it's a little unfair of you to call them proof of Adams' "limitations as a writer." I especially don't agree with your comments about the third Hitchhiker book...
I think many people don't give Life, the Universe, and Everything a fair chance. Yes, it is slower, but only in the sense that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is slower than a typical American sitcom. In this book, Adams found the whimsicalness that was, IMHO, lost in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Even as the plot is drawn tightly into focus (and yes, it actually has a compelling central plot, unlike the first two books), he manages to give us such wonderful bits as the encounter with Agrajag, the secret of flying, Prak, Belgium, etc. By contrast, all that Restaurant... gave us was "the B Ark", the (distorted?) Ultimate Question, and a lot of (relatively) uninteresting Zaphod scenes. I've also gotta say that the first Dirk Gently book was very tightly written and quite clever, and I really don't see how anyone could call it "incoherent" ("less funny", perhaps, but you can't weave a compelling mystery when you're cracking a joke every other paragraph.) The themes were dark, interesting, and completely unpredictable, the perspective shifts were very atmospheric and well-timed, and the characters were very distinct and believable. The sequel fell on its face somewhat (the plot was much less interesting and the focus shifted around far too much), though it was a little funnier than Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.
Finally, anyone who fails to mention Last Chance to See is doing the late Mr. Adams a great disservice. If you still don't understand it when some people (like me) call DNA one of the greatest writers of all time, read this book. Its "plot" is, um, fairly uninteresting (just a bunch of rich westerners traveling around looking at endangered species), yet it remains one of the most hilariously stylish nonfiction books I have ever read. His narrative style is extraordinarily powerful--funny and fiendishly clever to the extreme, yet with all kinds of beautiful insights lying just beneath the surface. The events that take place are not really very interesting, but on the whole I'd have to say that it's a very good book simply because the prose itself is so engaging.
And that, I think, is the best thing I can say about the work of Douglas Noel Adams. His material might have been hit-and-miss, but his style never faltered for a moment.
You can also get the slightly abridged versions (2.5 hours) read by Stephen Moore (didn't know until today, but he's the voice of Marvin in the BBC series). I actually wore out those little fuzzy dealies in the tapes more than once listening to them. Though I haven't heard any other versions, I would still highly recommend them. :)
Not to sound totally depressingly pessimistic or anything, but rich, famous and loved as he was, DNA got shafted by the publishing institution. Let this be a lesson to you, budding artists! Don't publish!
Look! The only reason that he's wasting his breath on this role is that, being dead, he has no other use for it.
(Sigh... he is sorely missed.)
//Information does not want to be free; it wants to breed.
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
I met DNA twice, the first time a group of us from university went out to meet him at an airport.
While we 'knew' that he was tall and had a largish nose, we watched as the people from that particular flight filed out, at each tall man we were asking each other 'is that him?', and then he arrived and there was absolutely no doubt that it was HIM. He towered over everyone else from the flight.
We got him to sign the club banner "Don't Panic", which has never been washed since despite the many and varied stains accumulated on a Uni club banner, and we gave him a bottle of Australian red wine, becuase we heard he had a fancy for it. We had emptied the club coffers to pay for the bottle, hope it was good.
A few years later I was lucky enough to attend a literary lunch where he was the guest of honour. It was just after the release of "Last Chance to See", listening to him tell stories both from the book and from the background to the book was wonderful. He will be sorely missed.
Sara
Designer, Gamer, Macgrrl in an XP World
Yes, but he's only been spending the year dead for tax purposes, this was always on the cards.
boakes.org