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New Trailer For Upcoming Hitchhiker's Episodes
Cally writes "I just heard a new programme trailer on BBC Radio 4 for the the
first time. Some familiar voices... it's Arthur! It's Ford! It's the
new radio
series of Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy!
The first broadcast
goes out on Tuesday 21st September at 6:30pm (UK summertime, which is
an hour off UTC.) Douglas Adams wrote the books in parallel with the two original radio series, which are still regarded as the definitive manifestation of HH-erdom. Hearing Mark Wing-Davey and Simon Jones' voices speaking new
words - albeit new words from 'Life, The Universe and Everything' -
is a spooky feeling. I just hope the sad death of Peter Jones does not
detract from the final result.
Let's hope the Beeb's live streaming media setup can cope with the mother of all Slashdottings!"
I can't wait. The more I listen to his stuff, the more I wish Mr. Adams had not prematurely left this world.
By the way, was it just me or did the voice of Agrajag sound suspiciously like Douglas Adams himself?
I've listend to a number of his books on tape that he read himself, and it sounds very much like Mr. Adams.
Having a nationwide radio station that you can turn on at any time of the day or night with a 99% certainty of finding something intellectually stimulating and enjoyable can't be beat. (The other 1% is "The Archers")
For those furriners who don't entirely grok what Radio 4 actually is, it's:
For example, driving several hundred miles each week for a job, I found myself listening to a regular program on vegetables - specifically, the ones you eat. Now I am a geek of the burger+coke variety, and frankly I don't care about this subject one jot. However the program was compulsive listening - it went into depth about, for instance, how the brussels sprout came to be cultivated with lots of (genuinely) interesting historical context.
Listening to radio 4 is rather like visiting a huge combined university, experimental theatre, and comedy club, and wandering blindfolded through the halls, randomly stopping to listen in various rooms.
And I miss it. Thank goodness for web streaming.
Shortly after DNA's death, I was in London and I noticed that a large, green 42 was visible on the skyline (on a skyscraper). Does anyone who lives in London remember this and know whether this was in honour of Douglas Adamns or if this is just a street address or something.
-a
HHGTTG was hugely inspirational back in the day here in the UK. Back at the end of the 70's the punk music fashion in music was violent and negative, allbeit exhuberant and youthfull. We were a decade away from the moon landings and were just entering the decade of the Yuppy, power dressing, padded shoulders and the triumph of the Golgafrinchams. But I digress, it was a time when science and the arts were at war and you had to be on one side or the other and HHGTTG was firmly on the side of the female astrophysicist who prefered a boyfriend who could take her on a tour of a black hole to Arthurs feeble small talk ( Notwithstanding the extra arm that said boyfriend "grew specially for you Trillian" )
So to set the scene, HHGTTG was, and possibly still is, the most scientifically friendly work of humour to hit the big time in the last six thousand years. At the time most computers were adressed with punched cards and Adams intuitively understood that a decent computer would look like a WiFi tablet pc hooked to the internet. Something which he described as a book of all known knowledge of the universe with "dont panic" scribed in large friendly letters on the cover - QED.
Even better Adams was of the radical (at that time) opinion that no one was going to tell him "the answer to life the universe and everything", it was patently clear that this was either too vague a question or that you had to figure out the answer step by step for yourself. His attitude was new because it anticeded a movement begun in the sixties to seek answers from gurus or to define oneself entirely in terms of opposition to the "establishment" - Adams rejected that and used humour to point out that it is your job (possibly your entire reason for existing) to figure out things for yourself.
Twenty years after its first incarnation its not going to set the world on fire and probably wont punch the buttons of the future like it did first time around. After all, today we are, the brands we purchase, and watchers of three simultaneous tv channels, and what we are, is clearly defined by what we are not. (If I got that wrong then feel free to explain what is going on these days...). However I have high hopes for this new series of HHGTTG because it was written by a man who liked technology and respectfully took the proverbial micky out of fashion and accepted wisdom.
Remarkably for those cynics amongst us who say that radical youth becomes conservative conservatives without changing a single idea over the passage of time, Adams mockeries still ring true to me in middle age. It is also sobering to realise that his entire lifes work is more or less defined by something like six months work in 1978, and whatever it was, 9 radio programs. This is probably the most important reason to get hold of the radio stream - as an experience the radio play is an order of magnitude more powerfull than the books.
Let me be the first to welcome our new overlord radio transmissions....
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
Let's hope the Beeb's live streaming media setup can cope with the mother of all Slashdottings!
Word is, someone over at the Beeb was overheard saying, "Bring 'em on!"
Anyone seen my jagged little pill?
Check out this here to see what are spending their time on developing http://www.bbc.co.uk/rd/projects/dirac/overview.sh tml/
Plus as a bonus they are keeping the whole thing open source :D
Ok, I don't see it written anywhere, but the trailer is 4:20 long...
101010b 2Ah 52o
Weird, you're using the British form of "defence" ("defense" in the US), but the "zee" form of "apologize" ("ise" in British English).
Next you'll be putting punctuation after quotation marks when appropriate. (When people tell me the correct form is "before the quotes", I tell them Webster could never have written a compiler.)
Anyway, it's bad form to pick up on typos in hastily written forums, so I don't care.
Just saying, it's not like he recorded the voice part specifically for this project. He did it in the mid-nineties for something almost entirely unrelated.
Triv
Heh. Obviously a joke, but anyway, to see it, you'll either have to buy the 1982 film (or is it a DVD of the TV Series?), or wait till June 2005, for the new film to be released (starring John Malkovich, Bill Nighy and Martin Freeman).
By the way, the BBC are also running another HHGTTG competition, which I submitted a story about, but alas, it got rejected. You have to write a new entry for Earth in exactly 264 words (262 more than "Mostly Harmless". UK residents only again, though luck America (and anywhere else for that matter).