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Colfer Asked To Write Sixth HHGTTG Book

Posted by timothy on from the can-atheists-have-ghost-writers? dept.

clickety6 writes "Eoin Colfer, the Irish author of a number of books (including the popular children's book series 'Artemis Fowl'), has been directly approached by Douglas Adam's widow, Jane Belson, to write a sixth book to continue the (even more) increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy."

25 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. No. Finish the Infocom Sequel by fyrie · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I'd rather see the Infocom HHGTTG Sequel completed/released.

    1. Re:No. Finish the Infocom Sequel by achacha · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The question is: are people willing to use their imagination when they are force-fed every feature directX 10 has to offer (shading, tons of light sources, fog, environments, shadows, physics engine, ragdoll physics) at insane resolutions.

      While I grew up playing almost every Infocom game out there and I still have the Atari 8-bit versions ready-to-play via emulator, I have yet to find anyone under 30 that thinks it's fun.

      For many, text adventure games are akin to a wheel made of stone, great in the day but with vulcanized rubber why would anyone use a stone wheel except in a museum...

      On a positive note, there is a counterculture of writers that still use the Z-Engine (Infocom text game engine) to write games based on their original works. So all hope is not lost :)

      To date no game was more memorable than Station Fall, when Floyd died, it broke my heart and to this day I feel sad for him and wished there was a way to save him.

    2. Re:No. Finish the Infocom Sequel by Tetsujin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      The question is: are people willing to use their imagination when they are force-fed every feature directX 10 has to offer (shading, tons of light sources, fog, environments, shadows, physics engine, ragdoll physics) at insane resolutions.

      Oh, snore... Not that old bit about kids these days with their polygons and their shaders. I suppose next you're gonna tell me to get off your "West of house"...

      I mean, I like classic games and text adventures - I just hate this attitude that there's some fundamental quality of them that makes them better than today's games. That's just nostalgia talking.

      --
      Bow-ties are cool.
    3. Re:No. Finish the Infocom Sequel by Culture20 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I just hate this attitude that there's some fundamental quality of them that makes them better than today's games. That's just nostalgia talking.

      I think text games allow for imagination to blossom, and 3D "shiny" games lend themselves to becoming glorified movies.

      Bear with me... It's like the latest commercial from LeapFrog (a computer-learning company): A grown man in a frog costume is behind a table with a bunch of books telling the viewers how much better the LeapFrog Tag(TM) Reading System helps children read, and then a little boy comes up to the table, waves a wand over his LeapFrog book, and the book reads to him. The man asks the boy which book he likes better, the LeapFrog book, or an older book. The boy responds derisively: "That book doesn't talk"
      When I first saw that commercial, I was appalled. The boy is just being spoonfed; he's only learning that reading is _hard_ and that talking books are better because you don't have to _think_. I later became appalled that LeapFrog would think that this commercial would appeal to parents. I then later became appalled because I realized that the marketing firm that made the ad must have done their research, and parents really think this is good. /rant

      So, a lot of today's games are like the LeapFrog books, where any puzzles are spoonfed because the designers want you to finish the game and buy another title, and you're not required to imagine a little white house. The designers don't _want_ you to imagine stuff, because then you end up falling into an abyss where the level designers forgot to place a wall because you were curious, or you skip a trigger and kill the bad guy before he gives his monologue, and he gives it then anyway. Okay, "give troll to troll" does this too...

  2. What? by vjmurphy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    How about Brian Herbert, Todd McCaffrey or Christopher Tolkien? Or is it too hard pulling them off the graves and/or shriveling bodies of their parents?

    --
    Vincent J. Murphy
    Spandex Justice
    1. Re:What? by hey! · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, I was thinking more Terry Jones.

      After all, he as already done a novel in the HTTG universe, one that was warmly received by Douglas Adams himself.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:What? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Brian Herbert.. I've finally told myself I won't buy another of his books.

      First he says he's going to finish the last Dune book his father never wrote, after finding a floppy disk in a security deposit box years later. But first he figures he needs to drum up some new interest in Dune. Let's write about the Butlerian Jihad! Everyone always wondered about it. It had a few good points, but mostly it felt like constant rehashing of the facts. The writing was poor at best, the concepts flawed.

      Okay, well you at least got people thinking about Dune again, time for the new books, right? Nope. Now it's time to do prequels using the characters we already knew. Again, the writing is poor, and I wonder if he just sat up at night trying to find tragic events to throw in there.

      So finally... hunters of Dune, time to finish that story! Get down to the last few chapters.. gee, this feels like he has a lot to wrap up still. Last page. TBC. Rage.

      So for one book he managed to milk eight out of us, and he's still going now with books set between Dune and Dune Messiah.

      That's it, I'm done. He's a poor writer, a shadow of his father's legacy and I can't justify handing over any more money to this hack. Attempting to finish his father's work is one thing, this is just blatant opportunism.

    3. Re:What? by dwye · · Score: 2, Interesting

      > Without his work, we would have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - nothing else at all

      No, we wouldn't even have that. Only he, and his family, and a few friends to whom JRRT told bedtime stories about elves and gnomes, would have had any of it. It was only when Christopher began correcting JRRT, reminding Daddy that he told it differently the last time, that JRRT started putting anything on paper, just to be consistent. Without that, he would never have produced anything more that Farmer Giles and Ham (at least that non-professional philologists would read).

  3. All the diodes down my left side... by Bilby+Baggins · · Score: 5, Interesting

    hurt just thinking about it. Humans, I'll never understand them, you don't even need a brain the size of a planet to know this won't work.


    I just finished reading the 2003-updated edition of Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and I have to say that I don't believe anyone can really emulate Adams' particular style of writing. And unless they've found a treasure trove of almost-finished manuscripts (unlikely) the best that we have from Adams' writing before his death is mostly compiled in The Salmon Of Doubt, and there was just the merest inklings of a beginning of a truely Adamsian epic tale in there...


    Besides, we all know the only person who could write HHGttG properly is Terry Pratchett, and he is ONLY allowed to write Discworld books until he's unable to write or they cure Alzheimer's Disease. And someone sure as hell had better cure it.

    1. Re:All the diodes down my left side... by somersault · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Besides, we all know the only person who could write HHGttG properly is Terry Pratchett

      That's exactly what I was thinking :) Pratchett has a very similar style of humour to Adams, but IMO his stories are much better. Adams admitted that he just made up HHGTTG as he went along (though some parts tie in quite well together, showing he's still very clever as well as randomly creative), but Pratchett has stories that are sometimes amazingly intricate, and all his books fit in well together.

      Pratchett's books seem to have spoiled me with their combination of wit, often epic plots and well paced storytelling. They're so good that I sadly often find other books rather dull now (trudging through Dune at the moment, it reminds me a lot of LOTR with all the pointless geographical musings.. Pratchett manages to setup his atmosphere, landscapes and cityscapes rather well without being too monotonous).

      --
      which is totally what she said
    2. Re:All the diodes down my left side... by Ihlosi · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Pratchett has a very similar style of humour to Adams, but IMO his stories are much better.

      Compare the earlier Discworld novels to the later ones, and you'll find that the writing style and the storytelling get better and better. Adams was on the same track, but unfortunately never got to write his later novels.

    3. Re:All the diodes down my left side... by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I've been reading the Discworld books since "The Light Fantastic" was new. Frankly, (and I know I'm going to generate some real hating from this), I thought Terry Pratchett was more or less imitating Douglas Adams in the first two books, with their more-or-less meandering plots and fairly random happenings (plus lots of excellent writing and humor), but then he got BETTER. Much BETTER. [Don't get me wrong, I love Adams' stuff and my copies of his books are all dog-eared and well-worn... I even used to read them to my kids (they totally love the BBC TV version and the revent movie, but their consensus is that the BBC version is better, which makes me proud), and I play the radio shows on CD when we are in the car.]

      Pratchett gets the details the way Adams would... tons of really clever jokes (the guy even puns in Latin for cryin' out loud) and great dialog, the outrageously bizarre creations, the fantastic imagination of it all, but to that he adds incredible characterization and detailed plotting, stopwatch-perfect pacing, and some of the best satire ever written. I can get more of a "feeling" for, more inside the minds of, Commander Vimes or Granny Weatherwax or Tiffany Aching or even the Librarian from one chapter than I can get from Arthur or Trillian or Ford from 5 books. Out of places I've never been, Anhk-Morpork is more real and detailed to me than London, Paris or San Francisco.

      And the stories... they are huge, sprawling and often very abstract working on many different levels, while remaining very cohesive, and we never lose the little details that make the Discworld perhaps the "realest" imaginary world ever created, more detailed in many ways than Tolkien, stranger in many ways than Wonderland, and yet it's really just a funhouse mirror that casts an exaggerated, but very, very true reflection of our real world and our complex, wonderful and insane nature as human beings.

      Adams universe was just a vehicle for delivering his exceptional writing style and brilliant humor, but it never had a sense of being a "real place". The Discworld is carried by four elephants on the back of the great A'Tuin the star turtle, and yet feel more real than the most hardest of hard science fiction and the most scrupulously detailed of fantasy worlds.

      Plus, Nanny Ogg. Anyone who could create Nanny Ogg (or really, discover her and reveal her to the world!) is a hero in my book.

      --
      You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
    4. Re:All the diodes down my left side... by somersault · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, the first book was written in 1979, he had plenty of time to write more - he was just interested in other things. I was googling earlier to see if Pratchett ever mentioned being influenced by Adams, and saw a quote from Pratchett saying that Adams felt that writing got in the way of having fun, while for Pratchett it was kind of the other way round - he would much rather be writing! Pratchett brings out a new novel more than once a year, and it's not like they are lightweight drivel. I'm not suggesting that Adams wasn't a good writer too, but it wasn't something he was so passionate about compared to Pratchett.

      --
      which is totally what she said
    5. Re:All the diodes down my left side... by Bilby+Baggins · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Oh yes, I fully agree- often times my favorite parts of Discworld novels are the not-funny parts- like the climax of The Fifth Elephant which brought me to tears, reading it yesterday in my dark, electricity-deprived apartment.

      Pratchett's humor (or is it humour?) comes from the same essentially British, psuedo-Pythonesqe dry wit and wry observations on life. I think that IF another book in the HHGttG multiverse were to be written, Pratchett would be the best option- BUT! It would be a Terry Pratchett book, written as he wants to write it. Only Douglas Adams can write Douglas Adams, but without the aid of a good crysal ball operator and lacking a touch-typing Ouiji board operator, I doubt we'll see any new Douglas Adams-written books.


      A few times in Don't Panic Neil Gaiman talks about the dark, somewhat dispairing feeling to much of Adams' works, something the author himself spoke of as well, saying that his situation in life and how he felt about it was reflected in his work, especially the early Hitchhikers works (Radio Series 1 & 2, Book 1). This essential darkness throws the humour into sharp relief while making the characters sense of desperation and hopelessness even more obvious to the reader. Terry Pratchett's works in contrast lack much of that disparity; even in the darker sections of his later novels ( Night Watch in particular, as well as portions of The Fifth Elephant and even going back to Lords and Ladies ) there is a sense of hope, that everyone will survive and we'll all gather around for tea after.

      Possibly even a sharper juxtaposition is the difference of "fate" in Pratchett's and Adams' books. The Hitchiker series as well as the Dirk Gently pair of novels indicate by word and action that the characters are free-willed, and the characters seem to understand that there is no "greater purpose"- it's all random, exemplified of course by Arthur Dent's erstwhile daughter Random Dent. Pratchett's books on the other hand always seem to have a "greater Plan", or "fate"- sometimes literally, as the gods playing games in Interesting Times, or as the genetically-predisposed-to-be-king Captain Carrot.


      Note: I'm stopping here because you've stopped reading anyhow, and this is deep in the comments so no one else will see it. Also, I'm hungry, and going to lunch.

    6. Re:All the diodes down my left side... by NiteShaed · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Well, since both names came up, how about a Neal Gaiman/Terry Pratchett collaboration....As pointed out in this thread, Gaiman has his ties to HHGTTG (as the gp mentions), Pratchet really is a great fit, and they did a great job on Good Omens together.

      --
      Some bring out the best in others, some the worst. Some bring out far more.
  4. Re:Nope, sorry by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I have a shock for you. It's called the "Second Foundation Trilogy":

    After his death, the Asimov estate, at the request of Janet Asimov, approached Gregory Benford, and asked him to write another Foundation story. He agreed, and at that same time suggested that it should form part of a trilogy with Greg Bear and David Brin writing the other two books, which they agreed to do.

  5. Re:NO NO NO by ari_j · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Are you saying that the movie destroyed his legacy, or that you are more sensitive because the movie glorified his legacy and you don't want that feeling taken away?

  6. Re:NO NO NO by Hatta · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I caught the beginning of that movie on TV the other day. I got as far as Arthur Dent lying in front of the bulldozer, complaining about the demolition notice that was "in the cellar". No mention of a locked filing cabinet, disused lavatory, or even a leopard! I changed the channel right then.

    --
    Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
  7. Leave it as it s by the_other_chewey · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...and go read Jasper Fforde's "Thursday Next" series.

    Hilarious, geeky (lots and lots of literary allusions), british as well,
    includes special features online (good for us /.ers), ...

  8. Re:NO NO NO by DeusExMach · · Score: 2, Interesting

    DNA was notorious for not reading his own work when writing a sequel or adapting it to a different medium, hence all the differences between the Book, and the radio play, and eventually the movie. It's not that he wanted constant rewrites... he just forgot what he said had happened and was too busy to go back and check. Honestly, I don't think he'd be too upset about someone using the Guide universe as a launchpad for another project if his widow benefits. The amazing thing is, we could have had the Guide as a movie 20 years ago, if it wasn't for Dan Akroyd hijacking the pitch meeting for his own purposes. ...fucking Ghostbusters...

  9. Good for her... by MythMoth · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...though I probably won't read it. I think that Douglas's style was inimitable - and it's painful when people try. Some people love the books for the story though, and before he died Douglas himself said that he might write another lighter sequel - that he was in a bad place when he wrote Mostly Harmless and that it was too dark as a result.

    He left a wife and daughter and I presume he would have wanted them to be ok; why shouldn't his wife do this? The works he was directly involved in are still there and will be no less enjoyable. I disliked the film, but it's still better to have the original stuff and a film that some people will like than just the originals so I feel the same way about this proposed sequel.

    People are too precious about these things. If you don't want 'em don't buy 'em. I'm with you. But don't try to tell the heirs about their responsibilities to a dead man if they're not suppressing anything.

    By all accounts Eoin Colfer is a good author. It's up to him to make something worthwhile of the new book regardless of whose footsteps he's following in.

    --
    --- These are not words: wierd, genious, rediculous
  10. Take it on its own merits if & when it's writt by pandrijeczko · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't see why so many people see this as such a great problem - this kind of stuff has been going on for years.

    What about the countless Star Trek books that have been written over the years, generally by authors who never had anything to do with writing for any of the original TV series or movies?

    Or how about the additional Star Wars books? It could be argued that a few books from the "X-Wing" series of books would have made much better movies than the dire Episodes 1 to 3.

    Or what about the newer James Bond books written by the likes of John Gardner, Raymond Benson & Kingsley Amis?

    I've read selections of books from all the above and some are very good and others not so good.

    So just leave it at that - if it gets written, decide when you read it. As far as I'm concerned, as a huge British HHGTTG fan, it can't be any worse than that Americanised piece of trash adaptation that hit the cinema screens a few years ago!

    --
    Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
  11. can't be any worse... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    ...than the ending of Mostly Harmless. Very, very depressing and bleak and awful and no way to end the series properly.

    There. I said it and I'm not taking it back.

    Anonymous
    (because I value my health; that's why)

  12. Re:Oh please no by IWannaBeAnAC · · Score: 2, Interesting

    The way the HHGTTG universe works is basically what it would be like if god (or multiple gods) had a really warped sense of humour and loved a good joke. From what I remember there are not so many points in the books where something happens that contradicts our experience but without a backstory. When Adams talks about small green pieces of paper that are, on the whole, not the ones that are unhappy, well, this is because the small green pieces of paper are just projections onto our universe of some 10-dimensional hyper-intelligent lego brick. The universe is set up to allow more or less anything, as long as it has some kind of purpose.

    The infinite improbability drive, for example, even though it is a bit ridiculous, plays on some of the more bizarre aspects of quantum mechanics, and it isn't so far from being plausible, if you imagine Zarquon has a surreal sense of humour.

    In comparison, videos leaving a residue sounds, by itself, a bit dumb. Adams would have invented some reason for them to leave a residue, even if it was just something like they were echoing cries of pain from of a previous universe where videos were used as a weapon of mass destruction. (Yeah OK so I'm not DNA. But hopefully I managed to convey the point?)

  13. I hope not by roc97007 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I believe this goes against Douglas Adams' wishes. "Mostly Harmless" seemed a deliberate effort by Adams to kill the series. (Spoiler: Everyone dies. The end.) I had an amazing opportunity to talk to Adams shortly before his death, and it seemed like he was deathly tired of the whole Hitchhiker thing.

    As far as I'm concerned, the series ended with So Long And Thanks For All The Fish. It's a good ending. No other novels were or are necessary.

    What I would much rather have seen is a third Dirk Gently novel. Although I have mixed feelings about someone else attempting it. The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul was a work of art. I don't see another author producing anything near as good that adhered to the spirit of the original.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.