Colfer Asked To Write Sixth HHGTTG Book

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."

Comments

No. Finish the Infocom Sequel

[fyrie]

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

Re:No. Finish the Infocom Sequel

[achacha]

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.

What?

[vjmurphy]

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?

All the diodes down my left side...

[Bilby Baggins]

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.

Re:All the diodes down my left side...

[ConceptJunkie]

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.

Re:Nope, sorry

[TheThiefMaster]

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.

Re:NO NO NO

[ari_j]

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?

I hope not

[roc97007]

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.