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The Hitchhikers Guide To the Galaxy Returns With the Original Cast (arstechnica.com)
Jonathan M. Gitlin reports via Ars Technica: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy deserves a special place in the geek pantheon. It's the story of hapless BBC radio editor Arthur Dent, his best friend Ford Prefect, and the adventures that result when Prefect saves Dent when the Earth is unexpectedly destroyed to make way for a galactic bypass. Written by the late, great Douglas Adams, THGTTG first appeared as a radio series in the UK back in 1978. On Thursday -- exactly 40 years to the day from that first broadcast -- it made its return home with the start of Hexagonal Phase, a radio dramatization of the sixth and final book of an increasingly misnamed trilogy.
Although Adams died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2001, the universe he gave birth to lived on. Beginning in 2004, the original radio cast was reunited to dramatize the third, fourth, and fifth books. In 2005, a film adaptation was released, and then in 2009 came a final novel in the "trilogy," And Another Thing..., written by the novelist Eoin Colfer. It's this story that the BBC is now dramatizing, again using many of the original cast, along with newcomers like Jim Broadbent, Lenny Henry, and Stephen Hawking. Yes, that Stephen Hawking.
Although Adams died suddenly and unexpectedly in 2001, the universe he gave birth to lived on. Beginning in 2004, the original radio cast was reunited to dramatize the third, fourth, and fifth books. In 2005, a film adaptation was released, and then in 2009 came a final novel in the "trilogy," And Another Thing..., written by the novelist Eoin Colfer. It's this story that the BBC is now dramatizing, again using many of the original cast, along with newcomers like Jim Broadbent, Lenny Henry, and Stephen Hawking. Yes, that Stephen Hawking.
but Trillian was the object of many fantasies!
The BBC website doesn't have available the previous seasons (maybe from the US?) so how can we listen to the whole thing from the start? The first two seasons are famous and I've had them many times in the past but how does one start now, legally.
There was one Matrix movie, three Star Wars films, and FIVE Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. NOT. SIX. Fuck that E-oin Culpepper or whoever, and the shit he wrote. No, like, seriously. Fuck that shit. (I actually tried to read it, but when you start out with, "throw away the entirety of the previous books," you might as well just write a different story.) I don't give a good god damn if Adams' widow "AUTHORIZED">/I> the novel, HE did not, and I'm confident WOULD not, and I'm sure you'd all agree, especially if you'd read the fifth book, and witness the effort Douglas Adams went to to TIE the story up in a neat little bow, for some asshole to come along and try to rip-off and capitalize on an INFINITELY better writer's work, his blood, his sweat, and his tears... no, fuck 100% of that shit. Any book(s) E-oin Codswallup shit out and tried to attach to the series is nothing more than shit-smelling fan-fiction, it's NOT CANON, and never can or will be. It is the Star Trek, the Animated Series of HHGTTG, and is more of an insult than that atrocious, god-fucking-awful filthy, pus-dripping abortion that was the "movie" they made of it. Why do lesser people have to take something great someone made before, and wipe their ASSES with it? This shit is just straight-up sad. Fucking sad.
The BBC couldn't wait two more years?
The BBC couldn't wait two more years?
It blew a hole through the space time continuum and dropped through like a stone through a wet paper bag.
biopowered.co.uk - catalytically cracking triglycerides for home automotive use since 2008. Just say no to big oil!
https://www.engadget.com/2014/...
I was going to wait till the summer to install it, but I succumbed and installed it last week. It takes a little getting used to, old habits are hard to reform, and it's not quite finished (what software ever is), and much of the software that's out to run on it is Beta.
But...
I think it's brilliant. I've fallen completely in love with it. And the promise of what's to come once people start developing in Cocoa is awesome...
A few weeks later he was dead.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
"And Another Thing..." is awful. There are no original ideas in it at all, it's just a rehash characters from the previous books.
You should never allow another author to play in your universe, Dune and Harry Potter alone are proof of that.
Summation 2
There are authors and authors, and some age better than others. I used to be amused by THGTTG, and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, but that it is a long time ago. So, for me, Douglas Adams does not age as well as Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. Pratchett is (was) wittier and seemed to understand technology much better, while Gaiman's work in the fantasy realm is unmatchable (American Gods vs. The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul).
I hate wet paper bags.
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Why the hell do you have to annoy everyone with your idiotic plural form of "hitchhiker" instead of writing "Hitchhiker's" properly? Why do you always have to do that?
The BBC couldn't wait two more years?
It was broadcast from 18.30 to 19.00, a slot on BBC Radio 4 that is used Monday - Friday for comedy, similar, shows. March 8 2020 is a Sunday, the 18.15-19.00 Sunday evening schedules Pick of the Week. Yes: 42 years would have been better, but the arithmetic of the calendar was against them.
Fucking whitewashing.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Science fiction and imagination can't even come up with anything faster than Infinite Improbability. A bowl of petunias was never the same to me after reading that book(s).
I for one, welcome our Vogon poets....
Er, no I don't.
Stephen Moore retired and apparently could not be persuaded to do the series. Jim Broadbent is doing it instead - have just finished listening to the episode and...well, he's good as ever. But he's not Stephen Moore.
Peter Jones, the original voice of the book died in 2000. Not sure if he would be much use these days.
Unexpectedly destroyed? Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz makes it quite clear that all the planning charts and demolition orders were on display for fifty Earth years.
They only work when they're dry; take it off, already...
Arthur Dent a BBC radio editor? Since when?
No, they couldn't wait. You didn't read the construction notice at the alpha centauri planning department, did you?
Sounds like he suddenly got too high a dose of Cocoa in his kool aid and died :)
Maybe he should have played more Space Quest, so he'd known the myriad of ways he could've gone out and chosen a different one later on.
As wrong as continuing Lord of the Rings after Tolkien.
or continuing Star Trek after Roddenberry.
or continuing Twilight.
The first books were a novelization of the radio show, which was written by a collaboration (many years ago, I had the published radio scripts, but I have not seen them in years). I find Adams' later (solo) works to be boring. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was especially stupid, and if I had read that before seeing the BBC TV series, I would've passed. The Dirk Gently books were boring, and I didn't even bother with Mostly Harmless.
oh, and you have no problem with a monocephalic duobrachial cast to play Zaphod Beeblebrox ?!!
I bet most of the actors playing aliens are all from Earth! Infuriating!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
In two more years the BBC should rebroadcast the entire series from the beginning.
Beware of Sales Reps bearing gifts.
the rest of the cast doesn't matter - the only one who does is Peter Jones, the book itself. Unfortunately he died in 2000 but was taken over by William Franklin who sounds just like him.
When I play Startopia, it's always a fuzzy feeling because of the voice over, done by Franklin.
Unfortunately he died in 2006 so they've got Hawking to be the book, but he doesn't sound anything like rural Shropshire.
Geoffrey McGivern played Ford in the radio series, and recently I discovered he was in Blackadder III ("Dish and Dishonesty") as Ivor Biggun, candidate for the Standing at the Back Dressed Stupidly and Looking Stupid Party.
I've seen that episode a hundred times and never made the connection!
No Not that Stephen Hawking