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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 when you start out with, "throw away the entirety of the previous books,"
What, a bit like Douglas Adams did when he produced multiple radically different versions of the story for the original radio play, the LP, the book, the TV series, (and the play? - and ISTR he was at least partly responsible for the film version), or the big chunk of the story that turned out to have taken place in a virtual reality universe in the HHGTTG offices? The unresolved cliffhanger at the end of the second radio series where Arthur runs off in the Heart of Gold with a rather nice archaeologist? Or book 4-5 when it turns out that there are parallel universes in which the earth wasn't demolished? Or the lampshading of how an exploding computer transports the gang to the end of the universe (in the versions where that happened)?
Seriously, the HHGTTG doesn't have "canon" - it has "cannelloni" that you ordered in that odd little bistro that wasn't there when you went back, and if you're going to worry too much about a consistent story, then you'd better put your analyst on danger money,
In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
Given that Sandra Dickinson was Married to Peter Davidson (Time Lord known as The Doctor) and their daughter Georgia Moffett (Also a Time Lord and daughter of The Doctor) is married to David Tenant (Also a Time Lord known as The Doctor). Christmas dinner round there's must have been a hoot!
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.