Hitchhiker's Guide, Salmon of Doubt

ReadParse writes "There was a previous story about "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" being released on DVD in January. This turned out to be a Region 2 DVD, but the Region 1 DVD was released on or about April 30th. There are two discs, the first of which is the BBC Miniseries, which was adapted from the BBC radio play. It suddenly occurs to me to submit this story, because mine was just delivered within the past hour. Right now it's the 12th most popular DVD on Amazon." Several people also noted that Adams' final (I guess) book, The Salmon of Doubt, is now hitting the shelves.

Douglas Adams

I can't wait to read Salmon of Doubt. I wonder if they'll make another Ultimate Hitchhikers Guide.

for once on /.

We have a link toward a book without referer encoded in the url.

Towel Day coming up, too.

And don't forget to show your appreciation for Adams with the Towel Day [systemtoolbox.com] tribute, on May 25th.

Begging the question:

What is on the second disc?

-If

Mmm

I'm going to order 42 copies. I can carry them around in my towel.

RIP Doug

good candidate for the worst movie Academy award

Now, if they just could make a movie out of it with some other intention than to rip off money from the fans, this would be something.

This one is a dull speak-through of the book. Just my opinion, without a godly message :)

Radio Series

For anyone who can, I'd recommend downloading the full twelve episodes of the Radio Series (Fit the 1st to Fit the 12th) on Kazaa (or any P2P) in MP3 format.

As well as being a good listen, it contains things not in the books (or any of the other versions). It was the original, and in some respects the best version of the Hitch Hikers Guide. You also get to see alternate ideas for things put in the books, etc. A good example is the Hagunneon (sp?) black space ship, being replaced in the book by the Disaster Area stunt ship.

Well worth it.

Re:Radio Series

I'd recommend downloading the full twelve episodes of the Radio Series (Fit the 1st to Fit the 12th) on Kazaa (or any P2P) in MP3 format

Hey, you could - of course - buy it instead of stealing it!

BBC Shop [bbcshop.com]

Re:Radio Series

I'd recommend downloading the full twelve episodes of the Radio Series (Fit the 1st to Fit the 12th) on Kazaa (or any P2P) in MP3 format.

I wouldn't. I'd recommend buying the tapes. Yes, the tapes, not the CDs from which the MP3s were almost certainly made.

I have both tape and CD releases - bought the tapes years ago, bought the CDs shortly after getting my iPod. There are scenes missing from the CDs - one immediate example that springs to mind is the mice talking about buying Arthur's brain. Cut to ribbons on the CD.

Purists will tell you that the tapes have things missing too. I don't know - wasn't ever lucky enough to hear the original broadcasts. However the tapes are more complete than the CDs, and the MP3s have probably been created from the CDs.

Cheers,
Ian

BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/hitchhikers/
It gives a feel of what to expect.
Great series if a bit short.

Next book?

This guy just gets lazier and lazier. Don't RIP Douglas, get up and possess a few people, give the channelers something worth writing. Just try and pick someone without writers block.

For those of us who bought the Region 2 DVD...

Patches that will allow you to safely read non-region-1 DVDs can be found here [datatestlab.com].

You may want to do what I did - rip the DVD with DeCSS [cmu.edu], rip it to a VCD [exit1.org], and watch it in your DVD player. I found that this particular title suffered almost zero quality loss through the whole process.

Disclaimer: by doing this you are violating copyright law and can be prosecuted. Consider yourself forewarned.

Amazon? It's a bit cheaper at.. .. .

If you do not wish to support Amazon for one reason or another (like you think they'll be the first up against the wall when revolution comes), the set is also available at Ken Crane's now DVD Planet [dvdplanet.com]. The DVDs+shipping at dvdplanet would equal just what amazon is charging for the DVDs. I can't wait so I'm going to Best Buy!!

Excerpt from Salmon of Doubt

Chapter 1

Life

Dear Editor,
The sweat was dripping down my face and into my lap, making my clothes very wet and sticky. I sat there, walking, watching. I was trembling violently as I sat, looking at the small slot, waiting--ever waiting. My nails dug into my flesh as I clenched my hands. I passed my arm over my hot, wet face, down which sweat was pouring. The suspense was unbearable. I bit my lip in an attempt to stop trembling with the terrible burden of anxiety. Suddenly, the slot opened and in dropped the mail. I grabbed at my Eagle and ripped off the wrapping paper.

My ordeal was over for another week!

D. N. Adams (12), Brentwood, Essex,
January 23, 1965,
Eagle and Boys' World Magazine

[Editor's Note: In the sixties The Eagle was an enormously popular English science-fiction magazine. This letter is the first known published work of Douglas Adams, then age twelve.]

The Voices of All Our Yesterdays

I vaguely remember my schooldays. They were what was going on in the background while I was trying to listen to the Beatles.

When "Can't Buy Me Love" came out, I was twelve. I sneaked out of school during morning milk break, bought the record, and broke into matron's room because she had a record player. Then I played it, not loud enough to get caught, but just loud enough to hear with my ear pressed up against the speaker. Then I played it again for the other ear. Then I turned the record over and did the same for "You Can't Do That." That was when the housemaster found me and put me into detention, which is what I had expected. It seemed a small price to pay for what I nowrealize was art.

I didn't know it was art then, of course. I only knew that the Beatles were the most exciting thing in the universe. It wasn't always an easy view to live with. First you had to fight the Stones fans, which was tricky because they fought dirty and had their knuckles nearer the ground. Then you had to fight the grownups, parents and teachers who said that you were wasting your time and pocket money on rubbish that you would have forgotten by next week.

I found it hard to understand why they were telling me this. I sang in the school choir and knew how to listen for harmony and counterpoint, and it was clear to me that the Beatles were something extraordinarily clever. It bewildered me that no one else could hear it: impossible harmonies and part playing you had never heard in pop songs before. The Beatles were obviously just putting all this stuff in for some secret fun of their own, and it seemed exciting to me that people could have fun in that way.

The next exciting thing was that they kept on losing me. They would bring out a new album and for a few listenings it would leave me cold and confused. Then gradually it would begin to unravel itself in my mind. I would realize that the reason I was confused was that I was listening to Something that was simply unlike anything that anybody had done before. "Another Girl," "Good Day Sunshine," and the extraordinary "Drive My Car." These tracks are so familiar now that it takes a special effort of will to remember how alien they seemed at first to me. The Beatles were now not just writing songs, they were inventing the very medium in which they were working.

I never got to see them. Difficult to believe, I know. I was alive at the time the Beatles were performing and never got to see them. I tend to go on about this rather a lot. Do not go to San Francisco with me, or I will insist on pointing out Candlestick Park to you and bleating on about the fact that in 1966 the Beatles played their last concert there, just shortly before I'd woken up to the fact that rock concerts were things you could actually go to, even if you lived in Brentwood.

A friend of mine at school once had some studio tickets to see David Frost's show being recorded, but we ended up not going. I watched the show that night, and the Beatles were on it playing "Hey Jude." I was ill for about a year. Another day that I happened not to go to London after all was the day they played their rooftop concert in Savile Row. I can't-ever-speak about that.

Well, the years passed. The Beatles passed. But Paul McCart-ney has gone on and on. A few months ago the guitarist Robbie McIntosh phoned me and said, "We're playing at the Mean Fiddler in a few days, do you want to come along?"

Now this is one of the daftest questions I've ever been asked, and I think it took me a few moments even to work out what he meant. The Mean Fiddler, for those who don't know, is a pub in an unlovely part of northwest London with a room at the back where bands play. You can probably get about two hundred people in.

It was the word we that temporarily confused me, because I knew that the band that Robbie was currently playing in was Paul McCartney's, and I didn't think that Paul McCartney played in pubs. If Paul McCartney did play in pubs, then it would be daft to think that I would not saw my own leg off in order to go. I went.

In front of two hundred people in a pub, Paul McCartney stood up and played songs he'd never, I think, played in public before. "Here, There and Everywhere" and "Blackbird," to name but two. I've played "Blackbird" in pubs, for heaven's sake. I spent weeks learning the guitar part when I was supposed to be revising for A-levels. I almost wondered if I was hallucinating.

There were two moments of complete astonishment. One was the last encore, which was an immaculate, thunderous performance of, believe it or not, "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." (Remember, this was in a pub.) And the other was one of the world's greatest rock 'n' roll songs, "Can't Buy Me Love," which I had first heard crouching with my ear cupped to the Dansette record player in the school matron's room.

There is a game people like to play that goes, "When would you most like to have lived and why?" The Italian Renaissance? Mozart's Vienna? Shakespeare's England? Personally, I would like to have been around Bach. But I have a real difficulty with the game, which is that living at any other period of history would have meant missing the Beatles, and I honestly don't think I could do that. Mozart and Bach and Shakespeare are always with us, but I grew up with the Beatles and I'm not sure what else has affected me as much as that.

So Paul McCartney is fifty tomorrow. Happy birthday, Paul. I wouldn't have missed it for the world.

The [London] Sunday Times, June 17, 1992

Brentwood School

I was at Brentwood School for twelve whole years. And they were, by and large, in an up and downy kind of way, pretty good years: fairly happy, reasonably leafy, a bit sportier than I was in the mood for at the time, but full of good (and sometimes highly eccentric) teaching. In fact, it was only later that I gradually came to realise how well I had been taught at Brentwood--particularly in English, and particularly in Physics. (Odd, that.) However, the whole twelve-year experience is, for me, completely overshadowed by the memory of one terrible, mind-scarring experience. I am referring to the episode of The Trousers. Let me explain.

I have always been absurdly, ridiculously tall. To give you an idea--when we went on school expeditions to Interesting and Improving Places, the form-master wouldn't say "Meet under the clock tower," or "Meet under the War Memorial," but "Meet under Adams." I was at least as visible as anything else on the horizon, and could be repositioned at will. When, in Physics, we were asked to repeat Galileo's demonstration that two bodies of different weight fall to the ground at the same speed, I was the one who was given the task of dropping the cricket ball and the pea, because it was quicker than going to an upstairs window. I always towered over everybody. Right back at the very beginning of my school career, aged seven, I introduced myself to another new boy (Robert Neary) by coming up behind him and, in a spirit of experiment, dropping a cricket ball on his head and saying, "Hello, my name's Adams, what's yours?" This, for Robert Neary, I'm sure was his one terrible, mind-scarring memory.

In the Prep School, where I was for five years out of my twelve, we all wore short trousers: grey shorts with blazers in the summer, and in the winter those pepper-and-salt tweed suits with short trousers. There is of course an extremely good reason for wearing shorts when you're young, even in the depths of an English winter (and they were colder then, weren't they?). According to Wired magazine, we can't expect to see self-repairing fabrics until about the year 2020, but ever since we emerged from whatever trees or swamps we lived in five million years ago, we have had self-repairing knees.

So, shorts made sense. Even though we all had to wear them, it did begin to get a bit ridiculous in my case. It wasn't towering over the other boys I minded so much, it was towering over the masters. Wearing shorts. My mother pleaded with the principal on one occasion to please make an exception in my case and let me wear long trousers. But Jack Higgs, ever fair but firm, said no: I was only six months away from going up to the main school, whereupon I, along with everybody else, would be able to wear long trousers. I would have to wait.

At last I left the Prep School. And two weeks before the beginning of the Michaelmas term, my mother took me along to the school shop to buy--at last--a long-trousered school suit. And guess what? They didn't make them in a size long enough for me. Let me just repeat that, so that the full horror of the situation can settle on you reading this as it did on me that day in the summer of 1964, standing in the school shop. They didn't have any school trousers long enough for me. They would have to make them specially. That would take six weeks. Six weeks. Six minus two was, as we had been so carefully and painstakingly taught, four. Which meant that for four whole weeks of the next term I was going to be the only boy in school wearing shorts. For the next two weeks I took up playing in the traffic, being careless with kitchen knives, and neglecting to stand clear of the doors on station platforms, but, sadly, I led a charmed life, and I had to go through with it: four weeks of the greatest humiliation and embarrassment known to man or, rather, to that most easily humiliated and embarrassed of all creatures, the overgrown twelve-year-old boy. We've all experienced those painful dreams in which we suddenly discover we are stark naked in the middle of the high street. Believe me, this was worse, and it wasn't a dream.

The story rather fizzles out there because a month later, of course, I got my long trousers and was readmitted into polite society. But, believe me, I still carry the scars inside, and though I try my best to bestride the world like a Colossus, writing best-selling books and . . . (well, that's about it, really, I suppose), if I ever come across as a maladjusted, socially isolated, sad, hunched emotional cripple (I'm thinking mainly of Sunday mornings in February, here), then it's those four weeks of having to wear short trousers in September 1964 that are to blame.

Y

"Why" is the only question that bothers people enough to have an entire letter of the alphabet named after it.

The alphabet does not go "A B C D What? When? How?" but it does go "V W X Why? Z."

"Why?" is always the most difficult question to answer. You know where you are when someone asks you "What's the time?" or "When was the battle of 1066?" or "How do these seatbelts work that go tight when you slam the brakes on, Daddy?" The answers are easy and are, respectively, "Seven-thirty-five in the evening," "Ten-fifteen in the morning," and "Don't ask stupid questions."

But when you hear the word "Why?," you know you've got one of the biggest unanswerables on your hands, such as "Why are we born?" or "Why do we die?" and "Why do we spend so much of the intervening time receiving junk mail?"

Or this one:

"Will you go to bed with me?"

"Why?"

There's only ever been one good answer to that question "Why?" and perhaps we should have that in the alphabet as well. There's room for it. "Why?" doesn't have to be the last word, it isn't even the last letter. How would it be if the alphabet ended, "V W X Why? Z," but "V W X Why not?"

Don't ask stupid questions.
--From Hockney's Alphabet (Faber & Faber)
Copyright 2002 by Douglas Adams

Funny :)

strangely its now ranked: Amazon.com Sales Rank: 13 instead of 12 as posted!

I think this is the first time some kind of stat has gone down! instead of up when posted on slashdot.. granted its still early.. but still funny :)

Mostly harmless = ~HHGTTG

Any "furthur adventures" of the HHGTTG crew in Salmon would have be set before Mostly Harmless, since in Mostly Harmless Douglas destroyed the HHGTTG universe (in the sense that he killed off all the major characters save Zaphod). He did so in an especially mean-spirited way - he didn't even give Fendchurch a proper exit, just erased her like a bad core dump.

I am (as you might guess from my /. nick) a HHGTTG fan, but I was quite disappointed with MH - it felt too much like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's "The Final Solution" - an author killing off a series that has become too popular, too much a millstone around the author's neck.

I would suggest to those who have NOT read MH to stop with So Long and Thanks for All the Fish - I think you will be much happier.

Re:Mostly harmless = ~HHGTTG

he didn't even give Fendchurch a proper exit, just erased her like a bad core dump.

Actually, it's worse than that. Re-read the section that takes place on NowWhat (I think that's the planet's name: the one that's at ZZ9pluralZAlpha instead of Earth). There's a disgusting local life form that communicates by biting. One breaks into Arthurs room, and bites him, i.e. tries to communicate with him. Arthur bashes its skull in. I'm pretty sure that the bog critter is supposed to be Fenchuch, or some analogue of her.

So, essentially, Arthur accidentally kills Fenchurch and never knows it. MH is darrrrrk.

Salmon of Doubt

Let me start off with the fact the I really, really want to read this book. However, are the descriptions of it's origin leaving a bad taste in anybody's mouth but me?

From the BBC [bbc.co.uk]:

"The publication will reportedly be edited but remain unfinished following its recovery from files on the novelist's computer. ... We have pored over Douglas's hard drive. There were so many different versions of the novel. "

Sounds like Adams felt this novel wasn't ready for publication but people close to him believed otherwise after his death. What could be their motivation?

Here I am, brain the size of a planet and I'm worrying about what a deceased author would think of me reading his book.

Re:Salmon of Doubt

Usually, when people take writers unfinished work after their passing, you can tell because it feels very disjointed and seems to have parts of the plot that are just left unexplained and make no sense.

I can't figure out how this would be different than any other Douglas Adams novel.

Zone *what* ?

What could possibly be the reason for zone locking more than 10 year old television material ??

DVD *and* Amazon in the same post :)

Ok, I guess that today it's a most accidental superposition of the "MPAA is our friend" day and the "1-click buying Amazon patent" day.

Let me guess, we should all buy the DVD and then burn it publically as a sign of protest? :)

Adams' readers also liked...

I followed one of the links off the isbn.nu page and discovered that according to this link [ebay.com], people who bought "The Salmon of Doubt" also bought:

Poisonwood Bible Hardcover, 1997
Barbara Kingsolver

The Catcher in the Rye Paperback, Reprint, 1991
J. D. Salinger

The Girls' Guide to Hunting & Fishing Hardcover Textbook, 1999
Melissa Bank, Melissa Banks

Would you believe it?

I just like the sheer quantity of misconceptions in that list item listing. Caveat Lector

Not interested

I am a huge "Hitchhiker's Guide" fan and have read all the previous books (most recently all together in the "Ultimate" version). The ending was one of the best of any series I have ever read and to try and tack anything anything else on top of that would ruin the closure for me.

Easter Eggs.

stolen from www.dvdeastereggs.com

this is all from the r2 dvd, does anyone know if its the same in the r1?

Access The Egg

DISC 1 -
Move down to bottom of menu then move left to bring up a key pad, key in the time the earth was destroyed: 1146.
Displays the complete destruction of the earth sequence and an ad for Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters.

DISC 2 -
From the Outer Planets screen, turn on the subtitles. Go up to 'inner planets' and press left. This highlights the words "Dont Panic". Pressing enter plays all the computer readouts for the Heart of Gold display screens.

On the Inner Planets (First Screen) highlight 'Communicate' and press left to highlight the hidden planet Earth
Flick about left to right in the middle of the screen to select a hidden planet (earth). This plays the complete credit sequence (with the tunnel through the O lifted right out of the Doctor Who credit sequence)

I don't know about this, but...

Is it a takeoff on the Irish myth of The Salmon of Knowledge [allaboutirish.com]?

CG in HHGTTG...

I remember an interview with D.A. concerning the TV adaptation where he recounted how many ppl had asked him about what computers and software they had used to make the actual Guide sequences. Much to their disappointment (and Adams' amusement) he replied "..umm, well, actually they were all hand-drawn." I'm still waiting for someone to create all of the info in the Guide excerpts in Flash ;)

"I'm never going to be cruel to a Gin & Tonic again"

DVD as "good" as the VHS?

I am in the middle of listening through the radio series with my wife (she had never heard it prior).

The books are good. I love the radio series. But I watched the video, and can not stand it. I owned it for 3 years. Watched it once. Never wanted to see it again.

I won't go so far as to say the video hurt the series, but I wouldn't recomend anyone watching it unless they get a 1/2 dozen beers in them first.

I'd buy it only if...

Only if they modified it and had the Vogons proclaiming that All Your Base Are Belong to Us.

Of course, Someone set us up the bomb might work in parts as well.

Two version of the book ?

Looking on amazon.co.uk theres this version of the book:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0333766 57 1/ref=sr_aps_books_1_1/026-0803875-1046813

That seems to have a introduction by Stephen Fry, and a tribute by Richard Dawkins in that version.

However there is also this version (Which looks to be the same as a amazon.com version).

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1400045 08 8/ref=sr_aps_books_1_2/026-0803875-1046813

I assume the one with the extra bits is a 'UK' version, while the other is a international one ?.

My Submission Got Posted on My Birthday

How weird is THAT? And it wasn't even intended. I happened to post it yesterday, and today it's posted. Cool.

This is NOT offtopic, by the way. I'm referring to the posting of this very story.

Take the Day Off

How much is this going to cost the economy [slashdot.org] if us techies take the day off to watch it?

Only 8 more days...

...until DA has been "dead" for a year.

We can always hope that he's just taking a year off dead for tax purposes...

i wish people would stop

dismissing the tv series out of hand as being inferior to the earlier radio series. i saw the tv show first and therefore to me the radio series was always a pale imitation!

Did anyone ever see this?

There's a whole domain dedicated to the HHGttG, vogon.com [vogon.com]. The site was built for Netscape so the online guide's JavaScript is flakey with IE, but there must be over a hundred pages on the series.

lol

"Several people also noted that Adams' final (I guess) book, The Salmon of Doubt, is now hitting the shelves."

You guess??? He's obviously not going to be writing any more books, since he died almost a year ago.

Douglas Adams at MIT November 2000

Douglas Adams at MIT
2 November 2000
Douglas Adams spoke to a packed auditorium (and to an overflow room by closed-citcuit camera) at MIT on 2 November 2000. The topic was his 1990 (?) book "Last Chance to See."

http://geocities.com/tmcgonegal/dna [geocities.com]

Ehm.... Boycott?

Aren't we supposed to be boycotting DVD's over the DeCSS/region encoding issues?

I've come to expect hypocrasy almost everwhere, but "Et Tu, Slashdot?"

Didn't they all die?

In "So Long and Thanks For All The Fish", the mechanical bird collapsed all probabilities for the Vogon captain ... and the bar Stavro Mueller Beta was blown up with the whole gang ... including Trillian's brat kid ...

So how can there be a follow up book?

I love HHGTTG

I love the radio show and the books but find the TV shows to be too slow paced compared to the radio show and a bit boring because of the pacing.

Re:Douglas Adams

Author of my favourite joke of all time...

Arthur: You know, it's at times like this that I really wish I had listened to what my mother had told me when I was young.

Ford: Why, what did she say?

Arthur: (crossly) I don't know, I didn't listen.

Re:huh?

Yes...
...unless he plans to give the world "ghostwriter" a whole new meaning.