New HHGTTG Radio Show Gets Douglas Adams' Voice

trellick writes "The BBC has not only announced that they are to make radio adaptations to The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy's final three books: Life, The Universe and Everything; So Long and Thanks For All the Fish; and Mostly Harmless. Also, Douglas Adams is to himself provide the voice of Agrajag, the character constantly being reincarnated and dying at the (inadvertent) hands of Arthur Dent, since Adams 'always intended to play the part of Agrajag and recorded himself in the part a few years ago.' Wonderful stuff!"

Re:Just so very fitting..

[crossconnects]

Lord of the Rings is not an example of how to do it right! It's close, but Jackson significantly changed the character of a few of the characters.

It started out great with FOTR, but began to show problems in TTT, and by ROTK, I had serious difficulty with Jackson's version. Merry, Pippin, Gimli, and Faramir got downgraded in Jackson's version, while Legolas, Aragorn, and especially Arwen were promoted.

Re:Awesome

[Angostura]

Trust me, you don't *really* want to see the TV series. Badly let down by production values. Though the book's animated graphics were quite nice (hand animated)

One drawback...

[Apostata]

...is that 'So Long, And Thanks For All the Fish" not only sucked (when a writer of humour inexplicably starts swearing somewhere in the middle of a series, it's a bad sign), it showed the limitations Adams' would show later-on as writer (unfinished story threads, complete breakdown of narrative, etc..) of the Dirk Gently books. I can't imagine ever wishing to hear SLaTFAtF put to another format, although conceivably it could only make the experience better.

This is not flamebait - I treasure the experience of reading the first three books, but honestly, even "Life, The Universe, and Everything" became plodding after a while, despite the ingenious ideas he hatched up (ie the hair dressers).

I will always remember Adams' books, but let's not needlessly enshrine everthing the chap wrote, eh?

Re:Awesome

[Bambi Dee]

Just imagine it's being performed live on stage, not in a studio.

"Fish" had nothing to do with Adams' limitations

[foreverdisillusioned]

I generally view the last two Hitchhiker books not so much as novels, but as a protest from Adams. He never liked writing (other than the Liff books), and he always hated being pigeonholed as the writer of the Hitchhiker series. Furthermore, he himself recognized the flaws in the last two books and blamed them, at least partially, on a turbulent personal life.

They're not great books (though you can find great fragments of writing within them--even Mostly Harmless had some killer dialog and a few cutesy ideas), but I think it's a little unfair of you to call them proof of Adams' "limitations as a writer." I especially don't agree with your comments about the third Hitchhiker book...

I think many people don't give Life, the Universe, and Everything a fair chance. Yes, it is slower, but only in the sense that Monty Python and the Holy Grail is slower than a typical American sitcom. In this book, Adams found the whimsicalness that was, IMHO, lost in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Even as the plot is drawn tightly into focus (and yes, it actually has a compelling central plot, unlike the first two books), he manages to give us such wonderful bits as the encounter with Agrajag, the secret of flying, Prak, Belgium, etc. By contrast, all that Restaurant... gave us was "the B Ark", the (distorted?) Ultimate Question, and a lot of (relatively) uninteresting Zaphod scenes. I've also gotta say that the first Dirk Gently book was very tightly written and quite clever, and I really don't see how anyone could call it "incoherent" ("less funny", perhaps, but you can't weave a compelling mystery when you're cracking a joke every other paragraph.) The themes were dark, interesting, and completely unpredictable, the perspective shifts were very atmospheric and well-timed, and the characters were very distinct and believable. The sequel fell on its face somewhat (the plot was much less interesting and the focus shifted around far too much), though it was a little funnier than Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

Finally, anyone who fails to mention Last Chance to See is doing the late Mr. Adams a great disservice. If you still don't understand it when some people (like me) call DNA one of the greatest writers of all time, read this book. Its "plot" is, um, fairly uninteresting (just a bunch of rich westerners traveling around looking at endangered species), yet it remains one of the most hilariously stylish nonfiction books I have ever read. His narrative style is extraordinarily powerful--funny and fiendishly clever to the extreme, yet with all kinds of beautiful insights lying just beneath the surface. The events that take place are not really very interesting, but on the whole I'd have to say that it's a very good book simply because the prose itself is so engaging.

And that, I think, is the best thing I can say about the work of Douglas Noel Adams. His material might have been hit-and-miss, but his style never faltered for a moment.

Strangely Depressing

[geek42]

Isn't it, that the author of Last Chance to See still has his best work ignored, and that Hollywood and the BBC waited until his death to bring to life the things he'd been pushing for for years?

Not to sound totally depressingly pessimistic or anything, but rich, famous and loved as he was, DNA got shafted by the publishing institution. Let this be a lesson to you, budding artists! Don't publish!