Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the confusion surrounding
exactly what it is, due to the haphazard way it was developed. The author was
famously disorganised to the despair of his publishers and programme makers (a
quote from him: "I love deadlines. I
love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."). My copy of the
book, an omnibus edition by Heinemann, is subtitled A Trilogy in Four Parts, and as well as the title story includes: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe;
Life, the Universe and Everything; and
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. These are not long, each story taking
130-150 pages. Most usefully, the omnibus has an introduction by the author (A Guide to the Guide) explaining the
sequence of events, briefly summarised as follows:
Adams had always been attracted by the idea of combining
science fiction with comedy, but the only person he could find who was prepared
to support him was a BBC radio producer, so a radio series was how it started;
on BBC Radio 4 in March 1978. This consisted of six episodes, but one more
appeared later that year. This generated enough of a response for Pan Books to
commission a book version of the series, which emerged in September 1979 and
was an instant hit. To quote Adams: "It
was a substantially expanded version of the first four episodes of the radio
series, in which some of the characters behaved in entirely different ways and
others behaved in exactly the same ways but for entirely different reasons,
which amounts to the same thing but saves rewriting the dialogue". In
case you were wondering, the 1979 book covered only the first four episodes
because Adams kept missing deadlines and Pan lost patience… At about the same
time, a double record album was released which was an entirely fresh recording,
and was a slightly contracted version of the first four episodes. In January
1980 five new episodes of THHGTTG
were broadcast, giving a total of twelve. In autumn 1980 the second book was
published with the title The Restaurant
at the End of the Universe, which was "a
very substantially reworked, re-edited and contracted version of episodes 7, 8,
9, 10, 11, 12, 5 and 6 (in that order)". At about the same time, a
second record album was made featuring a heavily rewritten and expanded version
of episodes 5 and 6 of the radio series, under the TRATEOTU title. Meanwhile, a six-episode TV version of THHGTTG was made by the BBC and
broadcast in 1981. "It was based,
more or less, on the first six episodes of the radio series". So it
incorporated most of the book versions of THHGTTG
and the second half of TRATEOTU. "though
it followed the basic structure of the radio series, it incorporated revisions
from the books, which didn't". In summer 1982 a third novel was
published with the title Life, the
Universe, and Everything. "This
was not based on anything that had already been heard or seen on radio or
television. In fact it flatly contradicted episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 of
the radio series". Adams then worked on a film screenplay "which was completely inconsistent with
most of what had gone on so far" (a film version eventually emerged in
2005, four years after Adams died). Then he wrote a fourth book of the trilogy,
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish,
which was published in 1984 and "effectively
contradicted everything to date, up to and including itself". I hope
that everything is now absolutely clear…
Wikipedia points out that THHGTTG also spawned several stage plays, comics, and a computer
game. Plus the naming of two asteroids: Douglasadams and Arthurdent (after the principal
character). My own introduction to this alternate universe was the TV series,
which I loved and saw twice, which meant that I judged everything else by it; as
a result I wasn't that impressed by the film, although it had its moments. In
reading the "trilogy" I realised that I only recognised the first two
volumes – I must have bought the omnibus and forgotten to read the others, so I
had the pleasure of reading a lot of it for the first time. So to the first
volume:
The Hitch Hiker's
Guide to the Galaxy: The story
begins with Arthur Dent, a completely ordinary Englishman, an
"everyman" who becomes the focus of the entire series. His friend
Ford Prefect turns out to be an alien (an explanation of the joke to non-Brits:
the alien had chosen his name on arrival since it appeared to be very common,
but he didn't realise it was actually the name of a small and very ordinary
British car). Ford warns Arthur that the Earth is about to be destroyed to make
way for a hyperspatial express route – which duly happens, but Ford manages to
hitch a ride for Arthur and himself on one of the Vogon ships which had carried
out the destruction. Here, Arthur is introduced to The Hitch Hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy, a book-sized machine which contains a vast amount of information of
varying reliability which is more or less useful to those travelling around the
galaxy; reassuringly, it has DON'T PANIC on the cover. He also has a babelfish
inserted into his ear, which carries out the useful task of translating any
language into English.
The adventures of Arthur and Ford include hitching another
ride on a stolen spaceship in which they meet up with the two-headed Zaphod
Beeblebrox and his girlfriend Trillian as well as Marvin the Paranoid Android.
They find the long-lost planet Magrathea where new planets are made to order
(including the Earth, made to order by Slartibartfast for a specific purpose,
for a non-human race). They learn about the vast computer which was created to
provide the answer to life, the universe and everything, and after seven
million years of thought famously came up with the answer "42" (sorry
if that's a spoiler!).
The Restaurant at the
End of the Universe: In this story, the real reason for the destruction of
the Earth is revealed (but only to the reader). After further adventures during
which the group are pursued by law enforcement officers over Zaphod's theft of
the spaceship, they arrive at Milliways, a unique restaurant which has the
ability to transcend time, so its meals are served while it is perched on a
piece of rock just when the universe is about to end. It is during this meal
that the famous talking cow episode takes place. The group decide to steal
another spaceship, not realising that it is designed for one purpose – to crash
into a star as part of a performance by Disaster Area, the loudest band in
galactic history. Escaping once more, the group is separated, with Arthur and Ford
finding themselves trapped on a huge spaceship which is conveying millions of
carefully selected people (although with unusual selection criteria) to another
world, where it crash-lands.
Life, the Universe,
and Everything: At the start of this story, Arthur and Ford have been
trapped for years on the world they crash-landed, but with the aid of a
Chesterfield sofa and an eddy in space-time they are able to return to
something like normality, only to encounter the existential threat of the Masters
of Krikkit and their deadly robots. They eventually rejoin Slartibartfast (and
later, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin), and Arthur learns to defy gravity, while first
Marvin and then Arthur both end up saving the Universe in unexpected ways.
So Long, and Thanks
for All the Fish: Arthur returns to the Earth by himself, after discovering
that it hadn't been destroyed after all (or, if it had, it had been replaced by
an identical copy complete with identical people). Here, at last, he meets the
girl of his dreams and together they discover God's Final Message to His
Creation.
Adams had a peculiarly British sense of humour which doesn't
necessarily travel well, but anyone who appreciates Monty Python will love
Adams. These stories are packed with comic incidents and anecdotes from Adams' free-wheeling
imagination and there is nothing else quite like them in SFF (although as I was
recently reminded, Robert Sheckley's style is worth comparing). I thoroughly
enjoyed reacquainting myself with Adams' work, and discovering the two later
volumes was an unexpected treat.
No comments:
Post a Comment