# Hitchhiker's guide wow! **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 7, 2004, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427 "2004-11-07T00:31:30Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/41 "2004-11-08T06:24:05Z")
Oh. Wait. Er … … That **is** five books, isn’t it? :smack: _So Long and Thanks for All the Fish_ had completely escaped my memory. Guess it really **wasn’t** as good as the first two! ---
**Author:** ![ISiddiqui](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/97f17d/32.png) [@ISiddiqui](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ISiddiqui)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/42 "2004-11-08T06:26:58Z")
I liked it :p. And yes, there are 5 books total in the series. ---
**Author:** ![Small\_Clanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 10:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/43 "2004-11-08T10:25:34Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > My advice to anyone getting into the _Hitchhiker’s Guide_ series is to put the novels down at once and seek out the original radio series – It’s far superior to the print version. I second that, the scenery is much better in the radio version\*\*\*\*\*. **Kricket** (soon to be **Krikkit** ) you do know that the first two books started life as a radio series? The Beeb have just finished a four episode broadcast of **Life, the Universe and Everything** IMHO it suffered from being adapted from a novel to a radio script, there was too much that was effectively just the characters reading sections of the book, in this case I think the book might actually be funnier than the show. _ **And you get to hear Marvin hum like Pink Floyd** _\* \*\*\*\*\*\*In the original broadcast to _was_ Pink Floyd, later they subsituted some library stuff. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 11:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/44 "2004-11-08T11:12:40Z")
> [@tracer](#): > > \ > > **THREE** books?!? > > What, did Douglas Adams rise from the grave and turn _The Salmon of Doubt_ into a Hitchhiker’s-series book like he was threatening to while he was alive? Now that we’ve gotten the book-count matter cleared up, Salmon of Doubt was never intended to be a Hitchhiker book, it was going to be the third Dirk Gently book. ---
**Author:** ![JoeSki](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/b487fb/32.png) [@JoeSki](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JoeSki)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/45 "2004-11-08T13:18:55Z")
> [@Small Clanger](#): > > I second that, the scenery is much better in the radio version\*\*\*\*\*. **Kricket** (soon to be **Krikkit** ) you do know that the first two books started life as a radio series? It has also been a tv show miniseries (which you can buy for $30 on DVD), a one man play (as well as a full cast play), a graphic novel, a video game, and a towel. > [@TellMeI'mNotCrazy](#): > > Now that we’ve gotten the book-count matter cleared up, Salmon of Doubt was never intended to be a Hitchhiker book, it was going to be the third Dirk Gently book. Correct, it was originally intenteded to be a Dirk Gently book, but before DNA died he considered it turning it into a Hitchiker’s book, and he says so in The Salmon of Doubt…or one of his friends says so anyways. I’m not sure how he was planning on changing it though. Nothing in Slamon of Doubt stuck me as a joke, or plot line, to be found in the Hitchiker’s universe. ---
**Author:** ![Johnny\_L.A](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnny_l.a/32/1084_2.png) [@Johnny\_L.A](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johnny_L.A)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 1:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/46 "2004-11-08T13:20:47Z")
> [@PictsiePat](#): > > I am sooooooo lucky I have the DON’T PANIC button from the original pc text game. I have that as well. Plus the Peril Sensitive Glasses and the fluff. I have no idea where they all are; but I made sure I kept everything that came with the game together. This was for an Atari computer, so even if I find the game I can no longer play it. After reading HHGTG in the '80s, I bought a towel and had ‘Don’t Panic’ put on it. Still have it, still like new. ---
**Author:** ![Small\_Clanger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9fc348/32.png) [@Small\_Clanger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Small_Clanger)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/47 "2004-11-08T14:04:53Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > I bought a towel and had ‘Don’t Panic’ put on it. Still have it, still like new. **Johnny L.A.** , there’s a hoopy frood who _really_ knows where his towel is. ---
**Author:** ![ChordedZither](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/e9c0ed/32.png) [@ChordedZither](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ChordedZither)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/48 "2004-11-08T18:34:29Z")
I’ll throw in another vote for seeking out the original radio series (it’s available on CD, by the way, from the BBC online shop and used copies can be found on Amazon as well). Even after reading the books, it’s still worth it to cet the radio series just to hear the wonderful deadpan narration of “Peter Jones as ‘the book’”. The radio series scripts are also available in print, but the some of the voice characters are just so well done in the radio series (Marvin, Slartibartifast, the mice, and almost all the Syrius Cybernetics robits, especially the off-tune robotic chorus) - they just have to be heard. (And then go back and read the books again and just see if you don’t hear their voices as you’re reading.) > [@JoeSki](#): > > It has also been a tv show miniseries (which you can buy for $30 on DVD), a one man play (as well as a full cast play), a graphic novel, a video game, and a towel. Avoid the TV series - no redeeming value whatsoever. Douglas Adams did oversee the Infocom PC (text) adventure game of Hitchhiker’s. It was pretty good. Selected parts were absolutely inspired - think “Babel Fish”), but the humor level was quite uneven. He did another game he did with Infocom, Bureaucracy, which I thought really captured his comedic style, suggestng that, no matter how normal the world may look on the surface, look close enough and you’ll find truly bizarre events going on all around you. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/49 "2004-11-08T18:52:14Z")
Agreed that while the Hitchhiker’s Infocom game was enjoyable, Bureaucracy was absolutely inspired and one of the most enjoyable text games (behind the Zork series, of course, and Nord & Bert) ever created. Absolutely brilliant. To the Salmon of Doubt point, from my copy which resides quite happily on my desk at work: > [@](#): > > DNA: The thing with Dirk Gently as that I felt I had lost contact with that character, I couldn’t make that book viable, which is why I said, “Lokay let’s go off and do something else.” Then, looking back at all the ideas that were there in Salmon of Doubt, I looked at it again about a year later and suddenly realised what it was that I’d been getting wrong, which was that these are essentially much more like HItchhiker ideas and not like Dirk Gently ideas. > > So there will come a point I suspect at some point in the future where I will write a sixth Hitchhiker book. But I kind of want to do that in an odd kind of way because people have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. \ I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number, six is a better kind of number. I think that a lot of the stuff which was originally in Salmon of Doubt, was planned into Salmon of Doubt, and really wasn’t working, I think could be yanked out and put together with some new thoughts. > > Interviewer: Yes, because certainly some people have heard that Salmon of Doubt was now going to be a new Hitchhiker book. > > DNA: Well, in a sense, because I shall be salvaging some of the ideas I couldn’t make work within a Dirk Gently framework and putting thme in Hitchhiker framwerork, undergoing necessary changes on the way. And for old time’s sake, I may call it Salmon of Doubt, I may call it - well, who knows! To me that suggests that in the course of writing SOD, he came up with some great ideas that didn’t fit in with the Dirk Gently realm, and so he set those ideas aside to possibly be used in a sixth (more upbeat!) Hitchhiker’s book, however, SOD was, from inception, a Dirk Gently book. ---
**Author:** ![TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tellmei_mnotcrazy/32/3419_2.png) [@TellMeI\_mNotCrazy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TellMeI_mNotCrazy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 6:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/50 "2004-11-08T18:54:11Z")
Wow. I can type, honestly, I can. ---
**Author:** ![Anaamika](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Anaamika](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Anaamika)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/51 "2004-11-08T19:40:28Z")
> [@duffer](#): > > As much as I read, I’ve never cracked a _Hitchhiker_ book. I better get, um, cracking. I feel so left out around here! Get him, guys! Seriously…Kricket…you can stop after the third one. And yes, switch over to Terry. ---
**Author:** ![Rufus\_Xavier](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/eada6e/32.png) [@Rufus\_Xavier](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rufus_Xavier)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 7:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/52 "2004-11-08T19:59:22Z")
My favorite bit, by far, of the Hitchhikers’ Guide books is from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, where they meet the real ruler of the Universe. That guy is my hero. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/53 "2004-11-08T20:14:23Z")
> [@ChordedZither](#): > > Avoid the TV series - no redeeming value whatsoever. You seem to have forgotten about Peter Jones as The Book. ---
**Author:** ![rjung](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/45deac/32.png) [@rjung](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rjung)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 8:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/54 "2004-11-08T20:36:59Z")
> [@Johnny L.A.](#): > > This was for an Atari computer, so even if I find the game I can no longer play it. You can dig up a Z-Machine interpreter for all computers these days. If you’ve got the .Z3 game files for those old Infocom games, you can play 'em. \ A few years ago, I bought up the entire Infocom collection on CD-ROM on clearance. With Z-Machine interpreters, I can now play those games on my Mac and my Palm PDA(!). Heck, I’ve got the _Hitchhikers’_ game right here… \ And while I’ve never heard the radio plays, I do have the radio scripts in book form. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Cliffy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/59ef9b/32.png) [@Cliffy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cliffy)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/55 "2004-11-08T21:50:07Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > You can dig up a Z-Machine interpreter for all computers these days. If you’ve got the .Z3 game files for those old Infocom games, you can play 'em. Heh. Just last night I was up until 2:30 playing Plundered Hearts – and on Friday I was up until _6:30_ playing Enchanter! Most of the Infocom games are still copyrighted, but the original Zork trilogy has been licensed for free downloads, as has Zork: The Undiscovered Underground, a text adventure written in 1997 by original Zork co-author Marc Blank and Infocom author Mike Berlyn – you can get them [here](http://www.csd.uwo.ca/Infocom/). Adams put the Hitchhikers’ game on his website before he passed away, and you can play it [here](http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html), although you can’t save. There’s also an illustrated version [here](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml), although I can’t get it to come up at the moment. –Cliffy ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/56 "2004-11-08T22:05:45Z")
> [@Small Clanger](#): > > _ **And you get to hear Marvin hum like Pink Floyd** _\* > \*\*\*\*\*\*In the original broadcast to _was_ Pink Floyd, later they subsituted some library stuff. I remember hearing a recording of that original broadcast in my youth. The music Marvin was humming sounded like Jean-Michel Jarre’s _Oxygene_ or _Equinox_, but the characters **said** it was Pink Floyd music. ---
**Author:** ![Skywatcher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/skywatcher/32/254_2.png) [@Skywatcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skywatcher)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/57 "2004-11-08T22:17:13Z")
> [@Cliffy](#): > > There’s also an illustrated version [here](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/game.shtml), although I can’t get it to come up at the moment. Works for me. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2004, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/58 "2004-11-08T22:18:09Z")
Or maybe it wasn’t the original broadcast, and that Jean-Michel Jarre music was the “library stuff” that **Small Clanger** was talking about. ---
**Author:** ![Rilchiam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/2bfe46/32.png) [@Rilchiam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rilchiam)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 12:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/59 "2004-11-13T12:47:03Z")
> [@Larry Mudd](#): > > Douglas Adams owes a huge debt to P.G. Wodehouse for that style of delightfully understated absurdity. He owes a lot of people. A.A. Milne being another one. ---
**Author:** ![AngelicGemma](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/439d5e/32.png) [@AngelicGemma](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AngelicGemma)\ **Post date:** [November 13, 2004, 1:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427/60 "2004-11-13T13:42:42Z")
I enjoyed the first book, but wasn’t too keen on the second. I didn’t even finish reading the third one. But I may try and read them again some time. I was quite young when I read them, so I may enjoy them more now. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/hitchhikers-guide-wow/273427.md?page=4)