I love Douglas Adams Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy series, been a fan ever since the TV show came on when I was a kid.
But, that fifth and last book: not really a great way to finish off the trilogy.
Anyway, last week I got my hands on the final radio series (Quintessential Phase) more because I enjoy the actors doing the work and, despite that ending, the book itself had some pretty interesting ideas.
I was amazed to find that the shows producers have added their own coda to the end, in line with the multiple-realities theme of the book:
The gang don’t die in the final destruction of the Earth, but, thanks to the Babel fish and some dolphins end up at Milliways for a rather nice meal and a reunion with Marvin!!!
I know its a bit sappy, but the way it was executed just felt right and the feeling of melancholy at the cast’s final show together, along with a sense of loss over Douglas’ death was all there. Even so it was a celebration as well
Well done guys - it was nice to end the series and bring a smile to my face.
Do you know where I can get the audio of it? I can’t find it anywhere. We have tapes we made from the radio program eons ago but of course they suck now.
That would sure be nice. I still get upset, a year later, over the whole fifth book fiasco. Just thinking about that book being the ending of such a wonderful series really depresses me.
I think Adams regretted writing it, too. He was in a pretty miserable state at the time and being continually hounded to cough out another novel. (“He is currently not certain where he lives, or with whom.”) The commercial disappointment of the Dirk Gently books (which were far less spurious and more mature as novels rather than a string of humorous anecdotes and asides strung together) also probably caused kind of a creative backlash; I can just envision Adams sitting in front of his Mac, fuming and saying to himself, “Ah, so they want aimless random humor, eh? I’ll give them random! Hell, I’ll name a fucking character Random!” While Arthur Dent is surely a conscious avatar for Adams, I think he had a bit of Agrajag in him as well, analogously failing to kill off the interest and fandom in Hitchhikers even after killing off the series.
AND he was going to write another. His plan was to turn The Salmon of Doubt into the 6th Hitchhikers book, but died about a month after announcing his decision on his website.
That’s the part that is heartbreaking to me about the series.
IIRC he said he only blew up the Earth at the end of Mostly Harmless so everyone would be in the same place at the start of the next book.
Oh well. I always thought that if it wasn’t for the ending, Mostly Harmless would have been considered one of his best books.
I didn’t realize it was as bad as you described, but he did say somewhere - it might be an interview quoted in Salmon of Doubt - that he had a very bad year when he was writing the book. Obviously it all came out in print.