Douglas Adams Continuum (DAC)

And that's exactly what Penguin (Colbie) wanted us to do.

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Her mouth opened, her eyes patients, the variety of age and constitution as a pullets egg, with some gobbits of fat, and the heavy sand.

(... don't piss us off)

The last time another author tried to write a book based on an idea by Douglas Adams, we got Starship Titanic.

Enough said.

Terry Pratchett has said that this sort of thing will never happen with his works.

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This has been another random act of nonsense.

Burning books? Nah...

I dunno. I'll probably give it a shot, though I'll not be expecting anything out of it.
And I've not picked up all the radio shows. Looks like I should go ahead and do so. One of the things I mean to do, but just haven't gotten around to yet.

Other than why is the question about creating new ideas riding off someone else's work rather than just simply creating new ideas. Seems creative laziness to me, although I've never read his books. But I'm open-minded enough to give it a try. It just seems wrong though.

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It's terrible, but I guess songs are just interesting things to do with the air.
-Tom Waits

I agree with Janette....

.....and Dukey.....

......and Gonz.....

.....and Ken....

And Barbie, of course...

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The drug purportedly affected an area of the brain called "Shatner's Bassoon"

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii297/h2g230/

Just when I've finally neared the point of recovery after reading Ken Socrates' Jane Austen fan fiction he posted last year, I hear THIS!?!?!?! Yeah, don't judge a book by its yet-to-be cover, but sheesh. Hitchhiker's without Douglas is like...something that shouldn't go without something else.

Will the suffering never end?

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"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings."

So, you haven't heard about Nickelback's Pink Floyd tribute album?

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The drug purportedly affected an area of the brain called "Shatner's Bassoon"

I used to think that the brain was the most wonderful organ in my body. Then I realized who was telling me this.
http://s267.photobucket.com/albums/ii297/h2g230/

You.

Are.

Making.

That.

Shit.

Up.

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"Friendship is like peeing on yourself: everyone can see it, but only you get the warm feeling that it brings."

So, can we get him to sit in our comfy chair whilst we stone him, erm I mean ask him some nice interesting questions?

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I'm going to start a new company. It's going to be called 'Easy McApple.' The revenue stream will be based on betting who will sue me first...

Many authors have had someone else continue thier work after them, Robert E Howard being one of them with his Conan 'yarns' as he himself once put it. Other authors such as John Gardner and Seabstian Faulks have continued Fleming's Bond series, or Kevin J Anderson the gargantuan Dune mythology.

How would this news have been recieved if the likes of Terry Jones (Starship Titanic) or Harry Harrison (Bill The Galactic Hero, The Stainless Steel Rat) have been the author instead of Eoin Colfer? Would the response have been the same?

Regardless, judgement should be held off until the book is published.

Out of curiosity, i have occasionally wondered whether a 'further H2G2II Universe' book would need to be a Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy novel, in the sense that writing a book that focused solely on Ford Prefect would not actually need to be part of the (at present) 5 book sequence.

Your thoughts?

Shalom...

Michael.

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"If you are disappointed in any way with our service, then please. Don't hesitate. FEEL disappointed." Fentible.

Skiv -- I don't think that this dismay is about the book, which of course one can't judge before they see it, but about the fact that such a high profile deal has taken place. I think that for some of us, the whole question has been tempered a bit by the knowledge that Douglas' family was, indeed, involved in the decision. However, there have been so many times that fans of DNA have been deeply disappointed by attempts to take his work several steps further without him, that we have a definite "Fear Factor" going here. So we can hardly be blamed for viewing this with trepidition.
If some writer, somewhere, had written an amazing "Part SIx" and it was discovered and realized to be a truly excellent follow-up, and THAT was published with much hoop-la, I would find that much more exciting than this "assignment" to duplicate (or replicate) the inner workings of a truly original mind. A book is SO MUCH MORE than mere writing, it is the psychology, the cadence of language, the personal history that shows in the writing. Everyone gets different things out of a body of writing, so something will have to be left out. No matter what, it can't be the same without the original writer, and what are you then left with? "The further adventures of Arthur Dent." It will reflect Colfer's soul, but not Douglas'. That is my objection.

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I'm just here

No offense to the above authors but their language is somewhat generic, so as anyone could fill in the spots. Not to wax lofty on DNA but he had a unique gift for phrases, one that he admittedly attributed to Wodehouse. It'd be one thing if the story was unfinished. This just seems a needless rejump of what was a done series.


See my previous response re: Starship Titanic.


I've never wondered. HHGTG is Douglas Adams and anything else is so much fan fiction.

I mean, it'd be one thing if he was working on notes from Adams and was just finishing up an unfinished work like Salmon of Doubt. But this is a new adventure written by someone not DNA. This isn't some long term plan that had already been established. This just seems like a cash grab.

Bad idea.

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This has been another random act of nonsense.

That is absolutely brilliant!! I do hope you take credit for coming up with the phrase.

And as for the topic, again I say:


ICK

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www.nocandyasses.com

"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule."--H.L. Mencken

www.campaignforliberty.com

The way I look at it, Hitchhiker is not meant to be Goosebumps or The Babysitters Club where it's a series where a new author does a whole new story for every book. It was meant to be done by one man and one man alone, as look what happened to it the one time he wasn't around to be involved.

Now I want to be a writer someday when I get out of college and I buy lottery tickets up the ass in hopes of being the million-to-one odds person who hits the jackpot but I would not have taken this redundant writing assignment for all the gold in Fort Knox!

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"If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now!"

-- Zaphod Beeblebrox

-- Wrestling is a spectacle all right. But believe it or not, some of the most devoted fans are highly intelligent people

In the interview with him Colfer says he will not be attempting to channel DNA but writing in his own style and "just using the characters".

That, I think, is rather pointless.

As is the idea of it being "a sequel". I'm glad in one sense that the story is being produced to "round off the series", because that at least implies that there will only be the one book.

This too is pointless.

Like many others I cut my teeth writing HHGTTG fanfic, and I am even having a go at writing a theatrical adaptation of the original story which will be a sequel to itself thanks to the wonders of parallel universes and the whole sortt of general mish-mash, but at the end of the day - just like a Sherlock Holmes story - it will just be a pastiche. I actually think that any half-decent writer can write a half-decent hitch-hiker story but, again, I don't see the point.

Then again, the hitch-hiker series never had any point either, and that didn't stop Douglas.

So, a book with no point, not in the style of Douglas Adams, using characters that have already been killed off by Adams, retrospectively resurrected for no point other than, perhaps, to be blown to smithereens again with even less of a point does seem to the order of the day.

It is, however, a missed opportunity.

What I've been hoping to see for a number of years is an anthology of short stories by people who knew and connected with Douglas Adams. Short stories collected together in an anthology which celebrated how amazingly amazing Douglas and his works could be.

I would have liked to see stories by: Michael Bywater, John Cleese, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Terry Jones, John Lloyd, Terry Pratchett (just to acknowledge who was really the daddy) and others.

But anthologies don't sell, so it would have been pointless.

Unless....

They could have got all of the above to write guide articles and then get someone to construct a completely random story around them, uniting them into a single narrative which had the look and feel of a novel, but which brought together the people that really mattered in a book which might not have been brilliant, but at least would have had a point.

Not sure what my own point was though.

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Don't Panic! is a not-for-profit role-playing game produced by and for fans of the late Douglas Adams. If you're looking for something fresh, funny, irreverent, and different to every other role-playing experience out there visit http://hitchhikers.wetpaint.com/

What?

Look, we're not going to have this discussion so just put that silliness out of your head.

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This has been another random act of nonsense.

Is Ms. Belson strapped for cash or something? I can't think of any other reason she would have approved this project.

And James, if you see this, please don't take that question as any sign of disrespect towards your family, as considering your brother's work always cheered me up when I was down (particularly the radio show) yours is the last family I'd ever want to disrespect, I just don't see any good coming of a Hitchhiker book not written by him.

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"If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now!"

-- Zaphod Beeblebrox

-- Wrestling is a spectacle all right. But believe it or not, some of the most devoted fans are highly intelligent people

You can put lipstick on some fanfiction done to make money, it's still some fanfiction done to make money.


Dude, metabaron, don't even about the Pterry origin thing. If you're going to namecheck anyone namecheck Wodehouse.

I'm surprised at how cranky this has made me. And I don't even mind Colfer.

I don't mean to come off as disrespectful to the estate, though, reading that back it comes off as a little snide. I know Douglas kind of hated H2G2 by the end of the 80s, but it's still...it seems wrong. Douglas wasn't Hitchhiker's, but Hitchhiker's was Douglas.

Library check-out and flip through the first few pages to check what's up for me.

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Oh, I see. You were lampooning me.





It was a simple lampoon.

I agree with Tony.

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love is a wet spot on the mattress of my life! Tracy Lundgren

after our performance a bunch of little kids were in awe of the size of my bassoon. Appogg

James, where are you?

I think some of us may need your perspective....

..and soda?

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D.
The Thirteenth Triskaidekaphobe
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If would imagine James would want to stay out of it at the moment. Eh James?

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Her mouth opened, her eyes patients, the variety of age and constitution as a pullets egg, with some gobbits of fat, and the heavy sand.

(... don't piss us off)

Janette that's brilliantly put. If Penguin read this it might make them come to their senses. Or maybe not, perhaps they haven't got any $ense.

In fact I think you should post it here

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Her mouth opened, her eyes patients, the variety of age and constitution as a pullets egg, with some gobbits of fat, and the heavy sand.

(... don't piss us off)

Thanks, Scratch. I may post it at Penguin, if I have time today to create a log in to do so.

In the meantime, may I offer this? James will have to forgive me for treading into speculation about the family, but I think this is a kinder, gentler consideration than many people's speculations about cash grabbing and finances.

In my little fantasy/speculation it goes like this: this beloved author's nuclear family read another fantasy series, say one like "Artemis Fowl" and really love it. They say to themselves: "this is a really good writer, and it would be so cool if he could try his hand at perpetuating the work of our husband/father...." So, they make some contacts, little realizing the machinery of the publishing world, and the widespread devotion of the fans, will turn their sweet idea into a minor explosion...

This may not be the case, but I would like to think that it might be nearer the truth than a desire to "capitalize"...Sometimes, when you are in the eye of the hurricane, it is easy to forget the intensity of the storm that's out there.

Just a take..

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I'm just here

It would be nice to think that Jeanette, but as the publisher himself states...



which unfortunately can only leave me drawing one conclusion.

Janette, I didn't log in to post.

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Her mouth opened, her eyes patients, the variety of age and constitution as a pullets egg, with some gobbits of fat, and the heavy sand.

(... don't piss us off)

I don't think James has anything to do with all this at all, so I guess he'd rather not get into it.

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Before long now, I'll reach the age where farting will be an essential part of propulsion.
(...don't piss us off)

Naaa, let's threaten to ban his ass if he doesn't spill the beans...right now!

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Her mouth opened, her eyes patients, the variety of age and constitution as a pullets egg, with some gobbits of fat, and the heavy sand.

(... don't piss us off)

Can't say I blame him for staying out of it....

Scratch, you were right. It was easy and I posted it.

As to the "large-ish check", Duke, yes, I saw that. But I can dream, can't I? One tries to think the best of people first. At least I try to.

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I'm just here

I agree with a lot of you all here. So here is a new point.

I am unfamiliar with the author taking on this almost certain to make a bit of money and almost certain to be hated project, but I've heard good things about Artemis Fowl. With that said, someone that I am familiar with who might be able to do a bit of justice to the Hitchhiker name, like, say, Neil Gaiman, I still would rather see something completely new and fresh from him with new characters and so forth than the strange fit of seeing his style with familiar characters.

Let me try this again. You know how it has been the rage in Hollyweird to remake old TV series. Let me pull out a past example from over a decade ago - The Brady Bunch Movie. Everybody in it looked somewhat like the originals, but just enough to feel weird. It was always a bit offputting for me. I have a feeling this will be the same way. Even if I enjoy it, it will be no more than a novelty than something that I believe belongs alongside Douglas' work. That is the best case scenario, in my opinion, and why I just don't see a project like this being worth it.

Sure, Mostly Harmless' ending didn't feel quite right, and I remember the first time I finished it feeling like Douglas was sick of the whole thing and wanted to put a final, and strangely bitter, ending to it all. But still, it is suitable enough for me.

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It's terrible, but I guess songs are just interesting things to do with the air.
-Tom Waits

Yes, but the joke in the Brady Bunch Movie was that civilization had moved on but the Bradys didn't. It was supposed to be off-putting.

Is someone afraid that we fans are unable to carry on the HHGTG franchise without "new adventures"? Other franchises may have thought this but unlike Star Trek or Doctor Who, HHGTG was written by only one person. You can have someone, anyone, plug in a Kirk-on-a-hostile-planet here or a Doctor-fighting-horrific-evil there but you're not going to find anyone else who knew the HH universe as well as bopAd. But if someone honestly feels like the series cannot stand on its own legacy, that's a serious slap in the face to everyone here.

So... pirating of a legacy out of fear or grab for cash. Which is it?

The beauty of HHGTG for me was that it was a perfect allusion to parallel universes. Each incarnation of the series was quite different. There are enough threads on that alone to keep us fascinated with the series. We don't need a pretender trying to hijack what doesn't need to be hijacked.

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This has been another random act of nonsense.

Oh. It's been so long since I've seen it. So was that the same effect the Flintstones or the Scooby Doo movies trying for as well?

Anyway, back to the discussion.

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It's terrible, but I guess songs are just interesting things to do with the air.
-Tom Waits

Basically I hate the idea. But I understand that the Adams family and the publisher have interests to keep the franchise alive.

The positive angle might be, that Colfer probably doesn't need the cash so much. Popular novels, major movie coming... I don't think he would do this ONLY for the money. Hope he is being sincere about his love for the series, and that he will try to do his best with the sequel.

But then again, I am a positive person (but only when I'm not depressed).

What the hell?! Is this a joke? What next, Tolkien's son asking Stephen King to write another Lord of the Rings novel?

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Batman: Nobody wants war.

Robin: Gee, Batman. Belgravia's such a small country. We'd beat them in a few hours.

Batman: Yes, and then we'd have to support them for years.

I feel sad..

Skei

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Ophelia was a preference, not humanly accessible, not as such.

So, to summarize, if we assume that we are an average cut-out of the H2G2 fanbase, the feelings range from skepticism to anger. Though, I think that I speak for all of us when I say that it comes with a tint of curiosity, about what this Colfer is going to do with our beloved series.

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Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

-H.L. Mencken


[url]http://www.madmanoz.blogspot.com[/url]

I'm going to read MH this weekend again for the first time in several years because, as a few have said, it wasn't the most uplifting of books DNA got round to writing.

My main problem with this project is the lack of notes that Douglas prepared for a sixth book. By bob the film was better prepared than this.

Now, as for Dirk - as already has been said...

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I'm going to start a new company. It's going to be called 'Easy McApple.' The revenue stream will be based on betting who will sue me first...

i just don't get it

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(... don't piss us off)

I love Eoin Colfer- I think his books are entertaining and funny- but he is NOT Douglas Adams. No one is. Why would anyone think it would be a good idea for someone else to continue his work? I don't understand.

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You know what you are? You're a beard with an idiot hanging off it.

Now let's be fair. He never said he was going to write it as Douglas, quite the opposite.

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Before long now, I'll reach the age where farting will be an essential part of propulsion.
(...don't piss us off)

No, he didn't, Duke, but there's something else to consider here:

They're Douglas' characters, so how could they possibly work written in someone else's style? I'll bet you any amount of money that under those circumstances, it will come off as nothing more than glorified fan fiction.

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"If there's anything more important than my ego around here, I want it caught and shot now!"

-- Zaphod Beeblebrox

-- Wrestling is a spectacle all right. But believe it or not, some of the most devoted fans are highly intelligent people

Yes, but the thing is he has clearly stated that he is going to write it in his own style, so what I'm aiming at is that we have really no cause to be disappointed when we read it and it's not in Douglas writing.

Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a bad idea. But I also think we should be fair to the poor fellow.

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Before long now, I'll reach the age where farting will be an essential part of propulsion.
(...don't piss us off)

This was mentioned even in my local newspaper in Finland this morning. Only a short piece in the culture-pages, though. Has it been in the media in other countries?