Q: What is the origin of the Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster, and how would you make one on Earth?

DNA: Unfortunately there are a number of environmental and weapons treaties and laws of physics which prevent one being mixed on Earth. Sorry.

Q: Do you remember the first time someone proposed the 6 times 9 is 42/ base 13 thing to you?

DNA: No. But oddly, I remember the seventeen thousandth. It was a warm June morning, as I recall, and I had just bought a new hat.

Q: Is it too early to reveal whether Zaphod's heads will have very different personalities in the movie, and whether you are thinking of having different actors for each head?

DNA: I do have a new strategy for Zaphod's two heads, but it's not one that I've seen anyone else suggest yet. Isn't that incredibly irritating of me?

Q: Why on earth would Fenchurch (or anyone) be in Rickmansworth?

DNA: Beats me. Never been there myself. Just liked the name.

Q: How are you going to interpret Marvin and some of the more fanciful creatures in the HITCHHIKER film? Are you planning to use CGI animation or actually build a 'prop' bot?

DNA: I think that the habit at the moment is to do a mixture of both. Animatronics is usually used for constrained shots because you can get more screen minutes for the buck. But CGI is used to do the real show-off stuff. I imagine that's the approach we'll take.

Q: Did you ever think that you would be so successful, or that what you wrote would cause all of this?

DNA: Bzzz bzzz. Meaningless unanswerable question alert.

Q: What is your connection with the Monty Python group, if any?

DNA: My connection to the Pythons is extremely tenuous. I was a big Python fan when I was at school and I later got to know them is really about it. I did work with Graham Chapman on other projects for about a year, but very little of it saw the light of day. I think I contributed about seventeen phonemes to a couple of stray Python scripts and appeared on screen for about 2.8 seconds. Otherwise I have collaborated with them on a lot of dinners.

Q: About three-quarters the way through the Illustrated Hitchhikers Guide there is a strange illustration of 42 multi-coloured balls lined up in columns 6x7. I can only assume this is the famed "42 Puzzle". My question is, how do you play? What's the puzzle?

DNA: The point of the puzzle was this: Everybody was looking for hidden meanings and puzzles and significances in what I had written (like 'is it significant that 6 * 9 is 42 in base 13?'. As if.) So I thought that just for a change I would actually construct a puzzle and see how many people solved. Of course, nobody paid it any attention. I think that's terribly significant.

Q: Are you hoping for a more famous cast or one of lesser known stature? Perhaps the Monty Python guys playing all the parts?

DNA: I don't know why everybody keeps trying to turn this into a Python movie. It isn't - it's a Douglas Adams/Hitchhiker's Guide movie. The Pythons are far too old to be in it. Unless they all want to play Slartibartfast.

Q:There is one thing that i would like to know. I think that it was in "The Long Dark Tea Time of the Soul" that in the list of other works by this author there was mentioned a book called: "Something" Christmas "something else" Holiday book. I have not seen it mentioned anywhere else. Please explain what this is about.

DNA: It was the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book, about 12 years ago. I edited it. It had contributions from me, from Richard (4 Weddings and a Funeral) Curtis, Terry Jones and a whole bunch of comedy luminaries. It was for Comic Relief to raise money for famine relief. We sold 500,000 pretty fast, and then we were attacked by the church for one item about the Nativity, told from the point of view of one of the sheep. They threatened to sue us for blasphemy. Which is a pity - we could have sold many more copies and relieved a lot more famine if it hadn't been for the church.

Q: You have often mentioned listening to music while writing. Is there an otherwise favoured piece of music, that you find too distracting to writing or makes you write badly?

DNA: It's a slightly complicated thing. On the one hand, when I'm getting deep into writing I tend to get obsessed with some particular piece of music and play it over and over again - but generally it has to be in the interstices: when you're making coffee or printing stuff out or whatever - any moment that you are not actually directly writing. Having music on while you are actually writing is a distraction.

Q: To be an artist these days you have to have just as much a business head as a artistic heart. When writing a script you do it for the love of writing it - but for it to be realised it seems you have to market every line you type to current trends in genre etc etc. Are we fucked? What are your thoughts?

DNA: I've come to think that the idea that the 'artist' lives in an ivory tower and is untroubled by the business of the world is a) a recent invention and b) silly. Making a living is as much a part of life as making poems or making jokes. If you don't learn about how to do business you'll a) not understand how most of the rest of the world operates and b) screw up.

I really feel cross about the fact that I managed to get through school and university without once being told how a business worked or even how to fill in a tax form. For a highly educated person I've made some pretty bad mistakes in my time in the administration of my life, not out of native stupidity but out of sheer ignorance.

Q: I am wondering if you have any advice to give to writers who are trying to write a novel, or trying to get their book published?

DNA: I don't really have any advice, other than to say it's the most appallingly difficult thing I've ever tried to do and I wish I had a better idea of how to do it. In my experience what you end up with is the by-product of your failure to achieve what you set out to do. It may turn out OK, but it wasn't what you meant and you've no idea how you got there.

Q: I was just wondering, did you purpously write these books with the ideas of human nature and the single mindedness of humans in mind or was it just a big coincidence?

DNA: What?

Q: As somebody who remembers the TV series; I was wondering what kind of effects might be employed in the film. Maybe George Lucas/Industrial Llight and Magic (or whatever its called) would have time between Star Wars episodes.

DNA: We intend that the effects will be even better than those on the TV series (if you can imagine such a thing).

Q: Did you know that Fox Mulder lives in flat 42? Noticed last night!

DNA: Aaaarrrgghhhhhh!

Q: It seems to me that, apart from living there yourself, many of your written works contain references to Islington. What is it about Islington that attracts you so?

DNA: The reason I frequently used Islington as a location while also living there shouldn't be too much of a conundrum. It meant I could do research by staring out of the window. Also, the little house in St Alban's Place was never my home, it was my office. It now belongs to my wife and is rented out to tenants - so please do not bother them!

Q: I just read The Deeper Meaning Of Liff, and found it to be uncompleted. What is the word for the feeling you get if you break an arm during abwong? Is there a definition for Tab? What is the correct number of sofa's? Really, the book seemed incomplete without this information.

DNA: I don't know when reading this forum last made me laugh out loud. I love the idea of the 'correct number of sofas', and that clarity is the nephew of talent.

Q: How did Zaphod manage to cut bits out of his own brain without killing himself?

DNA: By being fictious.

Q: Jehovas Witnesses. Ever had them knock on your door? If so, and you conversed with them, what do you think of them?

DNA: A friend recommended the following to me, if you happen to be visiting Salt Lake City. If there is someone you particularly dislike, or want to be revenged on in some way (no good for me, I'm afraid. I adore everybody) then here's what you can do. Go to the great Mormon Temple. In the entrance lobby is a huge visitors' book. DO NOT WRITE YOUR OWN NAME AND ADDRESS IN IT. But, in a fit of ill will, you could write in the name and address of someone you dislike. They will then be plagued with Mormon missionaries for the rest of their lives.

Q: Could you please tell me who Zbiginew is? This person/firm/entity is mentioned, just once, in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. The character Richard is reading the telephone directory, is distracted, and his colleague Kate suggests that the reason phone books keep you guessing until the end is that "Zbiginew did it." This could just be a case of an interestingly spelled name at the end of the alphabet, and I can accept that. But boy would I like to know for sure!

DNA: Ah, it's a terrible thing when you have to explain jokes, partly because it means they obviously didn't quite make it all the way to funny in the first place, but also because whatever vestiges of humour may cling to them never survives explanation. However... the point was that you always get the name of the murderer on the last page of a detective novel. So if you were to see a phone phone as a detective novel, then the name of the murderer would turn out to be (I picked up a phone book and looked at the last page and found...) Zbignew... Well, like many things, it seemed quite funny at the time.

Q: In 1994 CARDZ Distribution, Inc. put out a 100 card set of collectible cards based on "The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy". I recently found some unopened card packs and began my collection. I opened one of the card packs and I found a card number 27 that has what suspiciously looks like a DNA autograph! Do you remember if you personally signed these cards, or were they machine generated fascimiles?

DNA: I think I did have to sign a bunch of cards at one time. It was, as I recall, a lot of fun.

Q: Why no more Dirk? It's taken a lot of comittment and determination to pine for this long...

DNA: I just lost my way with Dirk and couldn't make the third book work. However, while I'm waiting for the next stage of the HH movie to happen (I can't talk about what's happening just at present, but there'll be news soon) one of several projects I'm working on in parallel is the screenplay of DGHDA. Got to page 5... I have no plans for another Dirk book, though if working on the screenplay generates new thoughts about the character, who knows? The next actual novel is not Dirk and not HH, but something altogether new. I won't say anything about it. I can't even tell you what the main character's name is because for years it's been Harry, but that's become impossible now.

Q: In DGHDA, Dirk has two minutes to save the world. All of a sudden it jumps
back to the time of Coleridge, Dirk fakes an interview, and all is well. What happened, how did this save the world, and what did I miss? Also, why did the time machine stop working?

DNA: Ahem. All I can say is that it was as clear as day to me when I wrote it and now I can't figure it out myself. Sorry about that. I'm actually thinking about it at the moment as I've been re-reading the book in preparation for doing a screenplay. I've got a little bit of sorting out to do...

Q: While watching some beautiful black and white ruffed lemurs at the Atlanta zoo yesterday, I suddenly had the urge to know--are lemurs just incredibly soft?

DNA: There's a very wide range of different types of lemur. I think the most common is the ringtailed lemur, which is very gregarious. They move around in large packs, and it's quite funny to see a whole bunch of them moving through long grass. All you see is a host of black and white tails moving along, held aloft above the grass. They are not particularly wary of humans (most lemurs are), and if you find yourself in the midst of them they'll clamber all over you and try to stuff bananas in your Nikon. They're very playful and energetic. I don't remember the quality of their fur particularly.

Q: All the women in DNA's books remind me either of the women in the Georgy Girl or the women in the movie Blowup .. coincidence or young adult infatuation with the Redgrave sisters?

DNA: This must be the single weirdest question I've been asked in twenty years.