Grab a towel and pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster because The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is 42 The weekend marked the 42nd anniversary of the first broadcast of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the hugely influential BBC radio show. 42 is a significant number for fans of the innovative series by Douglas Adams so (carefully) pour yourself a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, wrap yourself in a towel and join The Register …
I remember stumbling across the Radio Times magazine's listing (with accompanying illustration) for the show in 1978, when I was a schoolboy. I thought it was going to be some sort of documentary science programme about space. I listened to it in bed that evening and it was so amazingly funny, I just had to go and wake my brother for fear he would miss it.
Trying to explain the show to my school friends the next day was not easy.
the end of the first series when broadcast on the radio... found the xmas special, but what really got me into it was this from the start of the 2nd series
When Arthur and Ford ask the guide what to do if you find yourself stuck in a crack in the ground beneath a giant boulder you cant move with no hope of rescue
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far, however if life hasn't been good to you so far in that you are stuck in a crack in the ground beneath a giant boulder you cant move with no hope of rescue, consider how lucky you are that life isn't going to be bothering you for much longer"
Simply one of best and funniest things ever… mostly
Because it's interesting to compare different versions. The original radio series, plural, were pure genius. The sound design and music complemented the script beautifully, and I guess achieved just what DA intended. The books were just as good.
But the TV series was terrible, imho. Never understood why so many people actually liked it. The comic timing, spot-on in the radio series, was weirdly off in the TV adaptation, which ruined it for me. It was made worse by the fact that the script was so close to the radio series, so you *really* noticed the difference.
The film, on the other hand, was a decent stab at a screen adaptation, in part because it didn't try to stick so close to the radio series.
And the recent new radio series, adapted from collected bits of DA's unpublished writings (as I recall), was really quite bad. Very disappointing riffs on a hitchhiker theme
The TV series was pretty good, the animations were wonderful - there was an excited gaggle of programmers trying to work out how they did it all after the first episode, until someone realised it was animation. The film ( I refuse to say "movie") was dire, mostly because if you knew the story it left huge chunks out and made no sense, and if you didn't know the story it made even less sense.
I remember going to see a play based on the first radio series, complete with a giant inflatable hagunenon (no idea of the spelling!). On a couple of occasions a cast member forgot his lines, the audience just said them for him :)
To be fair to the film, which REALLY wasn't great, DNA did die before it was finished, so his input was limited. It did have one strong point for me, the musical rendition of SLATFATF. Also, the shot of the Magrathean workshop 'floor' with a planet being formed as a bust of DNA's head was a nice tribute. Perhaps a kind assessment would be "almost, but not quite, entirely unlike" HHGTTG
It's interesting the note in the article about not being able to make it with a studio audience.
At the previous anniversary - not sure whether it was 2 or 7 years ago - there was a broadcast of a version of it done before a studio audience. It was surprisingly indifferent. Not sure whether that was because of a lack of properly mixed-in effects, or just the players' need to wait for the audience laughter to subside.
Either way it emphasised how essential the lack of studio audience was to the quality of the original.
I find the post-DNA radio versions all a bit flat in comparison. DNA managed to instil a curious type of almost-science, and relentless logic, into it that sort of made sense, as well as being funny. The newer ones seem to be more focused on inventing characters whose names are generated in a way reminiscent of the originals. There's nothing like the SEP field, or Bistromathics, in the recent ones.
Or the reference to Don Cupitt, which I think he rather enjoyed ("Oolon Colluphid").
The original HHGG was very much like what you would expect if a group of Cambridge undergraduates from a wide range of disciplines congregated around one of their number who had a great gift for picking up ideas and was a literary genius.
"I find the post-DNA radio versions all a bit flat in comparison. DNA managed to instil a curious type of almost-science, and relentless logic, into it that sort of made sense,"
Yes, the internal logic of the "world" in which the story is set must make sense. It's what lets down poor or inexperienced writers, especially in the SF and Fantasy fields. You can have wonderful new science, magic spells or whatever, but they have to make sense in the world of the story and not just appear out of nowhere to solve a plot point when the writer has written themselves into a corner. It doesn't matter if the science is silly, so long as it's all consistently silly :-)
Forty-two bloody years??!!??
I'll have you know I'm feeling terribly depressed.
I missed the first two episodes and so wrote[1] to the BBC asking when it was to be repeated. I received by return a nice letter stating that there were no plans to do so, hotly pursued the following day be a postcard stating that, due to overwhelming demand[2], a repeat run was starting the following week.
[1] Yes, we really did that sort of thing back then.
[2] Yup, actual overwhelming demand caused by real people getting off their fat arses and making a proper effort, not sheep copying someone else's 140 character bleat.
"[2] Yup, actual overwhelming demand caused by real people getting off their fat arses and making a proper effort, not sheep copying someone else's 140 character bleat."
IIRC it was generally accepted then when people took the time to write in about an issue, there were probably hundreds more who felt the same but for whatever reason, didn't write in. In the modern days of twitter, email and on-line petitions, I think it's generally accepted that for everyone who shows an interest, there may be one or two more like-minded people.
In 1978 I inhabited a computer-nerd collective called 'Galdor Computing'. (In Surbiton as unlikely as that seems.)
One Sunday I was cooking late-lunch for the inhabitants (we didn't rise with the larks!) and turned the house radio on, BBC R4 of course, not knowing what was happening apart from it was too late for 'The Archers' (thank your own deity!) And there was something new on, interesting and funny. So I turned on the 'all stations' mode, so everyone in the house, office and mainframe room could hear.
IIRC, Arthur and Ford were about to be thrown off their transport or have to suffer the Vogon Captain's poetry.
Gradually the whole crew of Galdor accumulated in the house, to better hear the feed without the noise of the fans cooling several ancient mainframes. Anything that could capture the attention of a disparate crew of bright, technology obsessed nerds should't have been fascinating to the mundane world. But it was!
From where I lived the nearest stereo transmitter was some way south so a large directional FM aerial was required to receive a signal suitable for both ears.
Various key words have stuck within the family… brain the size of a planet, pain all down my left diodes, what is that coming towards me – I hope it is friendly, vase of petunias. However, the best one, because I was involved in digitising (using a BBC micro), from admiralty charts, the coastline of Norway, was something to do with crinkly bits and prizes.
Quite a few years ago I had a 42nd birthday party – because that it was one did.
I remember my first introduction to the radio series.
A certain Mouse Trainer was selling off plastic animation sheets from the book on the TV series. Got to see outtakes in Blackpool that were deleted forever a few months later. I'd never heard of the series at that point and so missed the opportunity to get Merch.
First episode later that week for me was the one where they're inside that marble cup. I was hooked.
Met Douglas himself a few months later doing book signing in Edinburgh. Only 3 of us there, so we got to ask lots of crazy questions. Later on, I was message boarding him on a London BBS. Sweet.
Being freakishly smart, getting bored is essential to come up with weird stuff and stay alife – or else getting nuts (after one develops a smart and fluffy tail and hang about the trees all day (like a diva on a sofa). ... As I read the comments of his Litterary Agent, I assume DNA was a 'gifted' person, i.e., had problems with focus and related problems... (the brain the size of...). ... It's a small ecology, that creates its own needs. And results. Getting bored with the universe (and its inhabitants) is one, inventing the gargleblaster is another one. (I'll have mine on the rocks, with a bit of napalm, and a little umbrella).
Sigh - I remember the original game by Infocom - available on 5 ¼" floppy disks that you had to boot to play. Text based only and it nearly drove me insane trying to survive in the darkness on my IBM PC/XT with glowing green phosphor letters....
42 Huh...? Where did the time go...?
Never really read books as a young kid, but either Blue Peter or Tomorrows World had a piece on Zaphod's head just before the TV series came out. I had it watch and an addiction, making more sense than the wearing of digital watches, started for me. First the TV series, then the books as they came out. Only encountered the radio series in the late 1980s when I saw the tape set in a sale (please do not lynch me) and bought them - still may favourite version.
A schoolfriend and I made Geoffrey Perkins's acquaintance when RadioActive (remember them?) came to perform at our school theatre on their way to Edinburgh. He later organised for us a tour of Broadcasting House. We met him in an editing suite where he and an editor were frantically trying to edit the second series of HHGTTG before RadioActive flew to Australia for a tour the following morning. The floor was knee deep in tape offcuts (the days when all tape editing was done with a razor blade and sticky tape) and he wasn't sure whether they would finish it all in time. I believe they did.
He did tell us that Douglas Adams suffered from terrible writer's block (fairly well known, I think) and would frequently turn up to recording sessions having written precisely nothing. He would sit in the next room with a stack of carbon paper, writing out the script by hand. It would be taken into the studio and recorded immediately the sheets were torn off the carbon pad. Sheer genius!
I remember starting out with the books at school, aged about 12 or 13. 2 friends were pissing themselves with laughter in the library and I asked them to share the joke, never forgotten that. I think, oddly, H2G2 is what got me into science fiction and science in general, it sparked the interest where genuine facts couldn't.
When I was a kid my parents sent off for a pack so I could join the Marvin Depreciation Society. It came with a badge with a sad Marvin face on, and a grey Marvin jumper. Except in my pack, they sent a too large jumper with little note saying something like "We are sorry to say we have run out of small jumpers, so have had to send you a large one instead. If you are unhappy please send it back for a full refund". My parents sent it back, but I have always wondered if the wrong size jumper and the note where part of the joke..
Is there anyone out there with inside information, I would love to know (it is something I ponder on once a year when the rotation of the earth makes my head spin)
I heard it, and in every broadcast since the mice have sounded 'wrong', but there's been no way to prove it.
Apparently they hadn't done all of the sound work before the first broadcast - thanks in part to Adams' attitude to deadlines - and the mice were reworked for the second broadcast.
I met Douglas in a bookshop in Birmingham when I was a student. He was there with co-author Mark Carwardine for a signing of Last Chance to See. A group of us from the RAG society heard he was there and decided to go down dressed in suitably menacing attire and flan him with a plate of shaving-foam, as was the habit back then, as part of the charity fund-raising we did.
To his huge credit he was well up for it and afterwards signed my copy of the book "with deep hatred and resentment".
The PF excerpt is still on the broadcast version. It has only been removed from the CD version. The broadcast version is currently on BBC Sounds for the next 28 days. Note: may be only available in the UK.
My personal experience of Hitchhikers is of tuning in by accident to episode 4 ( the one with the stupid cops ), and being mightily pissed that I'd missed the first 3 episodes. Fortunately the Beeb realised they were on to a winner, and started a rerun immediately the series finished.
Ron.
with various actors shut up in cubicles to record their lines so that voice treatments could be applied later. Occasionally the crew would forget, and much later a plaintive "Can I come out now?" would echo through the control room.
hmm, I believe this could be used today in several TV shows, bear with me here - Love Island / Big Brother/ I'm a Celebrity et al
get the cast of those, locked away,and forget about them, ignore the 'plaintive' cries, and keep cameras rolling to record the sordid details to be shown on the next 'it'll be all right on the night' :o)
Aside from the original albums, does anyone also remember the Marvin singles?
Came across them in my student uni days (at University Radio Nottingham) and might have even played them on the air a few times...
Marvin, Metal Man, Marvin I Love You and Reasons to be Miserable iirc.
Article forgot to mention that it was also a comic book series.
I loved every incarnation of H2G2....including the movie. Loads of Easter eggs in that one. I had custom cricket jerseys made for me and some of my mates....with the BUCC patch, hitcher thumb and 42 prominently displayed on the back when I turned 42 years ago. I wear the Dent jersey. Trillain, Prefect, and Zaphod went to my mates and they about died when I handed it to them. Hitcher for life!
Controversially I don't think it has stood up well over time at all, read the books recently and really struggled to finish them. I posit that generally the majority of people under 50 think its a bit shit but its "geek cool" to say its brilliant, so everyone does...
*lights touchpaper and runs away*
I got married when I was 42. On planet Africa, that has strangely enough the shape of Rwanda, and tends to be frequented by a 1000 hills, in a little place called Kigali. The claim of Rwandan people being the prettiest people on earth might be an overestimation, but by a negligable percentage. They do speak the most beautiful language - a fact I never see mentioned anywhere (not even chez El Reg, that now being corrected).
The negligable percentage of overestimation on prettieness explains why my future better half made up the excuse why I couldn't see my future mother-in-law before the wedding - for she was compensating on her own - I believe my better half was afraid about the source that had spawned [her] and I might get second thoughts. ... Thing is, my beloved loves Killing Joke (drums, Rwanda is great with that)... and other (violent) Pock-music, so any fears were redundant. (I don't care so much about my mother-in-law, being nice but truly horrid.)
I know where my towel is - as I sit on top of it all day, it being draped over my lounge chair, behind my desk, at work as an editor chez Mano Sinistra Publications - the place from which I rule a unverse with 1 inhabitant (a calculation by The Greatest Writer (for being over 2 meters tall) shows that I am 10 to the minus 43 (or something about) devided over all planets, my universe is uninhabited, making it a quiet place without kids.). I don't know where [the towel] comes from, but it's colorful, with an aboriginal patterning, so maybe there's a clue - it originates from an Australia-shaped former prison island, some of my relatives were born - thou I am not sure, since they speak an incomprehensible tongue - what might be a clue. We do communicate telepathically, and thankfully Australia is mostly a desert - we are one.
The rumour that I clubbed a towel to death with the leg of a table is gratutitous, and can be ignored. I love towels.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
