New Hitchhiker's Guide: Welcome, and help yourself to some fish

Douglas Adams may be gone, but his Hitchhiker's Guide series will continue. At the helm will be Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl fantasy series. In a recording on his website, Colfer says:

This is one of my favorite series of all time.... As a teenager I would run around quoting lines from this to get me through my teen angst... Now all of these imaginary endings that I had for years -- as you may or may not know, Douglas Adams never finished the series, so I finished it in my head -- now I'm finishing it in real life.

When Adams died suddenly of a heart attack at 49, he had written five Hitchhiker's Guide novels, the last of which blew up several key characters. But he had plans for a sixth, according to The Guardian. The proposal for the sixth book -- to be titled "And Another Thing..." -- was sanctioned by Adams' widow, Jane Belson.

Both series are mega-sellers. THHGTTG (as some fans abbreviate it) has sold 16 million copies; Artemis Fowl's books have sold 18 million. There was one Hitchhiker's Guide film; an Artemis Fowl movie is scheduled to go into production next year.

Eoin Colfer sees other, more important commonalities between Adams' books and his own: "action, adventure, sarcasm, irony, a bit of satire, lot of comedy, weird wonderful creatures that don't take themselves too seriously." Sounds like he might be perfect to bring Arthur Dent, Marvin, Zaphod, Trillian and Ford Prefect back to the page.

-- Carolyn Kellogg

Photo courtesy EoinColfer.com

Comments

[Terrils]

"THHGTTG (as some fans abbreviate it)"

Whoa. I don't know any fan who calls it anything except HHG. I think the reporter isn't very familiar with it.

[Brenda]

WooHoo!! One of my favorite series of books. I'm looking forward to reading this one.

So Long and Thanks for All the Fish

[wg]

Terry Pratchett would have been perfect to continue this series (not that it needs to be continued). His Discworld books have always been the fantasy equivalent of HHG.

[ZAPHOD]

This looks mostly harmless.

[lil_gaucha]

Not sure how I feel about this. Can anyone else really tackle something so intimately a part of another person as their books? Especially a series?
It's it's not their baby.

And I agree that Terry Pratchett would have been a more appropriate choice, stylistically, but he's got Alzheimer's and I want more Disc World or childrens trilogies before it's too late.

[phio]

We'll just have to pray it's better than the Spider Robinson/Robert Heinlein posthumous "collaboration"!

[ATF]

WHAT?!

Oh god let it go! Adams should have just stopped at the So Long and Thanks for all the Fish! No one but Adams can write HHG. It won't work and will be even more disappointing than the terrible movie.

Blaaaaaah.

Let him rest in piece.

[Thor]

Shouldn't the sentence have read "When Adams died suddenly of a heart attack at 49, he had written five Hitchhiker's Guide novels, the last two of which blew up in his face." ? The last two entries in the increasingly ineptly named 'trilogy' (Adams' words, not mine) already were lacking. Anther one...? Why?

[Chris]

I think the series died with Mr. Adams, and should not be continued.

[Erwin]

HHG? Not H2G2?

[Ford Prefect]

Actually, I've seen HHGTTG used plenty.

I agree that the last two books indicated that Adams had more or less lost interest in writing for those characters. His tone became increasingly self-referential, cynical and bitter in "So Long..." and "Mostly Harmless."

While I am pleased Arthur Dent might finally get his happy ending (should've just left the poor bastard with Fenchurch in the first place), I am wary of a HHGTTG book penned by anyone but Adams.

That said, I'll definitely read it... I've been following along since the first US broadcast of the BBC radio series on KUSC all those years ago.