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