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If you're not a fan, or you're not sure if you understand what this all about, maybe you'd like some complementary informations. Let's go!

The radio series : the begining of the legend

Douglas Adams created "The hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" as a six part radio series for the BBC (Radio 4) at the end of the seventies. Douglas was then a 25 years old absolute anonymous, if you except a not very productive collaboration with Graham Chapman (of Monty Pythons' fame). "The Hitch Hiker's guide to the galaxy" was the first attempt to make some SF radio comedy with great sound effects (Douglas "wanted Hitch-Hiker's to sound like a rock album"). When the first series was broadcasted between march and april 1978, it became quickly a huge success. "By the time of the first three or four episodes the place has gone absolutly made. I think six publishing companies rang up, and four record companies" told John Lloyd (co-writer of episodes 5 and 6) to Neil Gaiman years later (in "Don't panic"/Titan books). A seventh episode, the Christmas special, was broadcasted at the end of 1978. A second series has even been recorded : five new episodes were aired at the begining of 1980. This five episodes contain a lot of exclusive material that will never be used again in the following versions of the guide (as the planet Brontitall). But "the hitchhiker's to the galaxy" is not just a radio series (even if it's one of the best you'll ever hear). It's also five books written by Douglas, a text based computer game from 1982, an official towel, a six part tv series from the BBC, some DC comics, some successfull LPs, several plays, an illustrated book, a still very active fan community, and soon a movie!!

But what is this damn story really about ?

Well it's difficult to summarize H2g2. But let's try to make an introduction. Of course it's not a summary of the movie but of the previous versions of h2g2 which sometimes contradict themselves. It's the story of a perfectly ordinary human being from England called Arthur Dent. One morning, he finds himself lying in front of a huge yellow bulldozer because a man from the local council, called Prosser, is trying to drive a bypass through his house. While Arthur is arguing with Prosser, his old friend Ford Prefect turns up, brings Arthur in a pub, and tells him that he's not from Guilford after all, but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse! His real job is researcher for an odd book as popular as inacurate, "The hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy". Even more important, the earth is going to be destroyed by the evil Vogons to build a hyperspace express route. Thanks to Ford, Arthur is going to flee from earth a few seconds before the vogon ships beams of demolition are energized. In fact Arthur and Ford got a lift, and are now in the Vogons construction ship! They will now have to face Vogon poetry, dying in the vacuum of space, the strange logic of the Infinite Improbability Drive, happy doors, the Ravenous Bugblatter beast of Trall, towels, a sperm whale, mice, humane cops, hairdressers... They also will have to find the question to the ultimate answer of the life, the universe and everything (the answer being 42). They will be helped in their quest by the infamous part-time galactic president Zaphod Breeblebrox, the maniaco depressive robot Marvin and the quite pretty and intelligent girl whose name is Trillian and who also escaped from earth a short time before the earth got destroyed.

The main characters (with presentation, pics and words from their various incarnations)

Arthur is a prefectly common human being, he is introduced in the radio series as "a six feet ape descendant". We learn a little more about him in the books. In the first book, he is decribed as about thirty years old, "tall, dark haired and never quite at ease with himself". He leaves in a very unremarkable house in the english country for three years when the Hitchhiker's story begins. Before he lived in London, but had to move out because it made him "nervous and irritable". He works in a local radio. Of course he loves tea, and is not very at ease with women (Trillian and later Fenchurch). "This must be thursday. I never could get the hang of Thursdays." "I woke up this morning and thought I'd have a nice relaxed day, do a bit of reading, brush the dog... It's now just after four in the afternoon, and I'm already being thrown out of an alien spaceship five lights years from the smocking remains of the earth". "... Is there any tea on this spaceship?" "It's only getting through me... a whole alien world, millions of light years from home. Pity it's such a dump though."

Ford is a researcher for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the galaxy". He's been jamed on earth during fifteen years. He pretends to be an out-of work actor, born in Guilford, and chose the name Ford Prefect because he thought it was "nicely inconspicuous". Arhtur Dent is one of his best friend on earth. He is described in the first book as being "not conspicuously tall, his features were striking but not conspicuously handsome. His hair was wiry and gingerish and bushed backwards from the temple. His skin seemed to be pulled backwards from the nose. There was something very slightly odd about him, but it was difficult to say what it was. Perhaps it was that his eyes didn't seem to blink often enough... Perhaps it was that he smiled slightly too broadly... He struck most of the friends he has made on Earth as an eccentric, but a harmless one..." "How would you react if I said that I'm not from Guilford at all, but from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse?" ( To Arthur) "What do you mean you've met? This is Zaphod Breeblebrox from Betlegeuse Five you know, not bloody Martin Smith from Croydon." "I wish I had two heads like yours, Zaphod. I could have hours of fun banging them against a wall." "I read of one planet off in the seventh dimension that used as a ball in a game of intergallactic bar billiards. Got potted straight into a black hole, killed ten billion people."

Zaphod is "the man who invented the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster, ex-confidence trickster, part-time Galactic President, one described by Eccentrica Gallumbits as the Best Bang since the Big One, and recently voted the Worst Dressed Sentient Being in the Universe for the seventh time running" (episode 2). He's got two heads and three arms, is Ford's semi cousin (they share three of the same mothers ). Oh, and he has stolen the Heart Of Gold, the new Improbability Drive prototype ship. "Look I'm here with cool OK? I am so amazingly cool you could keep a side of meat in me for a month. I am so hip I have difficulty seeing over my pelvis. Now, will you move before I blow it?" "Hell, I've lost my adrenalin pills". "Ford : What is you're after? Zaphod : Well, it's partly the curiosity, partly a sense of adventure, but mostly I think it's the fame and the money." (To Arthur) : "Hey look Earthman. You've got a job to do, remember? The question to the Ultimate answer, right? There's a lot of money tied up in that head thing of yours. I mean just think of the merchandising.... Ultimate Question Biscuits, Ultimate Question T-shirts...".

Trillian (Tricia Mc Millan) is also from Earth. She's "beautiful, charming and devastingly intelligent" according to Arthur (she has a degree in maths and another in astrophysics). Zaphod met her at a party and took her away with him while Arthur was trying to seduce her. "Same as you, Arthur. I hitched a ride. After all, with a degree in maths and another in astrophysics it was either that or back to the dole queue on Monday. Sorry I missed the Wednesday lunch date, but I was in a black hole all morning." "Zaphod, can we stabilise at X zero zero 547 by splitting our flight path tangentially accross the summit vector of 9GX78 with a five degree inertial correction? "Hey, my white mice have escaped".

Marvin is part of a new generation of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots and computers. Well, he's a prototype whith Genuine People Personalities. Obviously he's one of the greatest mistakes in all the cybernetics history. He's got a "brain the size of a planet", but he's also paranoid and utterly depressed : "Life, don't talk to me about life...". "Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they tell me to take you up to the bridge. Call that job satisfaction? 'Cause I dont." "What are you supposed to do if you are a manically depressed robot? No, don't try to answer that. I'm fifty thusand times more intelligent than you and even I dont know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level." "Making it up? Why should I want to make anything up? Life's bad enough as it is without wanting to invent anymore of it".

If you want to know more about....

- The h2g2 trilogy in five books is avalaible in many contries. The complete radio series are avalaible in BBC cds. You can also purchase the radio scripts (Pan Books). The TV series is also avalaible in DVD with a lot of bonus (makin of,...). - "Dont panic. Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" Neil Gaiman. Updates by David K. Dickson and MJ Simpson (Titan Books) - "The completely and utterly unauthorized guide to the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy" MJ Simpson (Pocket Essentials)

- His other books are all fabulous : The Dirk Gently series ("DG's holistic agency" and "The long dark tea time of the soul"), "Last Chance to see" (a great non fiction travel book about endangered species), "The meaning of Liff" ( a strange dictionary for words that dont exist but definitly should, co-wrote with John Lloyd) and the posthumous "Salmon of Doubt" (collection of essays, interviews and articles PLUS the unfinished third Dirk Gently's novel). - Two excellent and very different biographies have been published : MJ Simpson's "Hitchhiker" (Hodder and Stoughton, 2003) and Nick Webb's "Wish you were here" (Headline, 2003).

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