Go stick your head in a pig

[vovat]

Okay, the first order of business is to mention that Weird Al has a new song available for download (the link is on his web page). It isn't one of his best, but it has some clever lines, and hey, new Al is better than no Al, right?

Also, I have now listened to the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series, which was a lot of fun. This was the original format, and the one that many say is the best. I guess I still prefer the books, partially because they're the original way in which I (and probably most American fans) first discovered the whole phenomenon, but also because Douglas Adams explained some things a lot better for the written version, notably how Ford and Arthur ended up in and subsequently left the prehistoric past, and the purpose of Zarniwoop's artificial universe. On the other hand, the voices for the radio show were great (although I honestly imagined Gargravarr sounding a little more pathetic), and I liked some of the bits that wouldn't have worked so well in print, like the out-of-tune robots singing the "Share and Enjoy" song.

For the most part, the radio series and the first two books tell the same story, but in a slightly different order, and with some more major differences. The planet Brontitall was left out of the books entirely, although some of its attributes were transferred to Frogstar World B. Trillian, who plays a fairly significant role in Life, the Universe, and Everything and Mostly Harmless, is actually written out of the radio play surprisingly early on. And the Secondary Phase of the radio show ends with a cliffhanger that's never resolved. I've heard that the BBC did make another series after Adams' death, but it just followed the later books, and dismissed the differences between the earlier books and the original radio show as Zaphod's dream. Kind of lazy, I think, but maybe they thought it would be disrespectful to come up with a conclusion (or as close as the Hitchhiker's series ever gets to a conclusion, anyway) that Adams hadn't written himself.

Finally, to ask an unrelated question, why do so many people that I talk to on the phone or through drive-thru speakers call me "ma'am"? Do I really sound that much like a girl?

Comments

[loz]

Thanks for the link :D

Finally, to ask an unrelated question, why do so many people that I talk to on the phone or through drive-thru speakers call me "ma'am"?

You sure they're not calling you 'man'? Eh? Eh?!

[vovat.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty sure.

Mind you, I don't think I'd appreciate people calling me "ma'am" even if I WERE female.

[loz]

Addition: Oh man, I hate that song (the original I mean). I kind of love Al's version just because he's done it. It's automatically rendered great to me.

[onib.livejournal.com]

Trillian, who plays a fairly significant role in Life, the Universe, and Everything and Mostly Harmless, is actually written out of the radio play surprisingly early on.

This just popped into my mind the other night, and I was remembering an interview that Adams did on Life, the Universe, and Everything. He said that the plot is loosely based on a script he wrote for a never-created Doctor Who movie. So, he had the villains, and much of the plot already worked out. However, as he thought through his characters' motivations, he couldn't think of any of the main characters who would care enough to research and do something about this threat. Then he thought, "Hey, I've almost done nothing with Trillian. She's a flat, kind of bland unexplored character. What if we actually give her some depth below that?" And the book flowed from there.

If you haven't read it, I suggest The Salmon of Doubt. It's a collection of Adam's published articles & interviews along with a bunch of unpublished stuff that was on his computer when he died, including the first few chapters of the title story which was originally going to be a new Dirk Gently story, but shortly before he died, he said in many interviews that he had become convinced that it would work better as a new Hitchhiker's story.

[vovat.livejournal.com]

However, as he thought through his characters' motivations, he couldn't think of any of the main characters who would care enough to research and do something about this threat. Then he thought, "Hey, I've almost done nothing with Trillian. She's a flat, kind of bland unexplored character. What if we actually give her some depth below that?" And the book flowed from there.

That's interesting to know. On the other hand, if he'd wanted to follow the radio show plotline, he could have used Lintilla as the researcher. Since she's an archaeologist, she'd presumably be used to doing research.

I've read Salmon, which was pretty cool. I really have no idea how he would have turned the title story into a Hitchhiker's one, though, unless his unwritten ideas for it were totally different from the ones that he'd actually written out. What was there seemed pretty well-tailored to Dirk, except possibly the stuff about DaveWorld, and so little of that part of the storyline actually existed that we really have no idea where he was planning on going with that.