Colfer Asked To Write Sixth HHGTTG Book 338
clickety6 writes "Eoin Colfer, the Irish author of a number of books (including the popular children's book series 'Artemis Fowl'), has been directly approached by Douglas Adam's widow, Jane Belson, to write a sixth book to continue the (even more) increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy."
NO NO NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Enough Douglas Adams milking already, please for the love of - insert deity here - do not destroy the legacy of this great author.
Sorry for the rant, have just watched the movie...
NO. (Score:5, Insightful)
A tremendous feeling of peace came over him. He knew that at last, for once and for ever, it was now all, finally, over.
Let's just leave it at that, shall we?
Nope, sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
Not going to read it, and I say that as a dedicated Douglas Adams fan - I have the omnibus edition of HHGTTG (thanks to my daughter), the movie on DVD, the BBC TV series on VHS, and am still after the radio play (which I've been told is the best of the lot).
If Asimov's widow asked someone to continue his Foundation series I wouldn't read it, either, and Asimov was my favorite author.
It wasn't the story that made it great, it was the writing. Without Douglas Adams it can't possibly be the same. It will be to the original what margarine is to butter. I can't imagine a writer with integrity taking the job.
Re:TELL HIM NO (Score:4, Insightful)
Very brave. Using an anonymous account posting someones private contact information. Very brave.
You should have posted his official contact information, where he can deal with the responses during office hours, instead of whenever random /.er calls.
Re:All the diodes down my left side... (Score:3, Insightful)
Good call on Terry Pratchett, he definitely took a lot of pages from Douglas Adams's play book. At the same time that sort of disqualifies him (emulation != the oroginal (tpine ?)).
It really is very simple, Douglas Adams is dead, and no amount of 'franchising' is going to change that one bit, it never was about the story, it was about the writing, and that magical touch is not going to be reinstated with good will or effort, it would take the original to make that happen.
That said, it is probably 'worth a lot of money' (said in a squeeky high voice) so most likely it will be done anyway.
I for one will not be buying it.
Re:What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Christopher Tolkien isn't producing cheap cash-ins on his father's legacy. He compiled the Silmarillion, then spent decades writing and publishing detailed analyses of the reams of notes and fragmentary manuscripts that lay behind the legends, and finally tidied up the Narn i Hîn Húrin to a publishable form. And I for one am very glad that he did so.
OK I guess. (Score:5, Insightful)
I suppose I don't have a problem with this, as long as its crystal clear that this is Colfer's book, set in the HHG universe. If there is any implication whatsoever that this is a new Douglas Adams book, I have a big problem with it.
He's not pinin' for the fjords. He's dead. Let him go.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think so because the Dirk Gently stuff wasn't produced by then (and that definitely is Douglas Adams at his best, great gods of guilt in a refrigerator :) ).
I think it works like with most things produced by people of such amazing talent, they lose interest because too much of it is already cast in concrete by mistakes earlier on.
Like working on a big software project, the maintenance phase is not the most fun part, unless you did everything just right in the beginning. And judging by Douglas Adams's writing about the making of the hitch hikers guide he was very much feeling his way while making the radio plays and this led to all kinds of dissatisfaction while making the books because so much was already set in stone.
I personally think the radio plays are the 'definitive' edition (in spite of all their shortcomings) because they catch the atmosphere the best. The books however greatly expand upon the story, but I can't help hearing Peter Jones' (rip as well, but at least at a respectable age) voice when reading the guide quotes :)
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:NO NO NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Douglas Adams was one of the bigger obstacles in the way of making a movie, and I don't think it would have ever had his blessing. The script sucks (random rearrangements, insertions of 'new' but irrelevant stuff all over the place, and deletions of essentials elsewhere).
Of course, it made money so who am I to complain, but it left me with a definite unhappy and disappointed feeling.
When hearing the radio play and reading the book you get a definite mental image of the kind of universe that Douglas Adams wanted you to see, and most of the movie contradicts that mental image.
There is a joke about that:
A man walks into a movie theater and sees a donkey standing in the aisle.
He walks up to the row behind the man with the donkey and whispers in the guys ear: "Wow, how amazing, he's really looking at the movie, isn't he?"
Yes, says the guy with the donkey, sure is. But he like the book better...
Re:NO NO NO (Score:2, Insightful)
Sorry for the rant, have just watched the movie...
Well, speak for yourself... I quite enjoyed the movie, and felt it was a good portrayal of Adams' universe. I've never really been sure why other HHGTTG fans seem to hate it so much.
do not destroy the legacy of this great author.
Nothing can destroy his legacy. He's dead, and his legacy is set in stone. All they could possibly destroy would be the legacy of the guy who did a bad job (if he does a bad job, I guess, but I consider it a fair bet).
Re:NO. (Score:3, Insightful)
FTFA
"No information has yet emerged about the plot of the novel but Hitchhiker fans will be hoping for a resurrection of much-loved characters Arthur Dent, Trillian and Ford Prefect, who were all apparently blown to smithereens at the end of the fifth novel, Mostly Harmless."
No, they won't.
Re:Nope, sorry (Score:4, Insightful)
Bear, Brin, and Benford are all talented, but there is a difference between extending Foundation and extending HHGTTG.
The problem with extending the Hitchhiker universe is that it's driven by character interaction and DA's sense of humor.
The first Foundation book was basically short stories, each with new characters, new settings, etc...Very easy to extend, just write a short story of your own. Make up your own characters, your own planet, whatever...All you have to do is genuflect toward psychohistory, Hari Seldon, and the fall of the empire. It's a historical backdrop that can accommodate any number of stories.
Now imagine someone else trying to write dialogue between Ford and Arthur.
Yea. It's like that.
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were, for me, the only readable books. And only barely readable, in the case of LotR. The Silmarillion makes me reach for a real history textbook for interest. Of all the books I started reading of my own free will (and there are a lot of them), it is, to date, the only one which I've been unable to bring myself to finish.
I think I'm not the only one with that opinion and I expect it's a large part of the hate for Christopher Tolkien.
Re:Sounds reasonable (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:2, Insightful)
Care to name the book you are referring to as "entirely new crap"?
I have read a few of his books, but none of them were really new. They just told the story of the creative process based on his father's rather unwieldy mound of notes.
Dirk Gently (Score:2, Insightful)
I just put down Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, and frankly I wish there were more books from that Adams' series rather than HHGTTG.
Don't get me wrong, those books are pure gold, but Gently is more my style right now. Mixed feelings though about anyone but Adams having a hand in anything like this...
Re:NO. (Score:3, Insightful)
You have no idea how dejected I was upon reading those words. I'd love to see a reboot, and I don't agree with those who say it can't possibly be well done. Adams was a genius but he didn't have a monopoly on genius.
Of course he didn't have a monopoly on genius, there are plenty of other people out there talented enough to come up with new things rather than shamelessly exploit one extraordinary man's vision.
Hitch-hikers was always Douglas' baby, and it now serves as his major legacy and contribution to human culture. Let other geniuses have their own.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:3, Insightful)
Are you refering to the Disney movie that Doglas Adams wrote the screenplay for? [imdb.com]
OK, first, Adams didn't work in a vacuum or finish the screenplay himself, what with being dead and all. Second, why does everyone assume that the potential for that movie to suck, to miss the point of the original books, etc. is inversely proportional to the extent of Adams's involvement in the project? I don't care if they held a seance to get Adams to review the script before they started shooting - the movie has real problems. And a few high points, but mostly just a lot of problems.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
There are some really great stories in the Silmarillion, unfortunately it's in a style of writing that's more akin to an academic textbook than a pleasure read.
The problem is that he's trying to create a mythology for a fantasy world. Traditionally the old greek mythology I'm familiar with relied upon the reader to know and accept certain facts as being in evidence, and thus the stories proceeded straight into explaining how those truths came to be, and that's the most fun part. For Tolkien's world, we have no frame of reference, so he has to set the stage in gory detail.
I don't feel very robbed reading what Christopher Tolkien produced (though I get a headache at times, but that was true with LOTR), I believe he's really just cleaning his Dad's work and making it edible, and I think he's done a decent job (at least insofar as the Silmarillion is concerned).
Now Brian Herbert...another story. I'm not even sure Frank Herbert's Dune sequels were that great, I'm not sure why this continues on. I guess I was less enthralled with the Universe of Dune which seemed bland, as I was with the story of Dune.
Re:NO NO NO (Score:5, Insightful)
random rearrangements, insertions of 'new' but irrelevant stuff all over the place, and deletions of essentials elsewhere
ROFL, while I have my own critiques of the movie, this is probably the *last* reason to dislike the script. If you read the books and listened to the radio plays (or played the Infocom game), you'd know that DNA was quite happy to alter the HHGTTG storyline in order to fit the medium. The fact that the movie diverges from the books should be *expected*, not derided, given DNA's approach to the material.
great! (Score:3, Insightful)
Bingo - that's the difference (Score:5, Insightful)
Read the introduction to The Silmarillion. That's all Christopher was doing. Collecting his father's early stories and trying to figure out what was closest to canon. The early stories have discrepancies in them that make them mesh poorly. It was a monumental task to figure out each story and put them into the most coherent framework.
But Christopher took the time out and figured it all out and came up with the most coherent version of the early work and made what wound up being my favorite book in the whole Tolkien series. Without him, we never would have heard about the Music of Arda, or Feanor, or any of it.
He wrote nothing, changed nothing, and brought more of his father's work to the world. He has my eternal gratitude.
Now, let's contrast that with Brian Herbert. Spoilers ahead.
I got through House Atreides. And halfway through House Harkonnen before I gave up in disgust. They're not even as good as fan fiction. They're simply dismal. Having RM Mohaim be the mother of Jessica? Get serious. You know you're in deep shit if you're stealing plot ideas from George Lucas.
And the writing itself is simply awful. It's like he took a dartboard with his father's wonderful mythology on it and threw darts at it. The characters have zero depth and sound like they're doing Dune impressions. He goes too far out of the way to have everyone use words from the original works.
It's really awful. Penny Arcade said it best. [penny-arcade.com]
Re:What? (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't get the hate for Christopher Tolkien. Without his work, we would have The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings - nothing else at all.
Amusingly, I think you answered your own question here. The Silmarillion was a horrible book. The scattered notes, often contradictory, were not finished nor meant to be published. The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings was what should have been published. Nothing else.
Re:No. Finish the Infocom Sequel (Score:4, Insightful)
I played a lot of text adventures when I was a kid, but these days I can't stand anything more primitive than The Secret of Monkey Island. I'm sorry, but endless "guess the verb" sessions are not my idea of a good time.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
What?! Three Dune books? I know of no such thing, there is only Dune.
Re:What? (Score:3, Insightful)
It is a horrible book allright, but I'm still glad it was published. Some of us just love to burrow into a backstory like Gollum into Misty Mountains. For example, I've read dozens of D&D rulebooks just for fun, without ever having played the game.
Then again, I also consider physics textbooks light reading before bed...