h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was 17 or so, and I think that the Radio show was on R4. I would listen to it in my bedroom (fading pink wallpaper w/ roses on it) when I should have been writing A Level essays. A part of my teenage years. Then I bought the books, one at a time, but didnt like the TV series much - the pictures were better on the radio.

agcB

It was the day the first run of the first series ended! Round at a friend's flat we were just surfing the airwaves and caught the last 12 (or so) minutes of the last episode! We did not know what on earth we had found! Frantic consultation of my parents' Radio Times revealed the horrible truth - we had missed it! My best friend taped the repeats and how we LOVED it. I inherited those original tapes when she was tragically killed riding her bike to work and it was those very tapes that my 13 year old son got into about 6 weeks after he and his father found h2g2! To preserve them from destruction I had to buy him a CD/Cassette player and the BBC tapes of his own the next Christmas and he now knows every word by heart. If only there was a GCSE exam ...

Just sitting at home as a very young boy with my parents, my Dad particularly loved it so it was silence required while it was on. For once, with my parents orders on that front, that was not a problem. It was great and the rest as they say is history...I remember getting Life the Universe and Everything and The Meaning of Liff the instant they were published.

I was in my early teens I think, off school ill and I was provided with a radio to keep me company. I was lucky enough to tune into an episode of HHGTTG and was captivated by the surreal humour. My sister has aging tapes of the radio series but the TV show lives only in my hazy memories. I bought each book as soon as it came out and read them avidly and still go back to them pretty frequently even now.

I was at school in year 9 (gosh, only five years ago) and my friend Becca brought the book to school and raved on at me about how good it was so I borrowed it off her and was hooked! She had bought it from a book club because she liked the title. The radio plays I bought on tape about a year later and oh, was it two years ago? I bought the guide to the guide on tape.

I saw the original run of the TV series. It was a time of Dr. Who, Blakes 7, and the Adventure Game, and I was only in primary school, so I didn't notice the bad effects, just a man with two heads, white mice and a depressed robot. I adored the book as portrayed on the telly, with it's weird graphics, calming, reasonable voice, and totally off the wall subject matter. As soon as I could I got the books, and 42 became stuck in my head. It wasn't 'till years later that I realised it came from a radio series, and I only just got around to buying them a month ago (I've been borrowing them for years mind).

A whole 18 months ago I was sitting on the floor in a bookshop, killing two hours, HHGTTG caught my eye and I thought to myself, "I wonder what all the chat is about" ... read chapters 1 - 4 there and then and proceeded to buy the whole lot (including the Dirk Gentlys and Deeper Meaning of Liff) ... read them all in quick succession and have never looked back. New to the scene as you can see but none the less obsessive ...


did I say obsessive, I meant devoted.

I was in college, when some friends of mine where talking about this great book they had read, HHGTTG. The more they talked about the more interested I become, bought the book and read it. Then I bought the rest of the books and read them including the Dirk Gentlys series. I became a fan.

Thank you Mr. Adams for many hours of reading pleasure.

Mostly Harmless

I thought it might be nice to share stories of the first time we picked up Douglas Adam's work.

The first time I encountered Douglas Adams, was when I was in junior high school. I was fascinated by astronomy, and I was browsing through the school library's audiotape collection. I wanted to learn more about the stars, but I figured listening to a tape would be far easier than reading a book.

I found a Guide to the Galaxy. I didn't look at the author's name; it was Hitcher or something like that. I thought it was the name of the astronomer who wrote it. The tapes were numbered, and I grabbed the library's 11th and 12th copy. They were about to close, and I wasn't looking very closely.

When I took the tapes home, I listened to Fit the Eleventh and Fit the Twelfth for the first time. At first I was confused. Someone was talking about taking pills to learn about star ship repairs and falling into deep dark holes. Soon, I was in stitches. The Life the Universe and Everything Student, and Ruler of the Galaxy ore still two of my favorite bits. After that I went back and checked out the rest of the tapes.

That began my life long interest in logic, math, philosophy and British humor. It also started me reading a lot more. From the tapes, I went on to the original trilogy. I think I had already read the Foundation series by Asimov. The Guide though really sparked my interest. From there I went on to read the books that would greatly shape my view of the world.

I started quoting the book so much that my Dad read in self-defense.

If I've ever had a complaint, it's that Douglas Adams was not prolific enough. I'm desperately curious about what happened when Arthur left with infinite improbability drive ship, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Linttila the Archaeologist, Eddie the Shipboard Computer, a lot of chatty doors, and a battered copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I guess we'll never know.

>>"curious about what happened.."

What happened...? What happened!
It's still happening, you two bit trigger pumping moron. Sorry, I just had to say that out loud. Mind if I call you Mo?

Me? Oh I was stoned on acid in a large flood culvert just outside of San Antonio Texas (The Alamo). It was 1971 and I was lying on my back staring at this cloud that looked like a B-29 (later realised as the one with the skeleton crew in Heavy Metal) and worrying about rattlesnakes or flash floods while somewhere in Europe, near Innsbruck I think, there was this guy, ya know just this guy, lying on his back wishing he could be stranded under a Texas highway...

I have vivid memories of sitting in a tape transfer suite of a small and tatty recording studio just off Dean St in London. A Studio tech friend of mine at the beeb had just finished mixing the first episode of the series. The beeb had never done anything quite like this before and he was desperate for a film industry opinion of the mix.

I cannot remember now what I thought of the sound, it very quickly became completely academic. I just stared at the 1/4 inch box as the episode finished and said, "Do they know what they have let themselves in for?" I dont know if they did at that stage, but for me, waiting for the next 5 episodes and the next series was agony. It was beyond doubt the best thing they had ever done.

The HHGTTG fulfilled for me what is best in radio. With modern digital technology, surround sound and just better techniques we could now produce the show to a far higher standard. But would it be funnier, cleverer or better? Nah! It was and is simply brilliant - just as it is.


Joss
Dubbing Mixer

I wasn't around when the frst broadcasts went out.

I was quite young and I remember first played the HHG text game: *get dressing gown* *look in pocket* *take Analgesic* etc. on a (very large) laptop my dad had brought home from work. I remember asking him what this was all supposed to be about when after about 10 turns or so, the Vogons arrived, the Earth blew up, and the game was over. He mentioned something about a book. I wasn't too interested. And that was that.

It was later at school, just as I was starting my GCSE's that I came across it again on the bookshelf (I had resolved to start at "A" and work my way through the interesting ones.) I first came across a collection of the first four books (you might know it? it's the one in blue, with a bathroom mirror on it, in which is a picture of a yellow Vogon ship, which looks oddly similar to a bulldozer...) I remember then having to stiffle the odd guffaw in a very silent library. I resolved to own a copy of my own, but disaster, nowhere - it seemed - could get a copy of that same collection.
It was only while, several years later, as I was wandering around the Union bookshop at Warwick University on one of the Open Days held there that I saw a new Omnibus Edition (The one with the three linked Earths, inc. Mostly Harmless...) and snapped it up then and there. (I still have it, well thumbed pages and all )
When people ask which is better the books or the radio? I always think the books are because it was the books that I grew up reading. I didn't listen to the radio plays on CD until I finally went to University at Hull and a friend (and fellow researcher here, I discovered) lent them to me. I teresting to see how different ideas branched out or were reused. But I still prefer ther books.

For completedness sake, I found a good deal on the boxed-set T.V series last year for £20.
I also went and got the deeper meaning of Liff. ("staving off a Farnham" - has no entered the popular Lexicon of phrases around Uni. )

Clive