Neil Gaiman's Introduction to the "Ultimage Hitchiker's Guide"

"He was tall, very tall." Gaiman does not say so, but I think it obvious Adams was not at all sure of himself.  But, as Gaiman nails in his second paragraph, when you once accept Adams's view point, you're stuck. The legend goes that, while sleeping rough near Innsbruck on a university vaction, Adans thought "someone should write a Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy."  Whatever.  It got written, at least as a radio play.  The original vehicle was a series of plays in which the world, at the end of each, was destroyed.  Dramatically, the idea was unsatisfying.  The end of the world for something like the creation of galactic bypass demanded some consequence:  someone to care about it.  The result was the creation of characters who did care, and who would drive a much richer plotline.

Introduction

My sister (a wise, clever, shrewd but not always up-to-date woman) just started reading Douglas Adam's _A Hitchiker's Guide to the Universe_.  I'm so jealous.  I long for the feeling I had when I first read it in the late 1970s.  It has been 6 years since I last read the series, so I sprang for the $11 Kindle edition and am starting it again tonight.  Because this will be my 4th read-thru, I thought it might be good to blog my way through it.  There's certainly enough there to interest us even 40 years after the fact.

If anyone reading this heard the original 1978 broadcasts on BBC4, I would like to hear from you.  Did it have the same impact that print and other versions had on us in subsequent decades?  I've heard excerpts from those broadcasts, and I suspect not:  They sound a bit flat.  Perhaps it's BBC4 drollery.  Regardless, the 1979 novel was electric.  That's the book, which I first read in 1981 (when my son was
already 4 years old) which I'll begin commenting on in my next post.