September 10, 2004

Don't Forget Your Towel

Posted by Harry

ABout 25 years ago I was innocently listening to my radio very late at night, and heard the first episode of a strange science fiction show. I was one of the few thousand people who listened to all the first series. It was not a success, but, being the BBC, they made another series anyway. A couple of years later it was transcribed as a book and became a huge publishing phenomenon, and the author wrote several more books added on to the series. I refrained from reading them, on the grounds that books are just second-rate radio shows, and if it wasn’t dramatised it probably wasn’t worth reading. It never occurred to me that, if I refrained from reading them, I might, eventually, be able to hear them dramatised on the radio as they should be, and not have any inkling of the plot. Fantastic.

Posted on September 10, 2004 02:15 AM UTC
Comments

Great sound effects.

Posted by John Isbell · September 10, 2004 02:21 AM

I love the original series. I was wise or fortunate enough to tape all of those shows when they were repeated on public radio in the US at some point in the 1980s.

I always thought they were done properly the first time. You don’t agree?

Posted by Ralph · September 10, 2004 03:58 AM

I think I was about 14 years old when I first ran across The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I believe the third book in the original trilogy had been published in America by then; in any case, I’d heard of the books, but knew nothing about them. The copy of Hitchhiker’s I did pick up was, in fact, a battered old paperback that someone had left behind them in the aftermath of a Scout camping trip; once it looked like everyone had grabbed their gear and whatever remained was trash, I nabbed it. (No name written inside it, I promise.) All that afternoon I lay on my bed downstairs, whooping and screaming with laughter at this insane nutball of a book. I haven’t had a reading experience like that since.

Eventually I got a hold of a copy of the original radio scripts, which in some ways are even better. And I heard the radio program, and saw the tv show. It should be noted that Adams’s later books—the two Dirk Gently novels—are arguably superior to the Hitchhiker stuff. But I still treasure that first exposure to his weird world.

Posted by Russell Arben Fox · September 10, 2004 04:02 AM

Wow, I’ve read them all…and had no idea they started as radio scripts. That must have been a great experience.

Posted by Cryptic Ned · September 10, 2004 04:27 AM

“couple of years later it was transcribed as a book”

?????

Yes, I know there was a BBC radio show of The Hitchhiker’s Guide. I see it mentioned on the BBC website all the time.

Are you implying the radio series came before the book?

Posted by Anita Hendersen · September 10, 2004 04:35 AM

I remember listening to the series first time round as - and added to my delight was the surprise that The Eagles wrote its great theme music.

Posted by Nabakov · September 10, 2004 04:38 AM

“Are you implying the radio series came before the book?”

Yep, Adams had been doing contract scriptwriting on and off for BBC radio when he came up with the idea (drunk in a ditch)and pitched it to them.

Posted by Nabakov · September 10, 2004 04:43 AM

“Are you implying the radio series came before the book?”

Um, yes, that would be the case.

Posted by Gary Farber · September 10, 2004 06:16 AM

If you like Adams, I’d also recommend looking back to prior sf comic writers such as Robert Sheckly, R. A. Lafferty, Ron Goulart (in his better work), Barry Malzberg (in his better work), “William Tenn” (Philip Klass), Bob Shaw, and many others, as well as modern souls such as Howard Waldrop, Rudy Rucker, and so many others, and, of course, the work of Terry Pratchett in fantasy.

Adams was talented and funny, but not working in a fresh — I’m tempted to say “novel” — field.

Posted by Gary Farber · September 10, 2004 06:24 AM

According to Wikipedia, which almost seems to come from Adam’s world itself, the series was first broadcast in 1978 and then as a novel in 1979.

The story I heard at the time, when I first heard the series in London, was that it was run initially as a regional radio broadcast - Essex? - and then went out on the BBC World Service, where it got its first national audience amongst naughty natives who tuned in to the foreigners’ entertainment.

Because the Beeb didn’t know what to do with it. I know for sure that it was adapted for theatre by the Science Fiction Theatre of Liverpool and performed at the ICA in May 1979. The audience was punted around inside an annulus of theatre tableaux arranged around the walls, riding on air skates supporting a sort of bleacher. The night I saw it, the whole contraption broke down and we had to plod from place to place.

Posted by David Tiley · September 10, 2004 08:13 AM

There is nothing second-rate about the books.

Posted by Reinder · September 10, 2004 08:27 AM

Gary — Is William Tenn the guy who wrote “Of Men and Monsters”? If so I am surprised to see his name come up in a discussion of Douglas Adams — OMM seemed to me like some of the very lamest, most uninspired science fiction I have ever read. Of course I may be quite confused and mixing up authors, in which case never mind.

Posted by Jeremy Osner · September 10, 2004 01:13 PM

Ralph — yes, the first time was perfect. The new series is not a re-do of the first, but a continuation of it — by adapting the subsequent novels.

reinder — I regretted that phrase. I meant soemthing like ‘pale copy’. Basically, I love radio sci-fi and am close to indifferent to literary sci-fi. EG< much as I like the Asimov Foundation trilogy, they don’t come close in quality to the BBC dramatisation.

david — the story I heard in a recent BBC account of Adams’s life was that it went out on Radio 4 originally, but at the (then) ungodly hour of 10.30 or so (which is what I remember — I’m pretty sure it was Tuesday nights, because I was 15 and had double games lessons onthe same day). Thye got complaints and found very few people listening, but some great enthusiasts. Adams had already been script-editing for Dr. Who, and was responsible for what some fans saw as the deplorable introduction of an absurdist, self-mocking element. So he was a half-known quantity, and some publisher heard the re-broadcast of the show and thought it would make a neat novel.

It is through Adams, eventually, that Richard Dawkins met his current wife, by the way — Lalla Ward, who played Romana II in Dr. Who (and was briefly married to Tom Baker).

Posted by harry · September 10, 2004 01:53 PM

PS the original series is easy to buy in the UK. I just tried to search amazon.com for it and came up with nothing, but I know that it is available here in CD and tape.

Posted by harry · September 10, 2004 02:04 PM

harry -
you can get the complete original radio shows from amazon.co.uk, too lazy to look right now, but I know that you can, because that’s where I got it.

Posted by st · September 10, 2004 02:42 PM

Lucky me, I first heard the radio show on NPR in 1982. Absolutely slew me. They made 6 more shows, which aren’t all that related to the later books, I got all 12 on tape. (Hmm, time to get them on CD and/or MP3, I think). They reused much of the cast and soundtrack for the video version.

I can’t read passages without hearing the voice of Peter Jones as The Book:

“Space is big. Really, really big. You may think it’s a long way down the street to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Posted by Jay · September 10, 2004 05:05 PM

Yeah, good luck on finding the original recordings for sale now. They don’t seem to be on Amazon UK (not in stock). Can you provide the direct link?

Posted by cc · September 13, 2004 03:17 PM

If we want to be even more picky about it, some of the ideas in HHGTG were dramatized in, or written-but-never-produced for, Doctor Who when Adams was involved with the show.

Posted by dn · September 14, 2004 02:20 AM
Followups

This discussion has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed.