Douglas Adams developed the comic science-fiction franchise The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a BBC Radio 4 radio comedy broadcast in 1978, it was converted to stage plays, novels, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 text-based computer game, and a 2005 feature film. The books are the most extensively disseminated, having been translated into over 30 languages by 2005. The BBC’s The Big Read survey placed the first novel, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, fourth. Eoin Colfer wrote the sixth novel, And Another Thing, with not released content by Douglas Adams. In 2017, BBC Radio 4 planned an anniversary celebration, with one of the original producers, Dirk Maggs, in charge. In March 2018, the first of six new episodes aired.
About the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy:
The many versions follow the same core premise, although Adams altered the story for each rendition. The series recounts the exploits of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishman after the Vogons destroy the Earth to make way for a bypass. Dent’s adventures cross paths with several other characters, including Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox (Ford’s semi-cousin and the President who has stolen the Heart, a spacecraft equipped with Infinite Drive), the depressed robot Marvin the Paranoid Android, a woman Arthur meets at an Islington party and who is the only other survivor of Earth’s destruction thanks to Beeblebrox.
The narration of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy story:
The plot of Hitchhiker follows the escapades of Arthur Dent, the sole living man after the Earth is destroyed by a Vogon function Object() { [native code] } fleet to make room for a hyperspace bypass. Ford Prefect, an alien writer for the wacky electronic travel guide The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, saves Dent from Earth’s destruction by hitching onboard a passing spacecraft. Following his recovery, Dent and Prefect tour the galaxy, where they meet Trillian, another human kidnapped from Earth by the two-headed President, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and the sad Marvin, the Paranoid Android. Specific story details were modified across versions.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as a movie:
The Hitchhikers Guide To the galaxy is a 2005 science fiction comedy film directed by Garth Jennings, based on Douglas Adams’s media franchise. It stars Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, Mos Def, Zooey Deschanel, Bill Nighy, Anna Chancellor, John Malkovich, Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren, Thomas Lennon, Ian McNeice, and Alan Rickman, and also the voices of Stephen Fry, Helen Mirren, Thomas Lennon, Bill Bailey, and Alan Rickman. Adams co-wrote the screenplay with Karey Kirkpatrick but died before filming began in 2001; the film is dedicated to Adams. The movie scored more than $100 million globally.
The plot of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy movie:
On Thursday morning, Arthur Dent learns that his house will be destroyed immediately to make way for a bypass. By lying in front of the bulldozers, he attempts to stall them. Arthur’s buddy Ford Prefect persuades him to accompany him to a tavern. Ford reveals over several glasses of beer that he is an extraterrestrial from the Betelgeuse system and working on the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the best book. Ford warns that the Earth would be destroyed later that day by a race to make room for a hyperspace bypass. As the Vogon fleet approaches Earth in orbit, Ford saves Arthur by stowing them onboard one of the Vogon spacecraft.
How does Douglas Adams start his book?
The first radio series is based on a concept titled “The Ends of the Earth”: six self-contained episodes, each ending with Earth being destroyed differently. Adams realized when writing the first episode that he wanted something that was an extraterrestrial to offer context and that this alien wished a purpose to be there. Adams eventually decided to make the alien a wandering researcher in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “an extraordinary book.” The Guide became the middle of the plot as the first radio episode was written, and he prefers to focus the series on it, with the destruction of Earth being the sole holdover.
Adams’ imagined Guide is an electronic guide to the whole universe that was first published by Megadodo Publications, one of Ursa Minor Beta’s. Passages from the Guide periodically disrupt the narrative of the many versions of the story. The Guide’s voice (in the first two radio series and TV versions, Peter Jones in the third and fifth radio series, and Stephen Fry in the film version). The film was released in the UK on April 28, 2005, and made GB£4,200,000 in its first week. The film was nominated for Academy Awards and won one of them. It won the Golden Trailer Award for Most Unusual.