SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien.
After that, things get much, much worse.
With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .
SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!
Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read
It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien.
After that, things get much, much worse.
With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .
Reviews-
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Moments before Earth is destroyed, Ford Prefect, an alien who's been incognito for 15 years while researching a newer edition of THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, rescues his friend, Arthur Dent. The two stow away on a passing spaceship, and their adventures begin. Ford and Arthur encounter ex-hippie Galaxy President Zaphod Beeblebrox; Marvin, the morose robot; and a slew of otherworldly weirdos populating Douglas Adams's cult classic. Stephen Fry's performance is priceless as the interstellar travelers tumble from one near disaster to another. His voice shifts are inspired bits, half schtick, half nonsense. Without editorial comment, Fry injects just the right touches of irony into Adams's cheeky, always hilarious social satire. This is sure to please fans of Spider Robinson's THE CALLAHAN CHRONICLES and Terry Pratchett's DISCWORLD series. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
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It's been more than a quarter century since Douglas Adams's original radio series was first broadcast. In the able hands of director Dirk Maggs, Adams's third novel about Arthur Dent, Life, the Universe, and Everything, has been adapted as a radio drama and brought to life with most of the original cast from the first two series. Simon Jones reprises his role as the chronically disgruntled Arthur Dent, an earthman cast about in time and space when the earth is destroyed. Geoffrey McGivern is back as the easy-going Ford Prefect, and Mark Wing-Davey is the two-headed hipster, Zaphod Beeblebrox. Fans will be pleased by the return of Susan Sheridan as Trillian, who was conspicuously absent from the second series. Even Douglas Adams, who passed away in 2001, makes an appearance as the continuously reincarnated Agrajag. Through the wonders of digital sound editing, dialogue from an audiobook version of LIFE, THE UNIVERSE, AND EVERYTHING read by Adams was seamlessly spliced in, along with Simon Jones reading Arthur Dent's parts. Roger Gregg of Crazy Dog Audio Theatre plays Eddie the Shipboard Computer, giving a cheerful counterpoint to Stephen Moore's hilariously depressing Marvin the Paranoid Android. All in all, a delightfully manic treat. S.E.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award, 2006 Audie Award Winner (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine
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Based on SO LONG AND THANKS FOR ALL THE FISH, this BBC production follows Arthur Dent, the last survivor of Earth, who has discovered that humanity has merely been relocated to an alternate Earth. After getting the hang of traveling the universe, Dent returns to Earth to resume his life, but, of course, the universe is never that simple. This episodic radio comedy certainly delivers the continuity of the original series from the 1970s. Simon Jones masterfully reprises his role as Dent as if 25 years hadn't passed. With other voices from the original and slightly updated sound effects, this audiobook delivers all the guilty pleasures that made this series popular so long ago. L.E. 2006 Audie Award Finalist (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine
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This final installment of Douglas Adams's offbeat radio drama about hitchhiker Arthur Dent reunites the cast from the original BBC production. They may be--eek!--25 years older, but happily they're none the wiser. Arthur Dent, played as ever by Simon Jones, is searching several galaxies for his lost love, but that won't help you follow the plot. Instead, revel in the intentionally clunky sound effects and admire the cast's ability to pronounce things like "Stavrolmula Beta," the name of a very nasty planet. Through the magic of digital technology, the production includes the late Douglas Adams in the voice of an unhinged creature named Agrajag. This production will make you grin from beginning to end. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine
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This classic of science fiction comedy hasn't lost its charm in the years since it first came out. Its improbable tale is endlessly inventive as it gently pokes fun at science fiction, travel (and travel guides), high culture, bureaucracy, and a dozen other topics. The romp across the galaxy starts with the destruction of Earth, and things get wilder from there. Douglas Adams's impeccable sense of timing and flexible voice combine to multiply the humor of his writing. He brings morose robots and dim two-headed galactic presidents to life with equal ease. His fun with language evokes Lewis Carroll by way of Monty Python. G.T.B. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine
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Standing before a very live and appreciative audience at the Almeida Theater in London in August 1995, Douglas Adams claimed to have five performing voices: "posh quiet, posh loud, less posh quiet, less posh loud, and Australian." This performance is about the silliest, most delightful, poshest dramatic reading you'll ever want to hear--with Adams choosing three selections from his wonderfully irreverent, hugely successful canon of science fiction satire. With the subject matter being irrational couches and Frogstar Battle Robots, he gleefully presents some of his best-loved characters, including Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Marvin the Paranoid Android. Adams died unexpectedly in 2001. This live CD is a fine remembrance of a beloved author of gentle insight and exceptional style. B.P. 2008 Audies Finalist (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
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This entertainingly absurd audiobook is the latest in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and yet another example of the brilliance of the BBC's audio programs. The talented ensemble cast brings to life Douglas Adams's original characters, including John Lloyd as The Book, Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, and Geoff McGivern as Ford Prefect. Fast-paced and at times laugh-out-loud funny, the series returns to the popular previous storylines while also providing new and exciting plot twists as listeners discover what happens to all their favorite characters. Forty years after the original series premiered, listeners will likely feel nostalgic as they are reminded where the story started and hear new details on where it ends. K.S.M. 2019 Audies Finalist © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine
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Starred review from April 4, 2005
Audio reviews reflect PW
's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version.
Fiction
THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: The Tertiary Phase
Douglas Adams
, performed by the author, Simon Jones, Geoffrey McGivern et al. Audio Partners
, three CDs, 3 hrs., $29.95 ISBN 1-57270-469-1
American readers may not be aware that Adams's sci-fi parody classic started out as a BBC radio production. This audio, which contains a portion of that radio serial, will have listeners glued to their CD players. Never a dull moment passes in this uproarious dramatization, as Arthur Dent—a refugee from Earth, which was destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway—escapes from prehistory, and self-imposed insanity, on a time-traveling sofa along with his alien friend, Ford Prefect, who is a reporter for the eponymous guide. The pair find themselves reunited with old friends (such as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed president of the galaxy) and swept up in an attempt to stop the explosively xenophobic denizens of the planet Cricket from wreaking havoc on all of existence by behaving remarkably like players of the British sport of the same name. Each CD contains two episodes full of hilariously appropriate sound effects, dramatic music and witty fake advertising, and every performer brings his or her character to life with aplomb, including Adams, who makes his appearance in one scene as Agrajag, an entity that is killed and reincarnated innumerable times. Fully embodying the zany otherworldliness of the series, this audio production is a treat for anyone familiar with the Hitchhiker's books (the first of which will debut as a major motion picture from Touchstone in May). -
January 2, 2006
This quick little addition to the series, far more subdued than the previous "phase," is paradoxically a better introduction for newcomers to Adams's often imitated brand of satire. Arthur Dent, the series' protagonist and straight man, returns home to a destroyed and rebuilt Earth (identical to the one he left but for the lack of dolphins) and promptly falls in love. The object of his clumsy affections is Fenchurch, a young woman who had been on the verge of comprehending the secret to eternal contentment when Earth was destroyed. In order to recover her lost revelation, Fenchurch and Arthur (and some of his old hitchhiking friends) seek out God's final message to his creation, written in fire on the top of a mountain in a distant part of the galaxy. The story is straightforward by series standards and depends little on previous (and, as yet, unreleased) episodes of the radio program; the humor is decidedly low-key and the running time surprisingly short. All of this allows easy access for first timers, but won't leave a big impression on fans, especially after the promise of the perfectly zany Tertiary Phase
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