| An Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Sequel Will Be Written |
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Thursday, September 25th, 2008 00:24:24 GMT |
| Books News |
Here's some exciting news I heard recently. A well-known author, Eoin Colfer, author of a well-known children's book series, Artemis Fowl, has been selected to write the official sequel to the five-book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy".
Here's one of the author's own blog posts about this news: Eoin Colfer on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
I know hardly anything about Eoin and had never heard of him or his books prior to running across this news, but, even based on nothing more than my reading of that post, he definitely appears to be a more than capable writer.
However, the original books were so astoundingly brilliant, any successor to Douglas Adams definitely has some horrifyingly immense shoes to fill. For me, trying to fill those shoes would probably be a bit like stepping into the Total Perspective Vortex. I hope it won't be that harrowing for Eoin.
Unlike some HHGTTG fans, I don't have any misgivings about the series continuing. I actually didn't really like the series' last book, Mostly Harmless, very much. To me, it seemed rather dark, glum and less funny than the rest. I lost interest in it partway through, and to this day have never read all of it from cover to cover. So, I definitely don't mind not having the series permanently end on such an unsatisfying note.
I'd love to see HHGTTG sequels written by the Monty Python folks, and Gary Larson (author of the comic The Far Side, Scott Adams (author of the comic Dilbert, Robin Williams, and the folks from the TV show Whose Line Is It Anyway.
I think even sequels written by authors who don't specialize in humor would most likely be entertaining. Just imagine, a HHGTTG sequel written in the grand style of a dark, melancholy sword and sorcery fantasy novel by Michael Moorcock (one of my very favorite authors). Or maybe something more light like his Dancers at the End of Time books.
Moorcock's work, like Adams', also substantially incorporates the concept of alternate universes, so crossovers wouldn't seem totally out of place even in Moorcock's multiverse. I think Marvin the depressed robot would make a very entertaining sidekick for Elric, the depressed doom-haunted wizard-emperor. And meanwhile, maybe Ford and Arthur would end up having to fight off Stormbringer with their trusty towels. :-)
I suspect Eoin will do a good job, but, I can't help but wonder what might result if others also tried their hand at writing an official sequel.
If you think about it, there's no real reason why there couldn't be multiple official sequels by multiple authors. The HHGTTG multiverse is so random already that even if the series forked into all kinds of crazy different directions, sure, the result would be chaotic, but random farcical chaos is anything but out of place in the HHGTTG series.
This all makes me wonder what kind of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan fiction might be out there lurking on the internet. I've never actually looked for any yet, but it's probably worth a look.