Dirk Gently: Series 1 (2012)

TV series review: Dirk Gently: Series 1 (2012), directed by Tom Shankland

The pilot episode of Dirk Gently left me cold, but as a big fan of everything Douglas Adams, the news that they were making a whole series (well, okay, only three episodes) was still more than welcome.

And this time it actually worked - hooray! What I really didn't like about the pilot and wanted them to have done differently ... was done differently. That is, they weren't trying to adapt either of the two books, they just took the character of Dirk Gently (Stephen Mangan) and let him do his own thing. Have plots specifically written for this series. Thank you!

Okay, they've still got Richard MacDuff (Darren Boyd) as his bemused sidekick, which is a step away from the books, but in keeping with the pilot episode, and I don't really mind, to be honest. At least they're not trying to be creative with the books and make a complete mess of it.

Janice the surly secretary (Lisa Jackson) is back, and Richard's other half Susan (Helen Baxendale) shows up in the periphery too. And then there's DI Gilks (Jason Watkins), who, for lack of a better way of putting it, is to Dirk and Richard what DI Lestrade is to Holmes and Watson in Sherlock. Sort of.

Happy 60th, Douglas Adams!

Sadly, the big man is no longer with us, but if he hadn't been snatched from us in May 2001, he would've celebrated his 60th birthday today. Alas, that shall never be. In honour of his birthday, however, here's the man himself, giving UCSB a talk not long before he passed away.



Douglas Adams supported Save the Rhino. Do you have any spare Altairian dollars for these merry savannah tanks?

And Another Thing ... by Eoin Colfer (2009)

Book review: And Another Thing ... by Eoin Colfer (Michael Joseph, 2009)

An Englishman's continuing search through space and time for a decent cup of tea ...

Arthur Dent's accidental association with that wholly remarkable book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has not been entirely without incident.

Arthur has travelled the length, breadth and depth of known, and unknown, space. He has stumbled forwards and backwards through time. He has been blown up, reassembled, cruelly imprisoned, horribly released and colourfully insulted more than is strictly necessary. And, of course, he has comprehensively failed to grasp the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Arthur has, though, finally made it home to Earth. But that does not mean he has escaped his fate.

For Arthur's chances of getting his hands on a decent cuppa are evaporating along with the world's oceans. Because no sooner has he arrived than he finds out that Earth is about to be blown up ... again.

And Another Thing ... by Eoin Colfer is the rather unexpected, but very welcome, sixth instalment of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. It features a pantheon of unemployed gods, everyone's favourite renegade Galactic President, a lovestruck green alien, an irritating computer and at least one very large slab of cheese.

The title comes from a quote from Douglas Adams, namely:

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying "and another thing" twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.

Which is rather apt. In 2001, the giant genius of a man known as Douglas Adams departed from this world. In 2009, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the first publication of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, part six of three was released. It's written by Irish author Eoin Colfer, famous for the Artemis Fowl books for young adults, which I now have a hankerin' to read.

The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams (2002)

Book review: The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams (Pan Macmillan, 2002), foreword by Stephen Fry

The Salmon of Doubt comprises ten chapters of the novel on which Douglas Adams was working at the time of his death in May 2001, along with an astonishing collection of pieces recovered from his beloved Macintosh computer.

The plot of The Salmon of Doubt is as intriguing as its title and sees Dirk Gently simultaneously on the trail of half a cat and an actor whose sudden appearance is perhaps not as random as it seems. Starring alongside the pizza-addicted detective are Thor Norse God of Thunder, Dave of DaveLand and a highly confused rhinoceros called Desmond. Other fictional stories include 'Young Zaphod Plays It Safe', featuring the intergalactic star of the Hitchhiker series, and 'The Private Life of Ghengis Khan', written with Graham Chapman, in which the emotional needs of a barbaric marauding killer are revealed.

Non-fiction pieces range from an earnest twelve-year-old Douglas's letter to Eagle magazine, through insights into a teenage mind full of adoration for the Beatles and loathing for short trousers, to lectures reflecting Adams's exceptional understanding of our natural, technological and philosophical worlds. Here too are articles on subjects as diverse as religion, the 'little dongly things' making a mess of computers, the letter Y and Douglas's love affair with two dogs in New Mexico.

For fans and new readers alike, The Salmon of Doubt is the ultimate smorgasbord of the insanities, urbanities and wondrous workings of life, the universe and everything.

The loss of Douglas Adams was a blow to a lot of us. For the people who knew him, it was a lot worse (of course) than for us fans, so when this book came out, it was welcome. Not because it had the bits so far of the new Dirk Gently novel he was working on, but because it's a celebration of his life. From his love of scifi and computers to his love of music and endangered species ... and his radical Atheism.

Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams (1992)

Book review: Mostly Harmless ([1992]) by Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Wings Books, 1996)

Once again, Arthur Dent tries to return to Earth, but instead settles for an honorary position as masker sandwich maker. Meanwhile, the Guide seems to be changing in much-too-mysterious ways, which keeps Ford Prefect on the run - running into Arthur Dent, whose daughter has just hi-jacked Ford's spaceship.

Arthur Dent is still travelling through space. To begin with, he was having a marvellous time together with Fenchurch, but after an accident involving a jump into hyperspace, he finds himself more lost than ever before. He sets off trying to find Home, or at least something not far off, donating his DNA to various places in order to pay for travel tickets, knowing (thanks to Agrajag) that he can't possibly die before he's been to Stavromula Beta. Eventually, the ship he's on crashes onto the planet Lamuella. It's Earth-like, with some differences, but he finds his niche - being a sandwich maker. And he's happy there. Finally.

Meanwhile, Ford Prefect is trying to cause some mischief at the Guide headquarters, but things aren't quite as he remembers them. It's a lot less hoopy, to begin with. In fact, it has been taken over by the bureaucratic InfiniDim Enterprises, and they're a lot less relaxed about things like, oh, paying expenses. With the aid of Colin, a security robot he modifies to be overjoyed about everything (such as breaking and entering) to keep the security systems calm, he breaks into the Guide's computer systems to fiddle with the accounts, as well as stumbling across the next version of the Guide itself. The Guide 2.0 is sleek, black and sexy - and incredibly dangerous ... After all, why else would the place suddenly employ Vogons as security guards?

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams (1984)

Book review: So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish ([1984]) by Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Wings Books, 1996)

Galaxy-weary space traveler Arthur Dent returns to Earth with his new voidoid gang to discover that it has been mysteriously reinstated. But more pertinent questions remain: Why did all the dolphins disappear? What is God's final message to His Creation? What really happened the day the Earth was demolished?

The previous times that I've read this fourth part of the Hitchhiker's trilogy, I've always felt as if it was the weakest book. Indeed, even the author himself wasn't happy with it. One of the most famous quotes you'll come across by Douglas Adams is, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." He was such an excellent procrastinator that in order to even get the book finished in some semblance of a reasonable timeframe, his editor locked him in a hotel suite for three weeks, and himself too. Otherwise, there would probably mainly have been a lot of hot baths taken and not much writing done.

The plot and pace is very different from the previous novels. Arthur has returned to Earth and finding it decidedly not blown up by Vogons. Instead, there is some rumours about a dead body found in a reservoir and people having had weird hallucinations of an alien invasion. Finally, Arthur can get a cup of tea, a shave and a new change of clothes and finds he's been given a greyish fishbowl as a present. He plonks his babelfish in it and gets on with his life.

The first chapter of the first book in the series ends with there being a girl sitting in a café in Rickmansworth and she has such a marvellous revelation of how to make the Earth a better place without anyone having to be nailed to anything, and how that book isn't about her. This book begins in much the same way, except to say that this book is about her. The girl's name is Fenchurch, also known as the love of Arthur's life.

42 by Peter Gill (2011)

Book review: 42: Douglas Adams' Amazingly Accurate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything by Peter Gill (Beautiful Books, 2011)

In The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy it was revealed by Douglas Adams that the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything is ... forty two.

Over the ten years since his early death the genius that created the joke has maintained Douglas Adams' reputation as one of the greats of English humour and The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the world's bestselling humorous book. Now fairly detailed new research reveals the truth behind the seemingly unstoppable success of the world's funniest number - Forty two elbowed past a whole bunch of other numbers queuing hopefully at the counter on the day the world's most interesting facts were dished out.

So, in sport, the most famous dog in English football, and the poster of a girl forgetfully playing tennis without any knickers, are now revealed to be connected, extremely loosely, by Forty two. In music, a special symmetry exists if there is anyone who is particularly fond of Mozart and Michael Jackson and Mungo Jerry. And there are amazing world records: for example the first building with a lift taking people up to the forty-second floor was also the first building with a forty-second floor; while in history the number segues us without any effort at all from The Star Spangled Banner to Apollo 13 and the Statue of Liberty.

Stephen Fry tantalised fans by saying it was 'completely obvious' in answer to the long-standing mystery of 'Why Forty two?' Douglas ADams spoke obliquely of the integer's inherent comic soul. Now Peter Gill invites readers to kick back and read, for the first time, the fascinating history behind Douglas Adams' discovery of the true significance of Forty two.

I first heard about this book over Twitter, and looking it up, I went "oooh!" and ordered it from my friendly online drugdealer. The book is basically what it says on the back (above): a collection of facts that happen to be related to the number 42. Some quite loosely, such as "and that's the distance between Rome and New York 42 times!" or something to that ilk.

The number 42 is fascinating, and it keeps cropping up everywhere, when you least expect it. That's what I've noticed over the years. Obviously, Peter Gill has noticed the same thing, but he's decided to go looking for facts and figures and putting them together in a book. Some are familiar, such as Elvis was 42 when he died and it was the number of Mulder's apartment in The X-Files. Others are more surprising. And others will of course be missing.

Life, the Universe and Everything by Douglas Adams (1982)

Book review: Life, the Universe and Everything ([1982]) by Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Wings Books, 1996)

Everything important and then some is examined in this third book, when Arthur Dent and his companions find they must avert Armageddon and save the Universe for life as we know it (or think we know it!).

The interesting thing about Life, the Universe and Everything is that it actually has a plot, and a fairly coherent one at that. Arthur and Ford are still on prehistoric Earth and not having a great time at that. Arthur considers going mad roundabout the time Ford detects a weak alien signal of some sort. They end up finding a sofa, and once they catch it, end up in modern day London. At Lord's Cricket Ground, to be precise.

There, they encounter some strange, white cricket-playing robots with murderous intent and also ... Slartibartfast, the Magrathean who won awards for his fjord work on Norway on Earth 1.0 (book 1). Slartibartfast has come with his cutting-edge starship Bistromath (to all intents and purposes an Italian bistro, because numbers in a restaurant is a science all of its own), and with it, he manages to whisk the two weary space travellers away in the hunt for the five parts of a cricket gate.

The cricket gate, or rather, the key to the lock that imprisons the planet Krikkit (a planet whose people were so bent on destroying the rest of the universe when they discovered they were not alone that they had to be locked away for good), is scattered over the universe and it would be a lot better for the universe if the Krikkit robots didn't get hold of all the parts of the key first. The Krikkit wars were pretty darn horrendous and the fact that cricket is a perfectly ordinary pastime on planet Earth (not to mention there's a country with the same name as one of the galaxy's worst curse words) just shows how ridiculously behind and tactless we are on this planet.

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe by Douglas Adams (1980)

Book review: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe ([1980]) by Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Wings Books, 1996)

The floor show is Doomsday while Arthur and Ford dine with Zaphod Beeblebrox, well-appendaged, ex-head honcho of the Universe, and Trillian, his human girlfriend. The four friends begin their quest for answes to some of the most confounding questions challenging mankind: When will they finish eating? What is the question to the ultimate answer?

The story picks up on Ursa Minor Beta, the home of the Guide offices, where Zaphod Beeblebrox has ended up together with depressed robot Marvin. Zaphod has no idea why he's on Ursa Minor, other than he needs to go and see the Guide's editor, Zarniwoop. Somehow, his brain has been messed with, and this was done so well that he wouldn't be able to trace it because of the rigorous screening that's done before anyone's allowed to be the President of the Galaxy.

He finds Zarniwoop's empty office in the big H-shaped building, but the building is lifted off the ground and dropped on the deserted planet on Frogstar World B, where he is to pay for his crimes (nicking the Heart of Gold) by being put in the Total Perspective Vortex. A bad idea for anyone: it shows you in comparison with the universe, and people don't generally want to know how big the universe actually is, because it makes them seem so small and utterly insignificant. With an ego the size of a planet, Zaphod survives, and finds himself together with Arthur, Ford, Trillian and the Heart of Gold at the nearest restaurant: Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

There isn't a lot of Arthur Dent in the first part of the book, as the story focuses on Zaphod instead. After they've joined up at Milliways, the team split again due to some unforseen circumstances involving a sun-diving stunt ship, with Zaphod and Trillian going to find the man who secretly governs the universe, with Arthur and Ford ending up on another spaceship, full of frozen hairdressers, headed for a crash collision with a planet that looks a little too familiar.

Young Zaphod Plays It Safe by Douglas Adams (1986)

Short story review: Young Zaphod Plays It Safe ([1986]) by Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Wings Books, 1996)

The two-headed hero travels to the depths of the ocean floor to investigate the mysterious destruction of the ship that "could one hundred percent positively never crash." With the annoying assistance of the Safety and Civil Reassurance Administration, Zaphod learns some disturbing secrets ...

This short story made its first appearance in the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book in 1986. It's about Zaphod Beeblebrox. He's young, he's two-headed and he's got himself a salvage business. He's been hired to salvage something from a perfectly safe spaceship that happened to have crash landed on a planet, even though it could by no means ever crash because nothing could go wrong with it. The ship, as it turns out, harbours something perfectly safe extremely dangerous. So dangerous, in fact, that it needs to be destroyed. The fact that said thing has buggered off to another planet gives a whole new meaning behind the sudden "must" of building a new hyperspace bypass right through our solar system ...

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (1979)

Book review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ([1979]) by Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Wings Books, 1996)

Arthur Dent, mild-mannered, out-to-lunch kind of guy, is plucked from Earth just before it is demolished yo make way for a hyperspace bypass. Towel in hand, he begins his journey through space and time with his rescuer Ford Prefect, a travelling researcher for the Guide.

Once when I was on the phone to a friend, he said a sort of off-handed comment beginning with "the Bible says" and I immediately interrupted him with, "you mean the Hitchhiker's Guide". He paused, then said, "Yes. Actually." Then we both had a moment of smiling knowingly at the phone.

My first encounter with Hitchhiker's was years and years ago, when one of my sisters had heard something on the radio about the meaning of life and a computer and forty-two and thought it all sounded pretty nifty. Didn't think much of it, but I was maybe eight or so at the time. When I was maybe 13 or 14, a friend of mine said that there was a book I just HAD to read, because it was utterly brilliant. I got it from the library and read. And the world seemed to change around me.

Maybe that's why, a couple of years ago, when someone said that there was a book she just didn't get and thought was utterly over-rated because it simply wasn't funny at all, I really didn't understand where she was coming from and silently questioned her sanity, amongst other things. How can you NOT love this book?

The story in itself is perhaps not that extraordinary. It's about a man, Arthur Dent, who wakes up one morning and finds that the council wants to knock his house down to build a bypass. Arthur's day doesn't get much better when his friend Ford Prefect turns up amongst the bulldozers and decides now would be a good time to mention that he's from a different planet. And then some bureaucratic aliens come along ... who want to demolish the Earth ... in order to build a hyperspace bypass ...

Dirk Gently (2010)

TV movie review: Dirk Gently (2010), directed by Damon Thomas

So, back in August, when I saw the BBC were going to turn Douglas Adams's holistic detective Dirk Gently into a TV-show, I was terribly delighted. What a brilliant idea! Douglas Adams is one of my favourite writers and the sheer genius of that man never ceases to amaze me. In mid-December, safely tucked away on BBC4 where it was sure not to grab too much attention, it was broadcast.

Before this, I had found out who was going to play the major parts in it, but that was just about it. It would have been a good idea for me to have read more about this production beforehand, because then I perhaps wouldn't have minded so much. Before the Hitchhiker's Guide movie came out, I read someone's thorough review of it, and was glad that I did, because I went to the cinema already knowing everything that had been changed, so that I didn't have to sit there going "but ... that's not right!" over and over until finally, "this sucks!"

Let's talk about books!

Was going through Marvin (the desktop computer) to find some files, and came across this, which I believe was posted on Facebook a couple of years ago or so. So not necessarily very up-to-date, but anyway. Here goes:

1) What author do you own the most books by?
Technically, Carolyn Keene, but on the other hand, they’re not all mine and besides, they’re all at my parents’. Seriously though, we’ve got probably 100+ Nancy Drew books! Sheer number of books aside from that … Bengt Linder. My collection of books about Dante and Tvärsan is almost complete. :D

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
Hmm. I’ve got a few doubles of Jane Austen books now, as I decided to get a new batch from the same series (Wordsworth Classics) to make it look nice and consistent.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Prepo-what-a? :P

The stars of the first on-screen Dirk Gently

The BBC have revealed who will be starring in their upcoming Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency adaptation.

And it is: Stephen Mangan as Dirk Gently. Don't know the name, but recognise the face.

Mr. Holistic Detective
(Love the glasses!)

Darren Boyd as Richard Macduff, the computer programmer. Again: no idea, see the pic: Oh him!

The owner of a stuck sofa

Helen Baxendale as Susan Way. Rachel off of Cold Feet! :) Unless they don't bugger up the script to be completely different from the book, she doesn't die in this. Yay!

Yes, she has been in more things than Cold Feet.
But that's the one we all know her from.

There is nothing on IMDb yet (gasp), so that's actually all I know when it comes to casting so far. But oh, I'm all excited! :D Would love to find out who will portray Gordon Way and the old professor as well, but I guess time will tell.

The filming has started in Bristol this week, and the show will air some time this winter on BBC4. And I can't wait!!! The Dirk Gently books are fab. They're not Hitchhiker's Guide, because Douglas Adams did manage to write more than that series of books (although he did try his best not to). They're quirky (obviously), funny (obviously) and mind-bending philosophical conundrums. Superb stuff! :)

BBC Four - today, you are too awesome for words

BBC Four have done a press release regarding the schedule for the autumn 2010 / winter 2011 season. And I'm thrilled! Delighted! Amazed! As happy as can be!

1. There's the first ever filmed adaptation of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It might not have been made clear here just yet, but I'm a huge fan of Douglas Adams and Dirk Gently is one of those things that tend to get over-looked because of the vastly more successful Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Dirk Gently! On the telly! :D

Holistic detective Dirk Gently,
as played by Harry Enfield in the 2007 BBC radio production

2. They're also adapting not one but TWO of DH Lawrence's novels! Hooray! Women in Love and The Rainbow, which are combined somehow, apparently, and will star Rosamund Pike. DH Lawrence! Now, how's that for timing? :D

Photo Friday

Aye, I'll jump on the bandwagon too! :) Although, instead of pictures of RA, I thought I'd show some pictures I took this morning, as I wanted to try out the camera on my new old mobile phone. (I don't buy mobile phones anymore, I just use the Squeeze's old one when his contract gets upgraded. I didn't want the previous one, so haven't had an upgrade for quite some time, so yay, the new one is pretty damn cool!)

This is Daisy. It's not a very good picture, admittedly, with the light coming in through the window and all, but hey, we'll ignore that. She's about 10 years old or so, but we don't know for sure. She was a stray originally, who one day just appeared in the cellar of a friend's house. They advertised and went to the police and things but she wasn't chipped and no one came forward to claim her, so they kept her. Three years later, I came along and wanted a cat, and seeing as how the new-born stable kittens (of which I was to get one) had been killed by a tomcat, and as they were still wanting someone to adopt her, I got Daisy instead. :) She's been through a lot in her time, but now she's settled down and loves a good cuddle.

This is Jayne, a Phalaenopsis orchid who is currently in bloom. The only other one who's blossoming at the moment is Mal, who has done so for quite a while. My little orchid crew of about nine all survived the move back in October, except for little River. On the other hand, Book has sprouted a baby so maybe I could cut that off and let it be River 2.0. Umm, yeah. They've all been named after the crew of the Serenity (from Joss Whedon's magnificent Firefly and Serenity)... I like having naming themes. My computery stuff's named after people and things from the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The laptop I got after Christmas (making it this year's anniversary, birthday and Christmas presents, the Squeeze tells me) is called Arthur, after Arthur Dent, but as it's red, it could have just as well been named after Arthur Weasley... or even King Arthur. :) My desktop's called Marvin, and it does sound like it's got a terrible pain in all the diods down its left side...

Towel Day

It's that time of year again!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Towel_Day

When I have anything interesting to report about this, I will. I shall update this post a bit later and reminisce about the past six years of celebrating Towel Day. Actually, sod it, I'll just copy what I sent in to the Towel Testimonials page on the official Towel Day website a few years ago:

It was a day like any other. I had been watching TV for some time and then finally decided to do something more constructive with my day, so I switched it off, and picked up my mobile phone. That's when I got an SMS from a friend in England: "Douglas Adams is dead". I asked the standard questions, and was told what had happened. I was in shock, went straight to the computer, and closed down my two websites in memorandum. Later that night, my mother and I were preparing dinner, and I told her I had got an SMS from my friend, and then I started crying. She thought something had happened to my friend's family, but I told her "Douglas Adams is dead!". She looked at me and said "Who?", and when I told her who he was she pointed out that I didn't know him personally and all that, but it somehow didn't matter. For a lot of fans, that didn't matter. We had lost Douglas and were in shock and mourning.

There was talk on the Internet of a Towel Day in rememberance of him, set to May 25, and the thought of NOT participating never even crossed my mind. Of course I would pay my tribute! Thus, I walked around with a towel in my
school bag for I think the end of the semester. Not displayed all the time, but it was there.

In 2002, I was going to Vänersborg to meet up with some friends on May 25, and I had a towel lying around my neck on the train. People looked, but I didn't care. At the train station in Vänersborg, the group of friends came to meet me. The two boys in the group had their towels with them.

In 2003, unfortunately, it was a Sunday, and I don't recall leaving the house at all that day. I had a towel with me anyway, though! In 2004, I was going to go to Gothenburg, but ended up going around Stenungsund instead - towel properly displayed from my hand bag! My mum asked why I was carrying a towel. I told her. "Ahh, that writer," she said, and left it at that.

To not celebrate Towel Day is still not an option. I've been pushing for it this year, sending out reminders to people, and they've been positive about it. Reading Daniel's testimonial, I've decided to keep the towel in my bag. I noticed back in 2001 that it was very useful to carry with at all times, so I will definitely start doing that again.

TraXy - who knows where her towel is!

To update it, as it seems to be written in 2005, I can say that in 2005, I was reminded of it at work, and fortunately had a towel in my bag, which I immediately took out and displayed. Last year (2006) I completely forgot and was deeply ashamed. Ended up pinning a paper napkin to my coat saying something like "temporary towel", explaining the situation. Ho hum. So this year, now that I have remembered it, I have put a towel in my bag as we're going around places carding in the morning. You can't stop the towel!