at least the meals would be good.
"We arrived there late at night, and I had one of the best
omelettes I've ever tasted. Unfortunately, it had some strange
mushrooms in it, and I was in bed for two days with food
poisoning. We were booked into all these wonderful restaurants
and I never got to any of them. Then we drove back. As soon as
my stomach was strong enough to hold anything down, we
couldn't find anything decent to eat. Then it rained all the time
and we missed the ferry and had to drive to Calais, and I was
seasick all the way back home. That's the jetset lifestyle for you.
Somehow it cost me a lot of money."
***************************************************

Adams spent most of 1986 editing The Utterly Utterly Merry
Comic Relief Christmas Book, spending less time than he had
hoped assisting in the writing of the Bureaucracy computer game
("it involves you in a bewildering series of adventures from your
own home to the depths of the African jungle, but the object of
the game is simply to get your bank to acknowledge a change-ofaddress card..."), and planning Dirk Gently.
"Dirk Gently has nothing at all to do with Hitchhiker's. It's a
kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedyepic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics.
"The strange thing is that while I was working on
Hitchhiker's I would always find myself telling people I wasn't a
science fiction writer, simply a humour writer who happened to
be using some science fiction ideas to tell jokes with. But Dirk
Gently is changing my mind. I think maybe I am a science fiction
writer. It's very strange..."

********************************************************
ON SCIENCE FICTION
Extract from an interview with Douglas Adams conducted by the
author in November 1983.
"I've read the first 30 pages of a tremendous amount of
science fiction. One thing I've found is that, no matter how good
the ideas are, a lot of it is terribly badly written. Years ago, I read
Asimov's Foundation trilogy. The ideas are captivating, but the
writing! I wouldn't employ him to write junk mail! I loved the
film of 2001, saw it six times and read the book twice. And then I
read a book called The Lost Worlds of 2001 in which Clarke
chronicles the disagreements between himself and Kubrick - he
goes through all the ideas left by the wayside, `Look at this idea
he left out, and this idea!' and at the end of the book one has an
intense admiration for Kubrick. I read 2010 when it came out,
and it was like all the stuff that Kubrick had been sensible enough
to leave out of 2001.
What's good? Vonnegut, he's great, but he's not an SF writer.
People criticise him for saying it, but it's true. He started with
one or two ideas he wanted to convey and happened to find some
conventions of SF that suited his purpose.
I thought `The Sirens of Titan' was close in many ways to
`Hitchhiker's'. The Chrono-synclastic infundibulum, for example,
if l've got that right.
That's right, yes. It's funny, people make this comparison,
and I'm always incredibly flattered, because I don't think it's a
fair comparison. It's unfair to Vonnegut, apart from anything
else, because when you are talking about his best books (I'm not
talking about his later books, where I can't understand how he
gets the enthusiasm to get in front of the typewriter and actually
write that stuff. It's like going through the motions of his own
stylistic tricks), those first three were deeply serious books. My
books aren't serious at that level - they are on some level - but
there's a very clear disparity between them. Read a Vonnegut
book next to one of mine and it's clear they're utterly different.
People are tempted to compare them for three reasons. Firstly,
they are both funny in some way, and secondly, they've got
spaceships and robots in them. [No third was mentioned.] It's the
labelling. A much, much stronger influence in my writing is P.G.
Wodehouse; he didn't write about robots and spaceships, though,
so people don't spot it. They are looking for labels.
There are Wodehousian turns ofphrase in your writing. Like
the line about "Aunt calling to Aunt like Dinosaurs across a
marsh".
Yes, I actually pinched that line somewhere in the third
book. I'm not sure where.
The mattresses?
Yes, it's at the end of the mattresses scene, in the swamp. But
I have to point that out to people since no one noticed.
As regards good SF books, well A Canticle for Leibowitz
[Walter Miller Jr] is a wonderful book. There's also someone I
came across because of Hitchhiker's - people kept saying, `If you
write this stuff you must know the work of Robert Sheckley?'
l assumed you must have read Sheckley's `Dimension of
Nliracles '.
People kept saying that, so I finally sat down and read it, and
it was quite creepy. The guy who constructed Earth... it was
completely fortuitous. Those are coincidences, and after all there
are only a small number of ideas. I felt what I did was more akin
to Sheckley than Vonnegut.
******************************************************

As with everything else Douglas has done, Dirk Gently was late.
By the time it was finished, there was no time to get it properly
typeset and to get proof copies out - something that spurred
Douglas to become a desktop publisher. The book was typeset on
his Macintosh computer (indeed, the proof copies were printed on
his laser printer) and came out on time in Spring 1987 - to mixed
reviews. Some people found it more satisfying than a Hitchhiker's
book. Others missed the non-stop cavalcade of jokes.
24

Saving the World at No Extra Charge




DIRK GENTLY IS A DETECTIVE and a rather improbable one at that.
He's smug, he's fat, he's bespectacled, he's a smartass, he sends
out ludicrous bills with positively ridiculous expenses claims and,
worst of all, he's probably right. He's the kind of person you
only ever want to know under the direst of circumstances.

***************************************************
Svald Cjelli. Popularly known as Dirk, though, again, "popular"
was hardly right. Notorious, certainly; sought after, endlessly
speculated about, those too were true. But popular? Only in the
sense that a serious accident on the motorway might be popular
- everyone slows down to have a good look, but no one will get
too close to the flames. Infamous was more like it. Svald Cjelli,
infamously known as Dirk. - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective
Agency.
*****************************************************

Douglas Adams knows nothing about detectives, or at least
not very much.
Indeed, so woeful is his level of knowledge that Dirk
Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was criticised for the sloppy
way in which the author disentangled the problems he posed for
the sleuth. (`Adams also violates cardinal rules of mystery writing
by supplying readers with information insufficient to solve the
crime and by introducing deux ex machina to bail out the the plot
logjams', according to the Chicago Tribune.) If Dirk Gently was
genuinely a detective the criticism might have been valid. But
then Gently is really a con-man who has a disproportionate
interest in the "interconnectedness of all things" and the
workings of quantum mechanics. That's what really fascinates
Gently, and working as a private eye simply enables him to
engage that passion and charge his clients for the privilege.

***********************************************
"Of course I will explain to you again why the trip to the
Bahamas was so vitally necessary," said Dirk Gently soothingly.
"Nothing could give me greater pleasure. I believe, as you know,
Mrs Sauskind, in the fundamental interconnectedness of all
things. Furthermore I have plotted and triangulated the vectors of
the interconectedness of all things and traced them to a beach in
the Bahamas which it is therefore necessary for me to visit from
time to time in the course of my investigations. I wish it were not
the case, since, sadly, I am allergic to both the sun and rum
punches, but then we all have our cross to bear, don't we, Mrs
Sauskind?" - Dirk Gently, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective
Agency.
********************************************************

As a whodunit, Dirk Gently doesn't really hang together, since
there is only one murder and, if you were paying attention, it's
fairly obvious who did it. Even if you weren't paying attention,
you get told before too long. So, if Dirk Gently doesn't work as
either a detective story or an archetypal whodunit, how does it
engage any interest?
Well, like all Douglas Adams books, it is funny. It's an
amusing and engaging romp through the spurious borders of the
detective yarn. Within these parameters, Douglas constructs a
hugely improbable tale which requires the introduction of a
detective to unravel.
There's also Adams's fascination with science fiction
computers, ecology, quantum mechanics and even a touch of
fractal mathematics. The story in which Dirk Gently finds
himself is almost incidental. What's important is all the peripheral
stuff which may, or may not, advance the plot.
Both reviewers and detective novel fans were annoyed by the
introduction of a bit of science fiction to get out of some of tricky
plot twists. This is understandable, or at least it would be
understandable if Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was, in
fact, a detective novel. But it isn't. It's a Douglas Adams novel
where the rules aren't quite the same.
Even so, Adams does take liberties, and using the time-travel
trick is perhaps an easy way out.
But there is plenty to enjoy. For a start, there's Dirk himself,
a thoroughly wretched character with few redeeming features.
And then there's the Electric Monk, perhaps Adams's finest
creation since Marvin the Paranoid Android. The Electric Monk
was created to believe things, which would save their creators the
trouble of believing them themselves. This is such a mindmeldingly brilliant ploy it's a wonder no one ever thought of it
before. But then no one ever thought of writing a `fully realised
Ghost-Horror-Detective-Whodunit-Time Travel-RomanticMusical-Comedy Epic!' before either.
The Electric Monk's only flaw is that it has developed a fault
and insists on believing the most ludicrous things, even if only for
twenty-four hours. But when an Electric Monk believes something
it will believe it up to the hilt, and nothing will shake its
fundamental certainty until such time as it finds something more
interesting to believe in.

*********************************************************
This Monk had first gone wrong when it was simply given too
much to believe in one day. It was, by mistake, cross-connected
to a video recorder that was watching eleven TV channels
simultaneously, and this caused it to blow a bank of illogic
circuits. The video recorder only had to watch them, of course. It
didn't have to believe them all as well. This is why instruction
manuals are so important.
So after a hectic week of believing that war was peace, that
good was bad, that the moon was made of blue cheese, and that
God needed a lot of money sent to a certain box number, the
Monk started to believe that thirty-five percent of all tables were
hermaphrodites, and then broke down. - Dirk Gently's Holistic
Detective Agency.
************************************************

Dust had not even begun to think about settling on Dirk Gently's
Holistic Detective Agency when Douglas produced a follow-up,
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.
Here Dirk continues to explore the interconnectedness of all
things. This time, the things that are interconnected include a new
fridge, a Coca-Cola drinks dispensing machine (an echo, perhaps,
of some previous episode), a self-immolating airline check-in
desk, and the Gods of Asgard, one of whom, Thor, is currently
an unhappy patient of the NHS. Now, normally that might be
enough to spoil anyone's day, but what really upsets Dirk is that
his client is dead - so who's going to pay the bill? Dirk is never
one to let anything so trivial as saving the world interfere with the
important stuff, like getting paid promptly and by someone
living.
The plot frailties of the first book were largely remedied in
the sequel and Dirk Gently looks set to become at least as longrunning as Hitchhiker's. As many novelists have discovered, the
public loves a good detective. What's more, they're damn difficult
to kill off. Just ask Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul was dedicated to Jane
Belson, a barrister and Douglas's long-term companion. The
book was published in October 1988, but it still took them
another three years to get married. This took place on November
25 1991 at Islington Town Hall in North London. The only
reason it probably hadn't happened earlier was that Douglas was
well, not exactly noticeable by his presence.
Throughout the entire Dirk Gently episode Douglas was in
constant contact with a zoologist called Mark Carwardine. They
were organising, or attempting to organise, a series of expeditions
to track down some of the world's rarest animals. But, what with
one thing and another, books coming out and needing to
undertake world tours to promote them, that sort of thing, this
would be another episode that would be three years in the
making.



25

Douglas and Other Animals








IN 1985 MARK CARWARDINE, the zoologist, and Douglas
Adams, the extremely ignorant non-zoologist, went to
Madagascar in search of the aye-aye, a creature no one had
actually seen for years, at the behest of The Observer colour
supplement and the World Wildlife Fund. Setting off for an island
in pursuit of the near-extinct lemur, they caught a twenty second
glimpse of the creature on the island of Neco Mangabo on the
first night, photographed it and returned feeling remarkably
pleased with themselves.
In fact, they were so remarkably pleased, they decided to do
it all again, only this time with some different species of
endangered animal and in places other than Madagascar
But, as Mark Carwardine was to discover, getting himself,
Douglas Adams and a bunch of threatened animals together in
the same place at the same time was to prove a logistical
nightmare. And since logistics are not Douglas's strong point, this
was all left to Mark.

***********************************************************
"It was several years before we both had the time, as we were
both involved in other projects, to set off and undertake Last
Change to See. But when we actually sat down to do it, it was
amazing. We actually worked out that if we had three weeks to
search for each endangered species and went for all the main ones
in the world, it would take us 300 years. And that's just the
animals. If we had decided to include threatened plants as well, it
would have taken another 1000 years.
"So we decided we'd be selective. We just sat down and I
said: `Well, how about going to the Congo?' And Douglas would
say: `Well, I'd rather go to the Seychelles.' And so we'd hit on a
happy medium and go to Mauritius. It was a bit like that. We
picked a whole variety so we'd get different kinds of animal. We
had the Komodo dragon, which is a reptile; we had the Rodrigues
fruitbat, which is a mammal; we went to look for the Yangtze
River dolphin in China; the Kakapo, which is a bird, a kind of
parrot, in New Zealand; the Juan Fernandez fur seal in Chile; the
Manatee in the Amazon, in Brazil; and the northern white rhino
in Zaire." - Mark Carwardine.
*************************************************

Once they had decided where they were going to go, and in
search of which animals, all they had to do was arrange a time.
This was not to prove an easy task. But, by May 1988, after a year
of anxious juggling and rearranging, the pair were ready to probe
the darker recesses of man's inhumanity to everything else he
shares the planet with.
With a self-imposed time limit of just three weeks for each
trip, they set off in search of dolphins and dragons. And, on and
off, they weren't to re-emerge until mid-1989.
Meanwhile, as is the way in all these things, other forces were
at work. Heinemann had been persuaded to stump up a
staggeringly huge advance to enable the intrepid explorers to go
off exploring intrepidly. They also thought it would make a fairly
nifty TV series.
This idea was quickly dismissed after a conversation with the
Chinese authorities. As Mark Carwardine explains:
"The first expedition we tried to set up was the Yangtze
River dolphin. We started making investigations, enquiring with
the right people in China about permits for filming and all that
kind of thing, and we got a reply back saying: `Sure, we can
arrange for you to come and film, it'll take at least nine months to
organise the permit and it'll cost you $200,000.' So we put a stop
to that straight away and then started thinking about radio."
And so, armed with only a BBC radio sound engineer, the
pair set off for the far corners of the planet. Sometimes they were
successful, sometimes not. Either way, the BBC managed to get
themselves six wildlife programmes for next to nothing as the
zoologist began to realise the benefits of recording for radio and
the non-zoologist began to get wet.

*********************************************
"We were trying to land on an island off the coast of Mauritius
called Round Island which, they reckon, has more endangered
species per square metre than anywhere else in the world. It's a
tiny little island, very hard to land on because of the swell and
there's no good landing points. We all had our gear wrapped up,
but the soundman just had a microphone sticking out and was
recording when Douglas fell out of the boat and was being
smashed against the rock. There was blood everywhere and it was
all quite dramatic. We got the whole thing on tape, but if we'd
had a TV crew there we'd have had to dry Douglas off, mop up
all the blood and then get him to do it again, and it just wouldn't
have been the same.
"Initially we were thinking about radio as a second choice
but in retrospect it worked much better than television. And they
always say about radio you get better pictures. There was an
occasion when we were just checking into the lodge on the island
of Komodo in Indonesia. We had three chickens with us for food
and a Komodo dragon came and grabbed the chickens and ran
off. And the sounds of all this, the squawking of the chicken and
the three of us chasing after the dragon and the shouting of the
guards and scrabbling in the dust, comes across so well on radio.
Maybe we'd have got some of it on telly if we'd have had the
cameras ready by chance. But I think it's more impressive when
you sit back, eyes closed, and just listen to it and build up your
own picture. So I think in retrospect radio worked better than
television could have." - Mark Carwardine.
********************************************************

With Douglas dried off and mopped down, they returned to
civilization and the south of France, where Douglas had been
exiled for a year by his accountant for tax reasons. There the
explorers were to write of their adventures.
Instead, as the zoologist confesses, they became strenuously
involved in:
"Lots of sitting in French caf‚s discussing it. We just spent
hours and hours and hours talking it through, listening to the
tapes - they were really useful sorting information. We kept
notes about facts and figures and what happened and quotes from
people and that kind of thing. But just listening to some of the
sounds on the tapes brought back memories of our impressions
and a feeling for places rather than the pure facts and figures. We
spent hours listening to those, discussing it all, talking it through.
Then we sat down and Douglas did most of the writing, with me
feeding ideas and information and checking facts while he was
sitting at the word processor with me looking over his shoulder.
"That was basically how it was done. We did it in different
ways, it was done in bits, basically, and then put together with a
mad period of twenty-four-hour days at the end."
In fact, the south of France proved a less than productive
environment for the pair - too many distractions, too may caf‚s
to sit in. After four months they had produced a total of one
page.
But, one way or another, the book eventually got written.
Heinemann published Last Chance to See, a bizarre
combination of travelogue and conservation, in October 1990 to
good reviews. The Times considered it `descriptive writing of a
high order... this is an extremely intelligent book.' The Pan
paperback followed thirteen months later.
Last Chance to See was also made available on CD-ROM by
The Voyager Company, providing hundreds of colour stills,
interviews and audio essays by Mark Carwardine, and extracts
from the radio series to accompany the text. Lazier readers could
simply listen to Douglas reading the book. Voyager have also
published The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (at
least it was complete until Mostly Harmless put in an appearance)
as an Expanded Book for use on a Macintosh computer. In fact
Hitchhiker's continues appearing in different formats. BBC
Enterprises have released an audio tape or CD boxset, which was
followed by The Long Dark Tea- Time of the Soul, this time just
on tape.
The BBC broadcast the Last Chance to See programmes
weekly on Radio 4 between 4 October and 8 November 1989,
with repeats later the same week.
Curiously enough, four of the programmes were rebroadcast
the following year, though what happened to the Kakapo and the
fruitbat tapes can only be guessed. Also lost, it seems, was a tenminute programme called Natural Selection: In Search of the AyeAye, broadcast on 1 November 1985, recalling that first
expedition.
But the question remains, after all this, did they do any
good? Mark Carwardine thinks so:
"When we went to New Zealand to look for the Kakapowhich is this ground-living parrot which can't fly, but it's
forgotten that it can't fly, it jumps out of trees and just lands on
the ground with a thud. It's down to roughly the last forty to
forty-five birds, that's all that's surviving and people had sort of
half given up in New Zealand. There were a few dedicated
scientists, but the powers-that-be weren't really putting enough
resources into it and the scientists were having a hard time getting
what they needed to save the bird from extinction. When we
went there, for some reason, our visit got a lot of interest and
there was a lot of publicity. And one thing led to another over the
weeks we were there and the bird was suddenly put as top
priority and more resources were made available to help it. So
that was good.
"In other parts of the world where the book's been published
it's really hard to say. My general view is that if you can aim a
book like Last Chance to See at people who wouldn't normally
buy a wildlife book and get a radio series out to people who
wouldn't normally listen to one, then you're reaching a
completely different audience, and if you can capture just one per
cent of them then it's doing some good. The more people you can
make aware of the problems the wildlife's facing and what's being
done about it and what needs to be done, the better. From that
point of view I think it probably has done some good."
The captured chicken on Komodo might have had other
ideas. As to any future Adams-Carwardine collaborations, the
zoologist has this idea:
"One possibility is doing war-zone wildlife. Going to countries
that have had wars, or suffered from wars, and looking at the effect
it's hád on conservation and the environment and the wildlife."
Given Douglas Adams's inability to successfully negotiate a
landfall on Round Island without blood being spilt, heading into
a war-zone doesn't immediately strike one as being a particularly
smart move. Perhaps with this in mind Douglas's next move was
instead, to leave the planet altogether and seek out something
mostly harmless.

26

Anything That Happens, Happens






IT GOES SOMETHING LIKE THIS: After The Hitchhiker's Guide to
the Galaxy trilogy is completed it, well, isn't, not really. There are
too many loose ends left dangling out there in hyper-space that
need tying together. So Douglas Adams is locked into a room and
told not to come out until he has completed the fourth and
absolutely final book in the trilogy. All those dangling plot
threads have to be clipped and tied off, there has to be no going
back, ever, at all, not even slightly.
But then...
Then there was Mostly Harmless. After So Long, and Thanks
for All the Fish, wherein God's last message to his creation was
finally revealed and Marvin could at last relieve the pain in all the
diodes down his left side by finally dying, things were supposed
to have been wrapped up neatly and conclusively. But, as Adams
himself writes in the preamble to Mostly Harmless:
`Anything that happens, happens.
`Anything that, in happening, causes something else to
happen, causes something else to happen.
`Anything that, in happening, causes itself to happen again,
happens again.
`It doesn't necessarily do it in chronological order, though.'
Which means that what exactly's going on in Mostly
Harmless is anybody's guess.
After Douglas's travels undertaken for Last Chance to See
his outlook on the world and its mercurial workings were altered
irrevocably. This is hardly surprising given the staggering vista
those expeditions had opened to the author. Adams took this new
perspective and naturally began writing it into his books.
And there were also those tantalisingly unanswered
questions lingering from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish,
such as:
- What was to become of Arthur Dent and his new-found
love, Fenchurch?
- What had become of Ford Prefect, Zaphod Bebblebrox
and Trillian, the other occupants of the Heart of Gold?
- What was to become of that most successful book ever to
come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor,
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy?
- And, perhaps most importantly, could Marvin really be
dead?
There is a positive answer to at least one of these questions.
But, in order that some sense of mystery remain to those who
have not read Mostly Harmless, it won't be revealed which
question this answer relates to until the end of this book.
1992 was bookended by Hitchhiker's activity. At the
beginning of the year the BBC finally issued the TV series on
video, having previously been prevented by the uncertain
contractual situation between Douglas and the movie moguls in
Hollywood, to whom he had sold the film rights. That is another
saga that has yet to be resolved. To recoup these rights is costing
Douglas something in the region of $200,000, with a bunch of
other catch-22 clauses thrown in for good - or bad - measure.
But, once the dust has settled, there may yet be more Hitchhiker's
stories reaching the TV screens.
The original series was released on video in a two-volume set,
eleven years after its initial transmission. The second volume even
contained `previously unseen material', a few minutes that were
cut to make the programmes fit their time-slot. The BBC also
managed to re-master the mono soundtrack into stereo. And on
radio the BBC re-broadcast the second Hitchhiker's series.
At the end of the year came Mostly Harmless, fifth in the
`increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy trilogy'. While many fans may have been disturbed by So
Long, and Thanks for All the Fish's lack of science fiction - it
was, after all, a love story, kind of - Mostly Harmless has a
whole truck-load of SF. And there's the occasional passage you
just know could not have been written by Douglas prior to his
ecological jaunt around the world.

***************************************************
It was a sight that Arthur never quite got used to, or tired of. He
and Ford had tracked their way swiftly along the side of the small
river that flowed down along the bed of the valley, and when at
last they reached the margin of the plains they pulled themselves
up into the branches of a large tree to get a better view of one of
the stranger and more wonderful visions that the Galaxy has to
offer.
The great thunderous herd of thousand upon thousand of
Perfectly Normal Beasts was sweeping in magnificent array
across the Anhondo Plain. In the early pale light of the morning,
as the great animals charged through the fine steam of the sweat
of their bodies mingled with the muddy mist churned up by their
pounding hooves, their appearance seemed a little unreal and
ghostly anyway, but what was heart-stopping about them was
where they came from and where they went to, which appeared
to be, simply, nowhere. - Mostly Harmless.
*****************************************************

There's also some bizarre physics and temporal paradoxes that
may, or may not, have come about since the Earth, or what we
popularly believe to be the Earth, was destroyed by the Vogons
way back when.

*******************************************************
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy has, in what we
laughingly call the past, had a great deal to say on the subject of
parallel universes. Very little of this is, however, at all
comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and
since it is now well-established that all known gods came into
existence a good three millionths of a second after the Universe
began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week,
they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is, and are
therefore not available for comment on matters of deep physics at
this time. - Mostly Harmless.
*********************************************************

Mostly Harmless delves into that decidedly murky pool of
parallel universes, so you're never entirely sure whether the
Arthur Dent featured here is in fact the same Arthur Dent as
popped up elsewhere. After all, there's an astro-physicist called
Trillian in the stars and also a thrusting young TV reporter called
Tricia McMillan, and they may be related, in some way or other.
And the TV reporter, who once met an extra-terrestrial called
Zaphod at a party in Islington but didn't go with him, is
apparently a TV reporter on Earth. At least an Earth, although
which one is anybody's guess. This Earth hasn't been destroyed
or if it has it is showing a remarkable reluctance to disappear
altogether.
Meanwhile, aside from tackling such weighty
SF/cosmological/scientific questions as parallel universes, there's
a little astrology, plus some aliens called Grebulons. The
Grebulons are currently stationed on the recently discovered
tenth planet in the Solar System named, after nothing much in
particular, Rupert. The Grebulons, who set out to wreak havoc or
something, met with a slight accident counesy of a meteor storm
on the way and have since entirely forgotten what it was that they
were supposed to do when they got wherever it was they were
meant to be going. So they watch TV instead.
In the meantime, Arthur, having singularly failed to find the
Earth, or at least an Earth that remotely resembles the one we still
presume the Vogons to have blown up, settles on a pleasant little
planet after his ship crashlands and he is the only survivor. There
he becomes the Sandwich Maker and is reasonably happy.
Reasonably happy, that is, for a man who has managed to lose
not only his planet but also, since then, the love of his life,
Fenchurch, in an accident involving Improbability Drive,
however improbable that may seem. But Arthur manages to
remain stoical throughout since he knows he can't die until he
meets the hapless Agrajag on the anarchically named Stavromula
Beta, as he discovered during the unfolding plot of Life, the
Universe, and Everything. And yes, if nothing else, this is a story
that does manage to resolve itself.
Elsewhere, Ford is having huge problems with the new
owners of The Hitchhiker's GHide to the Galaxy, InfiniDim
Enterprises. They are not only no fun to be with at panies, but
are also, horror upon horror, in the process of replacing the
Guide with the Guide Mark II, which comes in a box on which is
printed, in large, unfriendly letters, the word PANIC. Ford,
unable to go to a party, is understandably not at all happy. And
the more he learns of InfiniDim Enterprises, the less happy he is.
He engages the services of a mechanical friend called Colin and
attempts to get to the bottom of the mystery - that is, why there
are no panies or even drink at the Hitchhiker's offices anymore
- by leaping out of the building a lot and eventually going off in
search of Anhur.
While all that is happening, Anhur discovers, to his shock,
that he has become a father. His daughter has the unlikely name
of Random, and is generally surly and bad-tempered and has a
mother called Trillian. And, if you're wondering, no they didn't,
it was all down to DNA sampling and stuff like that. Anyway,
Random is definitely not the sort of person you want to lend a
watch to and Arthur is a little taken aback when his peaceful
existence as Sandwich Maker is interrupted. by the arrival of
Trillian, who dumps their daughter on him and disappears into
the stratosphere once again. Arthur loses happiness and gains
responsibility. He isn't happy.
All this goes on between the covers of Mostly Harmless,
which contains only mentions of Zaphod Bebblebrox and not a
single appearance.
Meanwhile, Douglas Adams's time becomes more and more
crowded and before long he may well wish to escape to a parallel
universe himself. His every waking hour for the foreseeable
future is swallowed up by a world tour to promote the book in
all the far flung corners of the planet. He is about to be enveloped
by the media circuit in this country, and appearances on radio
and TV chat shows are promised, or even threatened. Douglas
Adams, once again, is about to become a multi-media personality.
In 1993, Hitchhiker's fan Kevin Davies is releasing his The
Making of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy video, which
has been approved by Douglas. And over in New York, DC
Comics are publishing the official Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy comic book adaptation. The comic will run over three
issues and is scripted by John Carnell and drawn by Steve
Leilohah. It will be published by Pan in the UK. But as to any
more books, well, there definitely, categorically, absolutely and
unequivocally won't be any more Hitchhiker's books. Although
only Zarquon knows for sure.
Mostly Harmless is the last book Douglas will publish
through Heinemann. He is following his editor Sue Freestone to
Jonathan Cape. He would have done so already were it not for
Heinemann, not unnaturally, being none too willing to let one of
their leading authors go without a struggle. Douglas and his
agent, Ed Victor, became entangled in a wrangle which has now
been resolved to everyone's satisfaction. But it managed to delay
the publication of Mostly Harmless since, while it was going on,
Douglas couldn't put pen to paper, or more accurately, finger to
word processor.
Oh yes, and if you are still wondering, and haven't bought
Mostly Harmless yet - and shame on you if you haven't - yes
Marvin really is dead and doesn't appear in the book at all. Of
such exclusions are great tragedies made.
*********** Dirk: Appendix 1: Hitchhiker's - the Original Synopsis: 4 TIFFs. The text itself: *********

THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.
Douglas Adams.

The show is a science fiction comedy adventure in time and space, which weaves in and out of fantasy, jokes, satire, parallel universe and time warps, in the wake of two men who are researching the New Revised Edition of the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an electronic 'boook' designed to help the footlose wanderer find his way round the marvels of the Universe for les than thirty Altarian dollars a day.

One of the men is an extraterrestrial who has spent some years living incognito on the Earth. When he first arrrived the minimal research he had done suggested to his that the name Ford Perfect would be nicely incoonspicous. The other is an Earthma, Arthur Dent (Dirk: originally Aleric was here, but it has been crossed out. From now on, all the references to Arthur Dent was meant to Aleric at first) who was a friend of Ford's for years without feeling that he wasn't a perfectly ordinary human being.

The first episode tells of how Ford reveals the truth about himself to an incredulous Arthur, and how they both escape from a doomed Earth to begin their wanderings.

The story starts as Arthur is lying on the ground in the path of a buldoser which is about to demolish his house to make away (Dirk: sic!) for a new by-pass. Having fought the plane at every level, this is his last ditch effort. He is arguing with a man from the council who is pointing out to him in a Godfatherly way that the bulldozer driver is is (Dirk: sic!) a rather careless gentleman who isn't too fussy about what he drives over. In the middle of this confrontation Ford arrives in a rather anxious state and asks Arthur is (Dirk: sic!) he is busy at al, and if there's somewhere they can go and chat. Arthur, astonished, refuses to move. Ford is very insistenty and eventually Arthur calls the man from the council and asks him if they could declare a truce for half an hour. The councilman very charmingly agrees and says that if he likes to slip away for half an hour he'll make sure they don't try and knock his house till he gets back, word of honour. Ford and Arthur repair to a nearby pub, where Ford asks Arthur how he woud react if he told him that he wasn't from Guilford at all but from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse.

As soon as they're out of the way the councilman oorders the demolition ceremony to start. A local lady dignitary makes a very movin speech about how wonderful life will suddenly become as soon as the bypass is built, and swings a bottle of champagne against the bolldozer, which moves in for the kill.

The sound of the crashingf building reaches Arthur who is in the middle of not believing a woord that Frd is telling him, and he chardes back to his ex-house shouting about what a naughty world we live in.

At the moment the sky is suddenly torn apart by the scream of jets, an a fleet of flying saucers streak towards the Earth. As everyone fless in panic an unearthly voice rings through the air announcing that due to redevelopment of this sector of the galaxy they are building a new hyperspace bypass and the Earth will unfortunately have to be demolished. In answer to appaled cries of protest the voice says thta the plane have been on public display in the planning office in Alpha Centauri for ten years, so it's far too late to start making a fuss now. He orders the demolition to start. A low rumble slowly builds into an earshattering explosion, folowed by silence.

"A"
Arthur wakes, not knowing where he is. Ford tells him they've managed to get a lift aboard one of the ships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet. Not to worry about the Earth, he says, there are an infinite multiplicity of parallel universes in which the Earth is still alive and well. He explains how they got on the ship by producing a copy oof an electronic book called the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Under the entry marked 'Vogoon Constructors' it gives detailed instructioons as to get best way of hitching a ride from oone of their ships - you have to play on Vogon psychology, which it describes. Ford explains thta it's his job to research a new edition of the book, which is now a lttle out of date. Would Arthur like to accompany his in the task? Arthur only wants to get back to Earth, or at least, it's (Dirk: sic!) nearest equivalent. However, he is fascinated to browse through this strange book. He is suddenly appalled when he discovers Earth's entry. Thoough the book is over a miion pafge long, the inhabitants oof the Earth only warrant a one word entry - 'Harmless'. Ford, rather embarrassed, explains that the reason he had been on Earth was to gather a bit more material. He'd had a bit of an argument with the editor oover it, but finlally he'd been allowed to expand the entry to 'Mostly HAmrless'. Theyare (Dirk: sic!) very short of space.

Arthur is stung to the quick. He agrees to go with Ford.
END OF EPISODE ONE.


THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY.
Some suggestions for future development.

Each episode should be more or less self contained, but lead on quite naturally to thenext one, perhaps with a 'cliff henger'.

A narrative structure can be achievend by having short extracts read from the Guide itself, since much of its information woould naturally be presented in the form of anecdote.

Foord ands Alric frequently have to subsidise their travels by taking ofdd jobs along the way; as well as strange new worlds they can visit parallel alternatives of Earth which are more or less the same, but not quite... they find that many of the eccentric alien races they encounter epitomise some human folly such as greed, pretentiouenses etc., rather in the manner of Gulliver's Tarvels.

IN one episode they was hired by a fabolously wealthy but rather nervous man to act as 'internal body guards'. For this they are reduced to microscopic size in order to escort meals through his digestive system.

In another the encounter a race of dentists, exiled from their home planet for having pronounced that everything you can possibly eat or breathe, up to and including toothpaste, is bad for your teeth. They have been told not to return till they have evolved an entirely new way of life that is both hygienic and fun.

In another episode they finfd themselves on an 'alternative' Earth which is receiving its first visitatioon from alien beings who announce that they have come to pay court at the home of the most intelligent life form of the Galaxy. After a lot of self satisfied parading by the humans it turns out that it was the olphins the aliens actually had in mind.

The 'Guide' structure should allow for the almost unlimited development of freewheeling ideas whilst at the same time retaining a fairly simple and cherent shape and purpose.



Appendix II
The Variant Texts of Hitchhiker's:
What Happens Where and Why


The First Radio Series
1) Arthur Dent wakes up to find his house is about to be
knocked down. Ford Prefect takes him to the pub. Just before the
Earth is destroyed, they hitchhike their way onto one of the
spaceships of the Vogon Destructor Fleet. The Vogon Captain
throws them out of the airlock, having read them some poetry.
2) They are rescued by the starship Heart of Gold, piloted by
Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian, inhabited by Marvin the paranoid
android, Eddie the ship's computer and a number of Doors.
3) Arriving in orbit around the legendary planet of
Magrathea, they are fired on by an automatic defence system,
resulting in the bruising of someone's upper arm and the creation
and demise of a bowl of petunias and a sperm whale. Exploring
Magrathea reveals Slanibanfast, a planetary designer who is very
keen on fjords, and is about to design the Eanh Mark Il.
4) Anhur discovers that white mice really ran the Eanh as
an experiment in behavioural psychology set up by the computer
Deep Thought to find the Question to the Great Answer of Life,
the Universe, and Everything (the Answer being 42). Shooty and
Bang Bang, two enlightened and liberal cops, interrupt a meeting
with the Mice, who want Trillian and Arthur to find the
Question for them. The cops blow up a computer bank behind
which our heroes are hiding.
5) The fearless four find themselves in the Restaurant at the
End of the Universe... actually a far-future Magrathea. Marvin
has been parking cars there. Abandoning Arthur's Pears
Gallumbit they steal a small black spaceship, which turns out to
belong to an Admiral of the Fleet and drops them in the vanguard
of a major intergalactic war.
6) In which it is revealed that Arthur Dent's only brother
was nibbled to death by an okapi. The chair in the ship they are in
is actually one of the Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three, a shapeshifting race who evolve several times over lunch. Arthur and
Ford escape in a hyperspace capsule, while the others are eaten by
the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (aka the Haggunenon
Admiral). Arthur and Ford, having materialised inside the hold of
the Golgafrincham B - Ark, crash land on Earth two million
years before the Vogons destroy it. An experiment with Scrabble
shows that the Question is, or might be, `What do you get if you
multiply six by nine?'

Christmas Special Episode
7) Zaphod Beeblebrox is picked up by a freighter taking
copies of Playbeing to Ursa Minor Beta (the Haggunenon having
evolved into an escape capsule). Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect get
drunk on Old Earth and start seeing a spaceship. Zaphod tries to
see Zarniwoop, editor of the Guide. He meets Roosta as the
building is attacked by Frogstar fighters: while Marvin saves the
day, the building is kidnapped and taken to the Frogstar. . .
The Second Radio Series
8) Zaphod discovers that he is going to be fed to the Total
Perspective Vortex. Zaphod, despite two hangovers, rescues Ford
and Arthur, having discovered their fossilised towel. Zaphod (still
on board the Frogstar-snatched building) goes to a robot disco,
lands on the Frogstar, is fed to the Total Perspective Vortex, and
eats some fairy cake.
9) On board the Heart of Gold, Zaphod, Ford and Arthur
find themselves under attack from the Vogon Fleet, under orders
from Gag Halfrunt, Zaphod's psychiatrist. Arthur flings away a
cup of Nutrimatic drink, and the computer's circuits occupy
themselves with the problem of why Arthur likes tea. A seance
summons Zaphod's great-grandfather, who tells him to find the
person really running the universe, and rescues them.
10) Finding themselves in a cave on the planet Brontitall,
they soon find themselves falling through the air thirteen miles
above the ground. Arthur is rescued by a bird, and discovers that
he has fallen from the cup in the Statue of Arthur Dent Flinging
the Nutrimatic Cup. Taken to the bird colony which lives in his
ear, he is told by a Wise Old Bird the significance of the statue.
Belgium is discovered to be a very rude word indeed. Ford and
Zaphod land on a passing bird. Arthur discovers the planet to be
the property of the Dolmansaxlil Corporation, and is attacked by
limping footwarriors, then rescued by a Lintilla, a bright and sexy
girl archaeologist.
11) Ford and Zaphod reach the ground relatively safely.
Arthur discovers that the Lintilla he met is one of three identical
Lintillas, or rather one of 578,000,000,000 Lintillas, due to
problems with a cloning machine. Hig Hurtenflurst of the
Dolmansaxlil Corporation threatens Arthur and the Lintillas with
revocation, then shows them what happened to Brontitall; a Shoe
Shop Intensifier Ray caused the planet's inhabitants to build shoe
shops and sell shoes. Marvin, who was not rescued by a bird, falls
to the ground creating a hole, but gets out and rescues Arthur and
a Lintilla. Meanwhile, Zaphod and Ford find a derelict space port
and a curious ship. . .
12) Poodoo shows up with a priest and three Allitnils, while
Arthur and the Lintillas are under attack. The Allitnils and two
Lintillas fall in love, are married, kiss and explode. Zaphod and
Ford discover a spaceship full of people going nowhere, and also
Zarniwoop. Arthur kills the third Allitnil (an anticlone) and sets
off with Marvin and a Lintilla. Zarniwoop explains some of the
plot to Zaphod (Ford is getting drunk and isn't listening). They
all go and visit the Man in the Shack, who runs the universe. He
reveals that Zaphod was in collusion with the consortium of
psychiatrists who ordered the Earth destroyed in order to prevent
the Question from coming out. In a huff, Arthur takes the Heart
of Gold, and leaves with a Lintilla and Marvin, abandoning
Zaphod, Ford and Zarniwoop on the Man in the Shack's planet....


The TV Series/Records
Essentially the plot of the first six episodes; only instead of
all the Haggunenon stuff, they have escaped in a stunt ship
belonging to the rock group Disaster Area (whose lead Ajuitarist
Hotblack Desiato is no longer talking to his old friend Ford
Prefect, because he is dead), which is going to be fired into the
sun. They escape through a wonky transporter unit, operated by
Marvin, sending Zaphod and Trillian heaven knows where and
Ford and Arthur to the B - Ark. It was also established that the
Mice were quite keen on slice-and-dicing Arthur's brain to
extract the Answer from it.



The Books
i) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
In terms of plot, this resembles the first four radio episodes.
At the end, however, Marvin depresses Shooty and Bang Bang's
ship to death, blowing up each of the cop's life support units, and
they leave Magrathea.

ii) The Restaurant at the End ofthe Universe
This starts off with Arthur trying to get a cup of tea from the
Heart of Gold, tying up all its circuits as the Vogons attack (a bit
like Episode Nine of the radio series). Zaphod's great-grandfather
transpons Zaphod and Marvin to Ursa Minor Beta where events
similar to Episode Seven of the radio series occur. Once more
Zaphod is taken to Frogstar B, and fed into the Total Perspective
Vortex. Once more he eats the cake. Then he discovers
Zarniwoop and the spaceship (as in Episode Twelve). Then they
visit the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, steal Hotblack
Desiato's ship (as in records/TV) and wind up in a predicament.
From there, Ford and Arthur go to prehistoric Earth, while
Trillian and Zaphod go to the Man in the Shack, this time
abandoning Zarniwoop there. (Shoes and the Shoe Event Horizon,
which merited rather more than an episode of the second radio
series, get a paragraph in this book.)

iii) Life, the Universe, and Everything
Ford and Arthur are rescued from two million years ago by a
sofa which dumps them at Lord's Cricket Ground a few days
before the Earth was/is/will be destroyed. Trillian and Zaphod,
on the Heart of Gold, sort of split up. Marvin has spent a long
time in a swamp. There's a plot about the robots of Krikkit, but
I'm not giving anything away. There's also a statue of Arthur
Dent, but for a different reason from the radio series.
Variations between the British and American editions include
a certain amount of translation (lolly becomes popsicle), the
respelling of a sound effect (`wop!' becomes `whop!' throughout)
and an extra 400 words are added to chapter 21, adapted from
radio Episode Ten, concerning `Belgium' as term of profanity.
(The British edition just goes right ahead and uses the word
`fuck', thus avoiding the problem entirely.)

iv) So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish
The Dolphins restore the Earth. Anhur Dent falls in love and
discovers God's final message to His Creation.

v) Mostly Harmless
Athur Dent loses both his planet and the woman he loves,
and unexpectedly gains a daughter. And a new version of The
Guide, which behaves in an altogether more mysterious and
sinister manner, puts in an appearance.

vi) The Hitchhiker's Trilogy
American collection of the first three books (American
editions). Contains `Introduction - a Guide to the Guide'
Douglas's essay on Hitchhiker's origins, and the first few
paragraphs of `How to Leave the Planet'.

vii) The Compleat Hitchhiker
1,his was what Pan called the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy: A Trilogy in Four Parts when they were publishing it.
Seeing they never published it, or even came close, because the
book went instead to Heinemann, Douglas's new hardback
publishers, this is positively the rarest Hitchhiker's book
available. If you have a copy, hold onto it, and auction it before
returning to whichever parallel universe you bought it in.

viii) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Four
Parts
The same as the Hitchhiker's Trilogy, only in English
editions, and with an extra three lines of introduction and So
Long, and Thanks for All the Fish added.

The Expanded Books
The Complete Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
A collection of the first four books, for use on a Macintosh
computer.

Appendix III
Who's Who in the Galaxy:
Some Comments by Douglas Adams








ARTHUR DENT
Arthur wasn't based on Simon Jones. Simon is convinced I've
said this at some point, whereas what I've said was very similar
which was that I wrote the part with him in mind. Which is a
very different thing to say about an actor. I wrote the part for
him, and I wrote the part with his voice in mind and with an idea
of what he was strong on playing and so on. But there's only the
slightest echo of Simon himself in it. He isn't based on Simon, but
he is based on what I thought Simon's strengths as an actor were,
which is a very different thing. Nor, by the same token, is it
autobiographical; having said that, Arthur Dent is not so remote
from myself that it's impossible to use things which have
happened to me in writing about him.

DEEP THOUGHT
The name is a very obvious joke.

FENCHURCH
She isn't based on any particular person, but on a number of
different thoughts or observations of people or incidents. It was a
bit of a parody of the Oscar Wilde thing in The Importance of
Being Earnest - being found in a bag at the left luggage office at
Victoria. When in fact it's Paddington Station, where the ticket
queues are always insane and you can't understand why it
happens like that every single day, why it isn't sorted out.
Paddington was the station I had in mind, but I couldn't call her
that, because there's already a bear named Paddington after the
station, so I just went through the various names of the London
termini, and Fenchurch seemed a nice name. I just selected the
one that seemed the most fun as a name. I don't think it's even a
station I've ever been to. That was where that came from, it was
just an idea I'd had floating around for a character, whereas I was
also looking for a character who was going to be the girl who'd
been in the caf‚ in Rickmansworth. I put the two things together.
Then the whole thing of Anhur falling in love with her was sort
of going very much into adolescent memories really.

FORD PREFECT
I remember the idea I had when I created Ford, which was that he
is a reaction against Dr Who, because Dr Who is always rushing
about saving people and planets and generally doing good works,
so to speak; and I thought the keynote of the character of Ford
Prefect was that given the choice between getting involved and
saving the world from some disaster on the one hand, and on the
other hand going to a party, he'd go to the party every time,
assuming that the world, if it were worth anything, would take care
of itself. So that was the departure point for Ford. He wasn't based
on any particular character but come to think of it, aspects of
Ford's later behaviour became more and more based on memories
of Geoffrey McGivern's more extreme behaviour in pubs.

HOTBLACK DESIATO
I had this appalling overblown rockstar character, and I couldn't
come up with a name for him. Then I saw an estate agent's board
up outside a house. Well, I nearly crashed my car with delight! I
couldn't get the name out of my mind. Eventually I phoned them
up and said, `Can I use your name? I can't come up with anything
nearly as good !' They said fine. It hasn't done them any harm,
except it's terribly unfair, as people keep phoning them up and
saying, `Come on, it's a bit cheeky, nicking a name from
Hitchhiker's to call your estate agents by, isn't it?' And they were
a bit upset, when I moved back to England, that I didn't buy my
house from them.

THE MAN IN THE SHACK
I suppose he came from a discussion I had with someone about
this not entirely original observation that everyone's experience of
the world, on which we build this enormous edifice of what we
consider the world is, of what we think the universe is, and our
place in it, and how matter behaves, and everything, is actually a
construct which we put on little electrical signals that we get.
When you think of what we know about the universe, and the
data we have to go on, it's a pretty huge gap. Even the information
we have is not only just what we happen to have been told but the
interpretation that we have put on the little electrical signals which
tell us that somebody's told us this.
We really have nothing to go on at all. So that character was
someone who took that observation to the ultimate extreme,
which is that he would take absolutely nothing on trust at all. He
wouldn't accept anything as being proved or assumed, and
therefore responds absolutely intuitively, if you like,
thoughtlessly, to whatever happens. He makes everything up as
he goes along. Because he makes no assumptions about anything
he really is the best qualified person to rule, to exercise power,
because he's completely disinterested. On the other hand, that
level of disinterest makes him completely unable to produce any
rational or useful decisions whatsoever. As I say in the passage
that introduces him, who can possibly rule if no one who wants
to do it can be allowed to?

MARVIN
Marvin came from Andrew Marshall. He's another comedy
writer, and he is exactly like that. When I set out to write the
character, I wanted to write a robot who was Andrew Marshall,
and in the first draft I actually called the robot Marshall. It only
got changed on the way to the studio because Geoffrey Perkins
thought that the word Marshall suggested other things. Andrew
was the sort of guy you are afraid to introduce to people in pubs
because you know he's going to be rude to them. His wife
recognised him first time. He's cheered up a lot recently.
But I said that on the radio once - that Marvin was
Marshall, and my mother heard it. Next time I spoke to her she
said, `Marvin isn't Andrew Marshall - he's Eeyore!' I said
`What?' She said, `Marvin is just like Eeyore, go and look.' So I
did, and blow me! But literature is full of depressives. Marvin is
simply the latest and most metal.
The other place that a lot of Marvin comes from is from me. I
get awfully gloomy, and a lot of that comes out in Marvin. But I
haven't been that depressed in a year or so: I haven't had one of
these terrible depressions.
Curiously enough, I never had a very clear idea of what
Marvin looked like, and I still don't have one. I don't think the
TV one quite got it. I described him differently for the film script
- he's not silver any more, he's the colour of a black Saab Turbo.
He isn't so square, either, he needs a kind of stooping quality: on
the one hand, he's been designed to be dynamic and streamlined
and beautiful. But he holds himself the wrong way, so the design
has gone completely to naught because he looks pathetic. Utterly
pathetic. The patheticness comes from his attitude to himself
rather than any inherent design. As far as his design is concerned
he looks very sleek. A hi-tech robot.
People ask me what my favourite character is, to which the
answer has usually been, after a long umm and a pause, `probably
Marvin'. It's not something I strongly feel.

**********************************************************
Marvin was interviewed in the Sunday Times colour supplement
in July 1981:
Q: Would you like to be a human being?
A: If I was a human being I'd be very depressed, but then I'm
very depressed already, so it hardly matters. Sometimes I
think it might be quite pleasant to be a chair.
Q: How does it feel to have a brain the size of a planet?
A: Ghastly, but only someone with a brain the size of a
planet could hope to understand exactly how appalling it
really is.
Q: Why are you so miserable?
A: I've been in precisely the same mood ever since I was
switched on. It's just the way my circuits are connected.
Very badly.
Q: Can you repair yourself?
A: Why should I want to do that? I'd just as soon rust.
Q: Do you like reading?
A: I read everything there was to read on the day I was
switched on. It was all so dull I don't see any point in reading
it again.
Q: Music?
A: Hate it.
Q: Hobbies?
A: Hating music.
Q: What do you like the least?
A: The entire multi-dimensional infinity of all creation. I
don't like that at all.
*********************************************************

OOLON COLLUPHID
See Yooden Vranx.

ROOSTA
The guy who played Roosta wasn't very certain what kind of
person Roosta was meant to be, because I wasn't either. It
happens from time to time when you're writing serially, when
you introduce a character at the end of a show and you're going
to bring him back at the start of the next show and get him
working properly, that you can leave a character dangling like
that. You realise that you don't need the character or it's not the
right character or whatever, but in the meantime you've already
got the actor there, so have to have him do something.

SLARTIBARTFAST
Slartibartfast was actually a favourite character of mine in the first
book, though I think I slightly misused that character in the third
book. One thing I don't think I explained in the script book was
that I was also teasing the typist, Geoffrey's secretary, because the
character had actually been on stage for quite a long time before
you know what his name is. I was teasing the typist because she'd
be typing out this long and extraordinary name which would be
quite an effon to type and right at the beginning he says, `My
name is not imponant, and I'm not going to tell you what it is'. I
was just being mean to Geoffrey's secretary.

TRILLIAN
Her name was a son of feeble little twist actually. When she is
introduced to the audience you think, `Trillian - she must be an
alien'. Then later you realise it was just a nickname for her real
name, Tricia Macmillan, and that she was actually from Earth. It's
a feeble surprise, isn't it?
I thought it would be useful to have somebody else from
Earth so that Arthur could have somebody that he could have
some kind of normal conversation with, otherwise he is going to
be totally lost, and the reader/viewer/listener/whoever will be
utterly lost as well. There has to be someone who will understand
when Arthur mentions something which is Earth-specific,
therefore there must be someone else who survived Earth. But in
fact that wasn't really necessary, because obviously Ford fulfills
that function, so I'm afraid the main problem with Trillian is that
the pan wasn't really required. It was superfluous.
She makes less noise than the others do, but she comes very
much to the fore at the end of the third book. She is far more acute,
perceptive, aware and able than most of the rest of them put
together. That was something I finally spotted about her, and I was
pleased about that. Everyone always asked me, why is Trillian such
a cipher of a character. It's because I never really knew anything
about her. And I always find women very mysterious anyway -I
never know what they want. And I always get very nervous about
writing one as I think I'll do something ternbly wrong. You read
other male accounts of women and you think, `He's got them
wrong!' and I feel very nervous about going into that area.

VOGONS
The name was just a sort of code name - they sound like the
typical baddies from Dr Who or Star Trek or wherever, don't they?

WONKO THE SANE
The whole notion of this character actually came from this thing
about toothpicks. I came across this packet of toothpicks which
had instructions for use inside. I just imagined somebody who
might feel that this was the final thing which just tipped them
over the edge in terms of what they thought of the world, and
how they thought you could live in a world which had such a
thing in it. So from that came the idea of the universe turned
inside out, if you like - he built this house to enclose the
universe, which he called the asylum, and he really thought that
was what the universe should be put into, an asylum, and that he
would live outside the asylum and look after it. That was where it
came from, really, toothpicks.

THE WORST POET IN THE UNIVERSE
He was a bloke I was at school with. He used to write appalling
stuff about dead swans in stagnant pools. Dreadful garbage. (The
name of this character was changed to Paula Nancy Millstone
Jennings after complaints by Paul Neil Milne Johnson, an exschoolfriend of Douglas Adams.)


*******************************************************
CAPTAIN: Thy micturations are to me
As plurdled gabbleblotchits in a lurgid bee
Now the jurpling slayjid agrocrustles
Are slurping hagrilly up the axlegrune
And livid glupules fran and slipulate
Like jowling meated liverslime
- A variant and unused version of the poem,
from an early draft TV script.
********************************************************


YOODEN VRANX
Yooden Vranx was a character who was introduced in order to
pave the way to some bit of plot which then didn't get properly
pursued because something funny happened and I thought, `Well,
I'll go with that instead'.
In a way, it's more interesting to keep a character on the
sidelines and never bring him out on stage. Like Oolon Colluphid
who only appears as an author, and you just keep adding books...
I think some of these characters become so popular because
there's this hint of who the pFrson might be the whole time. The
audience have to use their imaginations. If I were to sit down and
explore them in the same depth it would probably be
disappointing. You select the characters you are interested in and
deal with them fully, but it's the little characters on the fringes,
that the audience can make of what they will, that really involve
the audience.

ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX
Zaphod was originally based on somebody I knew at Cambridge
called Johnny Simpson, who I think is now a bloodstock agent.
He had that nervous sort of hyperenergetic way of trying to
appear relaxed. That in a way is where it came from, he was
always trying to be so cool and relaxed, but he could never sit
still. Having said that, none of my characters are really based on
actual people. They start with an idea, then they take on a life of
their own, or they fizzle out.
The two heads, three arms was a one-off radio gag. If I'd
known the problems it was going to cause. . . I've had lots of
rationales for where the extra head and arms came from, and they
all contradict each other. In one version I suggested that he had
always had two heads, in the other I suggest he had it fitted. And
I suggested somewhere he had the extra arm fitted to help with
his skiboxing. Then there was the question of how e managed to
pass himself off on Earth. Arthur says in early versions, rather
inexplicably, that he only had one head and two arms and called
himself Phil, but I never really explained that. In the computer
game I actually dealt with that, and Zaphod is there at the party,
but it's actually a fancy dress party and he claims to have a parrot
on his shoulder. He has a cage for it, with a drape over it, and his
second head is sitting under the drape saying `Pretty Polly!'
There's a scene in which Trillian can't understand why
Zaphod seems on the one hand quite bright and on the other
appallingly dumb. That was a bit of self-portraiture. I sometimes
strike myself as being quite a clever guy, and sometimes cannot
imagine how I can be so slow-witted and stupid, so dull and
brainless. I can't understand why I should be able to write
something which everybody thinks is terribly clever, and at the
same time be personally so dumb. I think I'm schizophrenic.


Appendix IV

The Definitive 'How to Leave the Planet'








YOU HAVE BEEN CAREFULLY SELECTED as a totally random
member of the Human Race. This chapter is for you. Before you
read it :
1) Find a stout chair.
2) Sit on it.
This chapter has been spontaneously generated by the
PASSING ACQUAINTANCES OF THE EARTH computer.
It will appear in this book when the computer judges that the
Earth has passed the P.O.S.T.O.S.E.H. (P.o.s.t.o.s.e.h: Possibility of Sorting Things Out Sensibly Event Horizon)
If you have this chapter you may assume that the crucial
point has now been passed, and that you are one of those chosen
to be the future of the Human Race.
The following instructions are for you:
Leave the planet as quickly as possible.
Do not procrastinate.
Do not panic.
Do not take the Whole Earth Catalog.

HOW TO LEAVE THE PLANET:
1) Phone NASA (tel. 0101 713 483 0123). Explain that it's very
important that you get away as quickly as possible.
2) If they do not cooperate, then try to get someone at the White
House (tel. 0101202 456 1414) to bring some pressure to bear on
them.
3) If you don't get any joy out of them, phone the Kremlin (tel:
0107095 295 9051) and ask them to bring a little pressure to bear
on the White House on your behalf.
4) If that too fails, phone the Pope for guidance (tel. O10 396
6982).
5) If all these attempts fail, flag down a passing flying saucer and
explain that it's vitally important that you get away before your
phone bill arrives.

WHERE YOU SHOULD BE HEADING
Where everyone else in the Galaxy is heading. Stay in the swim,
hang out in bars, keep your ear to the sub-etha. Send all
information home on postcards for the benefit of the next wave
of Earth emigrants. Current information says that everyone else
in the Galaxy is heading for a small planet in Galactic Sector
JPG71248. It is clearly the most wonderfully trendy zillion tons
of hunky rock in the known sky.

WHAT YOUR TRAVELS WILL BE LIKE
Difficult and unbelievably dangerous.
Space is notorious for-having all sorts of terribly frightening
things happening in it, most of which are best dealt with by
running away very fast.
You should therefore take with you:
1) A pair of strong running shoes. The most useful type are of
outrageous design and mind-mangling colours; experience has
shown that if, while strolling through the ancient swampworld of
Slurmgurst you come unexpectedly across an appalling alien
monster with Lasero-Zap eyes, Swivel-Shear teeth, several dozen
tungsten-carbide Vast-Pain claws forged in the sun furnaces of
Zangrijad, and a terrible temper, it is in your immediate best
interests that the monster should be for a moment
a) startled, and
b) looking downwards.
2) A towel. Whilst the monster is temporarily confused by your
footwear you should wrap the towel round its head and strike it
with a blunt instrument.
3) A blunt instrument (see above).
4) A green Eezi-Mind Anti-Guilt jacket or sweat shirt, for
wearing after incidents such as the above. Guilt is now known to
be an electromagnetic wave-form which is reflected and diffused
by the material from which these shirts are made. Wearing them
protects you from worrying about all sorts of things, including
yout unpaid phone bill.
5) A pair of Joo Janta 200 Super Chromatic Peril-Sensitive
Sunglasses. These will help you to develop a relaxed attitude to
danger. At the first hint of trouble they turn totally black, thus
preventing you from seeing anything which might alarm you.
6) All the lyrics to any songs you like to sing whilst travelling. It
is very easy to make enemies by continually singing a song you
don't know all the words to, particularly on long space journeys.
7) A bottle of something. There are very few people in the Galaxy
who won't be more pleased to see you if you are carrying a bottle
of something.

MEDICAL KIT
In case of physical injury, press the buttons relating to A) part
affected and B) nature of injury simultaneously

[ ] leg [ ] broken
[ ] arm [ ] bruised
[ ] head [ ] wrenched off
[ ] chest [ ] mauled by Algolian suntiger
[ ] other [ ] insulted

This page will instantly exude appropriate waves of
sympathy and understanding.

REASSURANCE PANEL
In case of doubt, confusion or alarm, please touch this panel.

****************
* HI THERE ! *
****************


At times of stress it is often reassuring to make physical contact
with friendly objects. This panel is your friend.

NB: On the assumption that nothing terrible is going to
happen to the world, and everything's suddenly going to be
alright really, all the advise in this chapter may be safely ignored.

***********************************************
Douglas Adams originally wrote `How to Leave the Planet'
under the title of The Abandon Earth Kit, which appeared as a
fourteen-sided figure - a quatuordecahedron - of a silvery blue
colour, which was "issued partly in the interests of assuring some
reasonably relaxed and pleasant future for the human race, partly
to introduce the world to Athleisure" (the footwear company
who distributed the Kit as a marketing ploy) "and partly because
it's a rather nice shape."
He then rewrote bits of it, changing the concept of the planet
Athleisure to Ursa Minor Beta, for The Restaurant at tbe End of
the Universe. He then rewrote the whole of it, leaving out some
bits, for the liner notes of the American editions of the
Hitchhiker's albums. He then took the first section and rewrote
that not very much for the American (three book) Hitchhiker's
Trilogy Introduction, and not at all for the English (four book)
Hitchhiker's Trilogy Introduction.
The version above is a pretty definitive compilation of all the
others.
********************************************************

Appendix V
Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen:
An Excerpt from the film Treatment
by Douglas Adams



CRICKET AT LORD'S - the last day of the final Test. England
need just a few more runs to beat Australia.
The Tardis lands - in the Members' Enclosure; very bad
form. The members are only slightly mollified when the Doctor
emerges (with Sarah Jane Smith) wearing a hastily donned tie and
waving a very old membership card.
Three runs still needed. The batsman hits a six and the crowd
goes wild.
In the middle of the pitch, the Ashes are presented to the
England captain. The Doctor causes a sensation by strolling over
and asking if he could possibly take them as they are rather
important for the future of the Galaxy. Confusion reigns, along
with bewilderment, indignation, and all the other things the
English are so good at.
Then, whilst the Doctor is discussing the matter quite
pleasantly with one or two red-faced blustering gentlemen,
something far more extraordinary happens: A small Cricket Pavilion materialises on the centre of the
pitch. Its doors open and eleven automata, all apparently wearing
cricket whites, caps, pads and carrying cricket bats file out onto
the pitch.
Bewilderment turns to horror as these automata, moving as a
tightly drilled and emotionless team, club those in their
immediate vicinity with their bats, seize the urn containing the
Ashes and file back towards their Pavilion.
Before they depart two of them use their bats as beam
projectors to fire a few warning shots of stunray into the crowd.
Another tosses what appears to be a red ball into the air, and with
a devastating hook smacks it straight into a Tea Tent which
promptly explodes.
The doors of the Pavilion close behind them and it vanishes
again.
After a few seconds of stunned shock the Doctor struggles
back to his feet.
"My God," he breathes, "so they've come back. . ."
"But it's preposterous. . . absurd!" people exclaim.
"It is neither," pronounces the Doctor. "It is the single most
frightening thing I have seen in my entire existence. Oh, I've heard
of the Krikkitmen, I used to be frightened with stories of them
when I was a child. But till now I've never seen them. They were
supposed to have been destroyed over two million years ago."
"But why," people demand, "were they dressed as a cricket
team? It's ridiculous!"
The Doctor brusquely explains that the English game of
cricket derives from one of those curious freaks of racial memory
which can keep images alive in the mind eons after their true
significance has been lost in the mists of time. Of all the races in the
Galaxy only the English could possibly revive the memory of the
most horrific star wars that ever sundered the Universe and
transform it into what is generally regarded as an incomprehensibly
dull and pointless game. It is for that reason that the Earth has
always been regarded slightly askance by the rest of the Galaxyit has inadvertently been guilty of the most grotesquely bad taste.
The Doctor smiles again for a moment and says that he did
enjoy the match, and could he possibly take the ball as a souvenir?
The Doctor and Sarah leave in the Tardis. During the next
couple of scenes we learn some of the background history of the
Krikkitmen from the Doctor's explanation to Sarah and his
arguments with the Time Lords. If it can be done partly using
flashback and archive recordings from Gallifrey then so much
the better.

BRIEF HISTORY OF KRIKKIT
The Planet of Krikkit lies in an isolated position on the very
outskirts of the Galaxy.
Its isolation is increased by the fact that it is obscured from
the rest of the Galaxy by a large opaque Dust Cloud.
For millions of years it developed a sophisticated scientific
culture in all fields except that of astronomy of which it,
understandably, had virtually no knowledge.
In all their history it never once occurred to the people of
Krikkit that they were not totally alone. Therefore the day that
the wreckage of a spacecraft floated through the Dust Cloud and.
into their vicinity was one of such extreme shock as to totally
traumatise the whole race.
It was as if a biological trigger had been tripped. From out of
nowhere, the most primitive form of racial consciousness had hit
them like a hammer blow. Overnight they were transformed
from intelligent, sophisticated, charming, normal people into
intelligent, sophisticated, charming manic xenophobes.
Quietly, implacably, the people of Krikkit aligned themselves
to their new purpose - the simple and absolute annihilation of
all alien life forms.
For a thousand years they worked with almost miraculous
speed. They researched, perfected and built the technology to
wage vast interstellar war.
They mastered the technique of instantaneous travel in space.
And they built the Krikkitmen.
The Krikkitmen were anthropomorphic automata. They wore
white uniforms, peaked skull helmets which housed scything laser
beams, carried bat-shaped weapons which combined the functions
of devastating ray guns and hand-to-hand clubs. The lower half of
their legs were in ribbed rocket engines which enabled them to fly.
By an ingenious piece of systems economy they were enabled
to launch grenades with phenomenal accuracy and power simply
by striking them with their bats.
These grenades, which were small, red and spherical, and
varied between minor incendiaries and nuclear devices were
detonated by impact - once their fuses had been primed by
being struck by a bat. Finally, all preparations were complete, and
with no warning at all the forces of Krikkit launched a massive
blitz attack on all the major centres óf the Galaxy simultaneously.
The Galaxy reeled.

At this time, the Galaxy was enjoying a period of great harmony
and prosperity. This was often represented by the symbol of the
Wicket Gate - three long vertical rods supporting two short
horizontal ones. The left upright of STEEL, represented strength
and power: the right upright, of PERSPEX, represented science
and reason; the centre upright, WOOD, represented nature and
spirituality. Between them they supported the GOLD bail of
prosperity and the SILVER bail of peace.
The star wars between Krikkit and the combined forces of
the rest of the Galaxy lasted for a thousand years and wreaked
havoc throughout the known Universe.
After a thousand years of warfare, the Galactic forces, after
some heavy initial defeats, eventually defeat the people of Krikkit.
Then they have to face. . .


THE GREAT DILEMMA
The unswerving militant xenophobia of the Krikkitas rules out
any possibility of reaching any modus vivendi, any peaceful coexistence. They continue to believe their sacred purpose is the
obliteration of all other life forms.
However, they are quite clearly not inherently evil but
simply the victims of a freakish accident of history. It is therefore
impossible to consider simply destroying them all. What can be
done?


THE SOLUTION
The planet of Krikkit is to be encased for perpetuity in an
envelope of Slow Time, inside which life will continue almost
infinitely slowly. All light is deflected round the envelope so that
it remains entirely invisible and impenetrable to the rest of the
Universe. Escape from the envelope is impossible until it is
unlocked from the outside.
The action of Entropy dictates that eventually the whole
Universe will run itself down, and at some point in the
unimaginably distant future first life and then matter will simply
cease to exist. At that time the planet of Krikkit and its sun will
emerge from the Slow Time envelope and continue a solitary
existence in the twilight of the Universe.
The Lock which holds the envelope in place is on an asteroid
which slowly orbits the envelope.
The key was the symbol of the unity of the Galaxy - a
Wicket of Steel, Wood, Perspex, Gold, and Silver.
Shortly after the envelope had been locked, a group of
escaped Krikkitmen had attempted to steal the Key in the process
of which it was blasted apart and fell into the Space Time Vortex.
The passage of each separate component was monitored by the
Time Lords.
The ship containing the escaped Krikkitmen had been blasted
out of the sky.
All the other millions of Krikkitmen were destroyed.
The Doctor and Sarah go to Gallifrey to try and find some
answers.
The Doctor is furious with the bureaucratic incompetence of
the Time Lords. The last component of the Wicket to emerge
from the Space Time vortex was the wooden centre stump which
materialised in Melbourne, Australia in 1882 and was burnt the
following year and presented as a trophy to the English cricket
team.
Only now, a hundred years later, have the Time Lords
woken up to the fact that every part of the Wicket is now back in
circulation and should be collected up and kept safely.
The Time Lords at first refuse to believe the Doctor's story
that the Krikkitmen have stolen the Ashes of the wooden stump.
They say that every single Krikkitman was accounted for, and
they are all safe.
"Safe!" exclaims the Doctor, "I thought they were all destroyed
two million years ago!"
"Ah well, not exactly destroyed, as such..." begins one of the
Time Lords, and a rather curious story emerges.
The Krikkitmen, it seems, were in fact sentient androids
rather than mere robots. The difference is crucial, particularly in
war time. A robot, however complex, is basically a programmable
fighting machine, even if an almost infinitely large number of
response patterns give it the appearance of intelligent thought.
On the other hand, a sentient android is taught rather than
programmed, it has a capacity for actual initiative and creative
thought, and a corresponding slight reduction in efficiency and
obedience - they are in fact artificial men and as such protected
under the Galactic equivalent of the Geneva Convention. It was
therefore not possible to exterminate the Krikkitmen, and they
were instead placed in a specially constructed Suspended
Animation vault buried in Deep Time, an area of the Space Time
Vortex under the absolutely exclusive control of the Time Lords.
And no Krikkitman has ever left it.
Suddenly, news arrives that the Perspex stump has disappeared
from its hiding place. The Time Lords are forced to admit that the
Doctor's story may be true and tell him the locations of the other
components of the Wicket.
The Doctor and Sarah hurriedly visit the planets where the
other components are stored.
First, the Steel Stump. They are too late. It is gone.
Second, the Gold Bail. It is gone.
Third, the Silver Bail. . . it is still there! If they can retrieve it
the Key is useless and the Universe is safe.
It is worshipped as a sacred relic on the planet of Bethselamin.
The Bethselamini are predictably a little upset when the Doctor
and Sarah materialise in the chamber of worship and remove the
Sacred Silver Bail. The Doctor cannot stay to argue the point but
gives them all a little bow just as he is about to leave the chamber,
thus fortuitously ducking his head at the precise moment that a
Krikkit bat swings at him from the open door.
They have arrived.
A pitched battle ensues in which the Bethselamini are rather
forced to conjoin on the Doctor's side.
During the Battle, the Doctor finds his way into the
Krikkitmen's Pavilion, where he has to fight for his life. Just as a
death blow is apparently about to be struck, the Doctor, half
dazed, falls against a lever, and the Krikkitman slumps forward,
paralysed.
The Doctor has inadvertently switched them all off.
The battle is over. The Doctor is incredulous. If it is possible
simply to turn them off then they can't possibly be sentient
androids, they must be robots - so what were the Time Lords
talking about? Why weren't the Krikkitmen destroyed?
The Bethselamini are recovering. Sarah seems to be slightly
dazed, staring into the face of a paralysed Krikkitman. She soon
recovers. We gather (though the Doctor doesn't notice) that she
may have been hypnotised.
The Doctor dismantles one Krikkitman to examine its
interior. He discovers that it is cunningly disguised as an android,
but that in all crucial respects the circuitry is robotic, a fact that
anyone making a thorough examination would quickly notice.
Unless, of course, he didn't want to look very hard. . .
The Doctor and Sarah return to the Tardis. The next step is
clear. If the Krikkitmen are merely robots after all, then they
must all be destroyed at once. So - off to the Deep Time Vault.
Sarah points out that they shouldn't leave the Pavilion and
paralysed Krikkitmen on Bethselamin, but take them back to
Gallifrey for safe keeping and/or destruction.
The Doctor complains that he can't do both things at once.
Sarah's bright idea: if the Doctor will preset all the controls in the
Pavilion and guarantee that all the Krikkitmen are now absolutely
harmless, then she will take them back to Gallifrey and wait for
him there.
Nothing basically wrong with that, says the Doctor, and
agrees. What he doesn't see is that while his back is turned for a
few moments Sarah quickly and quietly switches a few of the
Tardis's controls, whilst a foreign intelligence flickers briefly
though her eyes.
As they leave the Tardis, Sarah surreptitiously hangs her hat
over a panel of lights.
The Doctor sets the controls of the Pavilion, and rather
reluctantly leaves her to it.
As soon as she is alone, Sarah completely resets the Pavilion
controls, and it dematerialises.
The Doctor watches the Pavilion leave and then returns to
the Tardis. Whilst he is setting the controls, he notices that one or
two of them are in the wrong position. With a momentary frown,
he resets them and dematerialises the Tardis.
It is clear that the journey into Deep Time is immediately
complicated, and actually requiresthe active assistance of the
Time Lords on Gallifrey.
Eventually the Tardis materialises in a large chamber full of
life support sarcophagi. The chamber is clearly just one of a very
large number.
He leaves the Tardis. He passes Sarah's hat, but fails to notice
that underneath it a bright warning light is flashing. After he has
gone a hand picks up the hat. Under it a lighted panel reads,
"SCREENS BREACHED: INTRUDERS IN TARDIS".
The hand is Sarah's. Keeping carefully out of sight, she
follows the Doctor out of the Tardis.
The Doctor has passed through into the next chamber. Sarah
goes to a large control panel set in the wall of the chamber, and
carefully, quietly, moves a switch.
Krikkitmen are coming out of the Tardis.
The Doctor has opened a sarcophagus and is examining the
internal workings of the Krikkitman within it.
Not far behind him another sarcophagus begins to open. . .
The Doctor is intent on his work. This Krikkitman is also
quite definitely a robot.
A voice says; "Hello Doctor". He stans and looks up. There
in front of him is Sarah Jane. Around them are several dozen
functioning Krikkitmen. All the sarcophagi are opening.
A bat swings and connects with the back of the Doctor's
head. He falls.
He comes to, lying in the Tardis, surrounded by Sarah and
the Krikkitmen.
"You should be on Gallifrey," he says to her, "how did you
get here? The Pavilion isn't a Tardis machine, it can't possibly
travel into Deep Time."
Then he catches sight of the flashing panel which Sarah's hat
had previously obscured and the penny drops. He struggles to his
feet and presses a button. A wall drops away and there behind it
stands the Pavilion. Inside the Tardis.
"So that's why the switches were off. You lowered the
Tardis's defence field, and then reset the Pavilion's controls so
that instead of going to Gallifrey you materialised a few seconds
later inside the Tardis. In fact 1 gave you all a free ride into Deep
Time," says the Doctor.
A Krikkitman announces that the entire Krikkit army has
now been revived - all five million of them, the Vault has been
shifted out of Deep Time into normal space, and they must now
go to release their masters on Krikkit.
He orders the Doctor to transport the Tardis to the asteroid
which holds the Lock.
"And if I refuse?" asks the Doctor.
"I will kill myself," says the hypnotised Sarah Jane, holding a
knife to her own throat.
The Doctor complies.
As soon as the Tardis materialises on the asteroid, Sarah
slumps over. She is of no funher use to the Krikkitmen. When
she comes to, she can remember nothing since the battle in
Bethselamin.
The Krikkitmen have reconstituted the Ashes into the original
stump shape, and reconstructed the Wicket Key.
They bear it before them out onto the surface of the asteroid.
The Doctor explains to Sarah that there, in front of them yet
totally invisible, is the star and single planet of Krikkit. It has
remained invisible and isolated for two million years, during
which time it has on!y known the passage of five years. In
another direction, they can see the great Dust Cloud that
obscures the rest of the Galaxy.
A very large altar-like structure rises out of the surface of the
asteroid. A Krikkitman climbs up to and pulls a lever. A perspex
block rises up out of the altar. It has deep grooves carved in it,
evidently designed to hold the upright Wicket. The Wicket is
insened. Lights glow. Power hums. In a scene that would make
Kubrick weep like a baby, the star slowly re-appears before them,
with its planet tiny, but visible, in the distance.
All the Krikkitmen turn to face the awe-inspiring sight and
together chant, "Krikkit! Krikkit! Krikkit!"
In that moment of distraction, the Doctor grabs Sarah and
makes a dash for the Tardis. They escape leaving that small group
of Krikkitmen stranded on the asteroid. The Doctor explains that
there's no point in trying to fight the robots now that they've all
been released. Their only chance now is to go to the centre of it
all. . . Krikkit. The Doctor is palpably scared stiff: Krikkit is
about the most dangerous place that anyone other than a Krikkita
could possibly go to. And they've got to go and make them
change their minds. . .
They land on the planet. . .
Picking their way carefully through the back streets of a city,
they suddenly inadvertently walk into a main square and come
face to face with a large number of people.
There is stunned shock on all the faces. . .
After a few seconds on both sides, a howling cry stans up in
the crowd - of pure animal fear and hatred. The Doctor and
Sarah run for their lives with the crowd in hot pursuit.
They duck down a side street - and suddenly find thernselves
ambushed from in front. They are knocked senseless. . .

Acknowledgements




I owe a debt of thanks to all who helped with this book
- not only those who gave interviews, who helped with
the research, who made suggestions, but also to the
people who made it easier for the book to be written by
lending computers, making coffee, or just being nice at
the right time.
Thanks especially are due to:
Alan Bell, Simon Brett, Kevin Davies, Jacqui
Graham, Paddy Kingsland, John Lloyd, Geoffrey
Perkins, and Cliff Pinnock for interviews above and
beyond the call of duty.
Hitchhiker librarian and unpaid archivist Terry
Platt, and ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha (c/o 37 Keen's Road,
Croydon, Surrey CRO 1 AH), the fan club.
Wendy Grahani, lan Pemble, John Peel, Richard
Holliss (who once started writing it), John Brosnan
(who once started editing it), Roz Kaveney, Bernie Jaye
and Nick Landau, Igor Goldkind, Peter Hogan and all at
Titan, Ken Burr and Julian Marks at Rapid Computers,
and Eugene Beer at Beer-Davies.
Two women with the same name: Mary Gaiman,
my wife, who transcribed interviews fairly cheaply and
put up with me for nothing; and my late grandmother,
Mary Gaiman.
Finally, the man without whom this book would
have been highly improbable: Douglas Adams, who
never made any jokes about how late I was with the
manuscript.
Neil.1987. Late.