Final episode of Hitch Hiker Guide found in author's files

Telegraph.co.uk ^ | 18/11/2001 | Charlotte Edwardes and Susan Bisset

[Alabama_Wild_Man]

Zaphod Bump

[jrherreid]

As a proud owner of the original radio series on CD, I'd have to say "Can I push the button?"

Don't forget your towel, folks!

[Vince Ferrer]

Won't happen to Stephen King. His best writing years are still to come.

For me, it happened to him a long time ago, but Pet Cemetery, The Shining, Needful Things, and Salem's Lot are great books. And Frank Herbert should have stopped with his fourth, God Emperor of Dune.

[Focault's Pendulum]

Pan Galalactic Gargle Blaster Bump.

[50sDad]

I love Pratchett's works a thousand times more; by volume and content he is much the better author. But I have, or had, a special place in my heart for Doug Adams. Sadly, he was a very one trick pony. He did that trick without question fantastickly, but one day he did something that p*ssed me off so greatly that I could never forgive him.

I saw him growing as an author. I loved the first few books without exception, and finally, on the rebuilt earth, he gave poor, bedraggled Arthur Dent a life. That poor bugger got his lady love, on the rebuilt earth, and the life that the character deserved after all the travels and pain. And then, Adams stole her, and destroyed Arthur's life and killed every character I ever cared about, apparently completely and forever, along with the rebuilt Earth and every earth like it. The wretched bastard killed my friends.

Now this may be because he was tired of the character, or because he had this dreaded writers block. But I took it no kinder than Conan Doyle's readers did when he snuffed the Great Detective. At a certain point, characters stop belonging to the author and start belonging to the readers. If Dickens had carved up Little Nell with a rusty bread knife, people would have spit on him. I feel much the same way about Douglas Adams. (And to a lesser extent about Heinlein, who wrote incredible stuff in his younger, idealistic days, and later turned into a pagan, God-hating, crazed sex freak. My second great disappointment is "The Number of the Beast", in which RAH starts out like his classic self with a grand, paranoid, alien-takeover book, skews through some Sliders-esk parallel worlds, and nose-dives into a bit of lame fanfic-level tripe.)

Anyway, I miss Douglas Adams. The younger one. Before he cut my heart out with a rusty bread knife.

[Michael Barnes]

If anyone is interested, using a gnutella client, lookup the Hitchhikers guide (in the MP3 list). The files are large. There are two versions. One is the "Author's read", the other is the BBC's HHG show. IMO, The BBC's is hysterical..Kinda cool to have HHG "playing" in the background.