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Hitchhiker's Guide
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (sometimes referred to as ''HG2G'', ''HHGTTG'', ''H2G2'', or ''tHGttG'') is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it was later adapted to other formats, including novels, stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 text-based computer game, and 2005 feature film. ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' has become an international multi-media phenomenon; the novels are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005. The first novel, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' (1979), has been ranked fourth on the BBC’s The Big Read poll. The sixth novel, ''And Another Thing'', was written by Eoin Colfer with additional unpublished material by Douglas Adams. In 2017, BBC Radio 4 announced a 40th-anniversary celebration with Dirk Maggs, one of the original producers, in charge. The first of six new episodes ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author and screenwriter, best known for ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame. Adams also wrote ''Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency'' (1987) and ''The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul'' (1988), and co-wrote ''The Meaning of Liff'' (1983), ''The Deeper Meaning of Liff'' (1990), and ''Last Chance to See'' (1990). He wrote two stories for the television series ''Doctor Who'', co-wrote ''City of Death'' (1979), and served as script editor for its seventeenth season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
BBC Radio 4
BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC's headquarters at Broadcasting House, London. The station controller is Mohit Bakaya. Broadcasting throughout the United Kingdom, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands on FM, LW and DAB, and on BBC Sounds, it can be received in the eastern counties of Ireland, northern France and Northern Europe. It is available on Freeview, Sky, and Virgin Media. Radio 4 currently reaches over 10 million listeners, making it the UK's second most-popular radio station after Radio 2. BBC Radio 4 broadcasts news programmes such as ''Today'' and ''The World at One'', heralded on air by the Greenwich Time Signal pips or the chimes of Big Ben. The pips are only accurate on FM, LW, and MW; there is a delay on digital radio of three to five seconds and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Extraterrestrial Life In Popular Culture
An extraterrestrial or alien is any extraterrestrial lifeform; a lifeform that did not originate on Earth. The word ''extraterrestrial'' means "outside Earth". The first published use of ''extraterrestrial'' as a noun occurred in 1956, during the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Extraterrestrials are a common theme in modern science-fiction, and also appeared in much earlier works such as the second-century parody ''True History'' by Lucian of Samosata. Gary Westfahl writes: History Pre-modern Cosmic pluralism, the assumption that there are many inhabited worlds beyond the human sphere predates modernity and the development of the heliocentric model and is common in mythologies worldwide. The 2nd century writer of satires, Lucian, in his ''True History'' claims to have visited the moon when his ship was sent up by a fountain, which was peopled and at war with the people of the Sun over colonisation of the Morning Star. Other worlds are depicted in such early works as the 10 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
H2g2
The h2g2 website is a British-based collaborative online encyclopedia project. It describes itself as "an unconventional guide to life, the universe, and everything", in the spirit of the fictional publication ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' from the science fiction comedy series of the same name by Douglas Adams. It was founded by Adams in 1999 and was run by the BBC between 2001 and 2011. The intent is to create an Earth-focused guide that allows members to share information about their geographic area and the local sites, activities and businesses, to help people decide where they want to go and what they may find when they get there. It has grown to contain subjects from restaurants and recipes, to quantum theory and history. Explicit advertising of businesses was forbidden when the site was run by the BBC, but customer reviews were permitted. – ''No Spitting. The lawyers wanted to know what rules we needed, and we said 'The usual ones, plus "No spitting" pl ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marvin The Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android is a fictional character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship ''Heart of Gold''. Originally built as one of many failed prototypes of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's ''GPP'' (Genuine People Personalities) technology, Marvin is afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a "brain the size of a planet" which he is seldom, if ever, given the chance to use. Instead, the crew request him merely to carry out mundane jobs such as "opening the door". Indeed, the true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. Marvin claims he is 50,000 times more intelligent than a human (or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live mattress), though this is, if anything, an underestimation. When kidnapped by the bellicose Krikkit robots and tied to the interfaces of their intelligent war ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox () is a fictional character in the various versions of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams. He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" of Ford Prefect, with whom he "shares three of the same mothers". Because of "an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine", his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather are actually his direct descendants (see Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth). Appearance This character is described across all versions as having two heads and three arms, though explanations of how he came to receive the extra appendages differs between versions. The original radio version never explained the second head, but did explain that Zaphod "grew" the third arm in the six months between meeting the character of Trillian on Earth, and the start of the series. The third radio series implies that he had a third arm when growing upthe fifth has him offer to T ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trillian (character)
Tricia Marie McMillan, also known as Trillian Astra, is a fictional character from Douglas Adams' series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''. She is most commonly referred to simply as "Trillian", a modification of her birth name, which she adopted because it sounded more "space-like". According to the movie version, her middle name is Marie. Physically, she is described as "a slim, darkish humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little knob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes," looking "vaguely Arabic." Biography Tricia McMillan is a mathematician and astrophysicist whom Arthur Dent attempted to talk to at a party in Islington. She and Arthur next meet six months later on the spaceship Heart of Gold, shortly after the Earth has been destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The trilogy later reveals that Trillian eventually left the party with Zaphod Beeblebrox, who, according to the Quintessential Phase, is directly responsible for her nickn ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (fictional)
''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' is a fictional electronic guide book in the multimedia scifi/comedy series of the same name by Douglas Adams. The Guide serves as "the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom" for many members of the series' galaxy-spanning civilization. Entries from the guidebook are used as comic narration to bridge events and provide background information in every version of the story. The guide is published by "Megadodo Publications", a publishing company on Ursa Minor Beta. In the original radio scripts, the Guide's voice was called the "Narrator" and in the 2004–2005 series, "The Voice". For all of the radio series and the 1981 TV series, the role was credited as "The Book", though this was changed to "Narrator/The Guide" for the 2005 movie. In the first two phases of the radio series, the LP album adaptations of the first radio series and in the television series, the Guide was voiced by British actor Peter Jones. During the 2004– ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Travel Guide
A guide book or travel guide is "a book of information about a place designed for the use of visitors or tourists". It will usually include information about sights, accommodation, restaurants, transportation, and activities. Maps of varying detail and historical and cultural information are often included. Different kinds of guide books exist, focusing on different aspects of travel, from adventure travel to relaxation, or aimed at travelers with different incomes, or focusing on sexual orientation or types of diet. Travel guides can also take the form of travel websites. History Antiquity A forerunner of the guidebook was the ''periplus'', an itinerary from landmark to landmark of the ports along a coast. A ''periplus'' such as the ''Periplus of the Erythraean Sea'' was a manuscript document that listed, in order, the ports and coastal landmarks, with approximate intervening distances, that the captain of a vessel could expect to find along a shore. This work was possibly ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ford Prefect (character)
Ford Prefect (also called Ix) is a fictional character in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by the British author Douglas Adams. His role as Arthur Dent's friend – and rescuer, when the Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass at the start of the story – is often expository, as Ford is an experienced galactic hitch-hiker and explains that he is actually an alien journalist, a field researcher for the titular ''Guide'' itself, and not an out-of-work actor from Guildford as he had hitherto claimed. Name Although Ford had taken great care to blend into Earth society, he had "skimped a bit on his preparatory research," and thought that the name "Ford Prefect" would be "nicely inconspicuous." The Ford Prefect was a popular British car manufactured from 1938 to 1961, and Adams later clarified in an interview that Ford "had simply mistaken the dominant life form" of Earth. This was expanded on somewhat in the film version, where Ford is almost run o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy''—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route. Vogons are slug-like but vaguely humanoid, are bulkier than humans, and have green skin. Vogons are described as "one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy—not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous", and having "as much sex appeal as a road accident" as well as being the authors of "the third worst poetry in the universe". They are employed as the galactic government's bureaucrats. According to Marvin the Paranoid Android, they are also the worst marksmen in the galaxy. Description Appearance and personality Guide Description: Vogons are roughly human-sized, although much bulkier, with green or grey skin. Their noses are above the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character and the hapless protagonist of the comic science fiction series ''The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'' by Douglas Adams. In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by Simon Jones (not to be confused with Peter Jones, the voice of the Guide). In Ken Campbell's 1979 stage production, Chris Langham took the part. In the 2005 film adaptation, he is played by Martin Freeman. In ''The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'', he is portrayed by Jonathan Lermit. Arthur's story Along with Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent barely escapes from Earth as it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur spends the next several years, still wearing his dressing gown, helplessly launched from crisis to crisis while trying to straighten out his lifestyle. He rather enjoys tea, but seems to have trouble obtaining it in the far reaches of the galaxy. In time, he learns how to fly and carves a niche for hi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
