Greenwich just got the complete set of the original Hitchhiker’s Guide radio plays (which were eventually re-written into the first book) and I snatched them up.
I don’t need to go through yet another explanation of why Douglas Adams is fantastic...
I’m loving the voice actors (except maybe the Vogons, and nothing beats Stephen Fry’s Zaphod) and everything is fairly familiar. It was fairly easy to pick out some parts that were copied verbatim in the first book, a few parts that were left out of the book, quite a few sections that were expanded upon in the book, and only one or two things that actually changed. In the first few chapters, for example, the Vogon ships are called “saucers.” No one ended up laying in the mud at all, and the entire “sleepy Arthur fails to notice the big yellow thing” opening scene doesn’t happen. And unless I heard this incorrectly, and I don’t think I did, Arthur suggests the bulldozer driver could cover for him while he popped off to the pub -- not Ford.
After the first book -- the “primary phase” of the radio show -- however, things seem to be quite a bit different, unless I’ve vastly underestimated my memory of the rest of the books. In fact, the later ones seem to be supplementary to books that have already been published: Arthur can fly, but I don’t remember that being explained; he knows about Stavromula Beta, but again, not explained, etc. Definitely a great read/listen, although I found it a little more confusing and less structured than the books.
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