Question about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books...

[Matt]

I just finished reading Mostly Harmless. The ending was...less than satisfying. I remember reading that Adams planned a sequel but died before doing it. Anyone have any information?

 

[Darren Daring]

what are you looking for? He planned one, but he died. That's the sum total of knowledge.

 

[Abaddon]

He was writing another Dirk Gently novel, that may have turned into a Hitchhiker's book. Some of what was written was printed along with his other short stories and stuff in "The Salmon of Doubt"

 

[Leto Atrides]

Apparently it was going to be the end, but after he wrote it he decided it was a bad ending and wanted to write another.

From Wikipedia:

In an interview reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt, Adams expressed dissatisfaction with the "rather bleak" tone of this book, and said that he "would love to end Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note" by writing a sixth installment in the series. He blames personal problems, saying "for all sorts of personal reasons I don't want to go into, I just had a thoroughly miserable year, and I was trying to write a book against that background. And, guess what, it was a rather bleak book!" Nonetheless, the story does a good job of tying together most of the plot elements introduced in the previous novels, in a typically quirky fashion.

Being the fifth book in a trilogy, and Adams wanting to write a sixth one, it wasn't entirely granite that this was the concluding book in the series, until his death (due to a heart attack) on May 11, 2001 made it so.

Although the complete destruction of every version of the Earth in every possible timeline, along with the death of nearly all the regular characters would seem to make a continuation extremely unlikely, Adams had remarked that the afterlife-enhanced state of the regulars merely meant he would not have to waste time at the beginning of the next book gathering them together or explaining what they'd been up to in the intervening period.

 

[Matt]

Apparently it was going to be the end, but after he wrote it he decided it was a bad ending and wanted to write another.

From Wikipedia:

Thanks Leto

 

[Abaddon]

 

[Matt]

Thanks too Abaddon.

 

[StorminNorman]

I don't even acknowledge Mostly Harmless - it never existed. Thanks For All The Fish wasn't horrible, but even that didn't measure up to the greatness of the first three - or even the Young Zaphod Plays It Safe short story. The funny thing is that Mostly Harmless basically took away the one huge meaningful part of TFATF (Fenchurch [sp?]) with no real explination what-so ever.

 

[Abaddon]

Life, the Universe, and Everything was the best......I think.




You should give "The Salmon of Doubt" a read, Matt. Some of his short stories are pretty good.

 

[StorminNorman]

I have always had a great amount of Fondness for The Resteraunt At the End of the Universe - but that is because I love Zaphod and that book gave him the most screen-time.

Now if only there was a movie/TV-show that did him justice