Concept of Time Machine

7/29/2019 Concept of Time Machine

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The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel, first described by the science fictionwriter René Barjavel in his 1943 book "Le Voyageur Imprudent" ("The ImprudentTraveller").[1] The paradox is this: Suppose someone traveled back in time and killed his biological grandfather before the latter met the traveller's grandmother. As a result, one of the traveller's parents (and by extension, the traveller himself) would never have been

conceived. But this would imply that he could not have travelled back in time after all,which in turn implies the grandfather would still be alive, and the traveller would have been conceived, allowing him to travel back in time and kill his grandfather. Thus each possibility seems to imply its own negation, a type of logical paradox.

An equivalent paradox is known (in philosophy) as autoinfanticide — that is, going back in time and killing oneself as a baby — though when the word was first coined in a paper by Paul Horwich it was in the malformed version autofanticide.[citation needed]

The grandfather paradox has been used to argue that backwards time travel must beimpossible. However, other resolutions have also been advanced.

[edit] Scientific theories

[edit] Complementary time travelSince quantum mechanics is governed by probabilities, an unmeasured entity (in thiscase, your historical grandfather) has numerous probable states. When that entity ismeasured, the number of its probable states singularises, resulting in a single outcome (inthis case, ultimately, you). Therefore, since the outcome of your grandfather is known,you killing your grandfather would be incompatible with that outcome. Thus, theoutcome of one's trip backwards in time must be complementary with the state fromwhich one left.[2]

[edit] Novikov self-consistency principleSee the Novikov self-consistency principle and Kip S. Thorne for one view on how backwards time travel could be possible without a danger of paradoxes. According to thishypothesis, the only possible timelines are those which are entirely self-consistent, so thatanything a time traveler does in the past must have been part of history all along, and thetime traveler can never do anything to prevent the trip back in time from being madesince this would represent an inconsistency.

[edit] Parallel universesThere could be "an ensemble of parallel universes" such that when the traveller kills thegrandfather, the act took place in (or resulted in the creation of) a parallel universe inwhich the traveller's counterpart will never be conceived as a result. However, his prior existence in the original universe is unaltered.

Examples of parallel universes postulated in physics are:



In quantum mechanics, the many-worlds interpretation suggests that every seeminglyrandom quantum event with a non-zero probability actually occurs in all possible ways indifferent "worlds", so that history is constantly branching into different alternatives. The physicist David Deutsch has argued that if backwards time travel is possible, it shouldresult in the traveler ending up in a different branch of history than the one he departed

from.[3] See also quantum suicide and quantum immortality.M-theory is put forward as a hypothetical master theory that unifies the five superstringtheories, although at present it is largely incomplete. One possible consequence of ideasdrawn from M-theory is that multiple universes in the form of 3-dimensional membranesknown as branes could exist side-by-side in a fourth large spatial dimension (which isdistinct from the concept of time as a fourth dimension) - see Brane cosmology. It istheorized that when two branes collide it sends a massive ripple of heat and energythroughout the two. This is a possible explanation of what caused the big bang accordingto the ekpyrotic scenario and the cyclic model. However, there is currently no argumentfrom physics that there would be one brane for each physically possible version of historyas in the many-worlds interpretation, nor is there any argument that time travel would

take one to a different brane.

[edit] Parallel universes resolutionThe idea of preventing paradoxes by supposing that the time traveler is taken to a paralleluniverse while his original history remains intact, which is discussed above in the contextof science, is also common in science fiction - see Time travel as a means of creatinghistorical divergences. Some examples of this type of story:

Michael Crichton's novel Timeline. However, unlike most time travel stories based on parallel universes, Crichton's novel seems to imply that changes to universes whichresemble our own past can affect the universe we live in. The example given is when a professor trapped in the past sends a message to his graduate students at a medievalmonastery.In the Marvel Universe comic books, any change made to the timeline results in analternate timeline (for example, Professor X's son Legion attempted to kill Magneto, heaccidentally killed Professor X, creating the Age of Apocalypse Timeline). Somecharacters know this and use it to their advantage (such as Vance Astro of the Guardiansof the Galaxy, whose timeline shift allowed an alternate self to become Justice.)In L. Sprague de Camp's Lest Darkness Fall, a modern historian is thrown back in time tothe period immediately after the fall of the Roman Empire, and introduces manyanachronistic technical innovations and especially printing - thus creating a timelinewhere the dark ages do not happen and the achievements of Classical civilization are to agreat degree preserved, and boosted by many inventions appearing a millennium or moreahead of schedule. This does not, however, change the original timeline he came from, inwhich world culture and society are still the result of Classical civilization havingcollapsed and a new civilization gradually taking its place.In Dragonball Z, Trunks travels to a parallel universe's past and saves the heroes whilethey remain dead in his own world several years in the future. Later, in the universeTrunks saves the heroes, Cell travels from a different universe still in which he killsTrunks there.



In Primer (film) the characters Abe and Arron are able to go back in time and kill their previous selves. They had arguments about continuity and the like, but besides that "Theonly thing that matters is what is happening right now."

Another resolution, of which the Novikov self-consistency principle can be taken as an

example, holds that if one were to travel back in time, the laws of nature (or other intervening cause) would simply forbid the traveller from doing anything that could later result in their time travel not occurring. For example, a shot fired at the traveler'sgrandfather will miss, or the gun will jam, or misfire, or the grandfather will be injured but not killed, or the person killed will turn out to be not the real grandfather, or someother event will occur to prevent the attempt from succeeding. No action the traveller takes to affect change will ever succeed, as there will always be some form of "bad luck"or coincidence preventing the outcome. In effect, the traveller will be unable to changehistory from the state they left it. Very commonly in fiction, the time traveller does notmerely fail to prevent the actions he seeks to prevent; he in fact precipitates them (see predestination paradox), usually by accident.

This theory might lead to concerns about the existence of free will (in this model, freewill may be an illusion). This theory also assumes that causality must be constant: i.e.that nothing can occur in the absence of cause, whereas some theories hold that an eventmay remain constant even if its initial cause was subsequently eliminated.

Closely related but distinct is the notion of the time line as self-healing. The time-traveler's actions are like throwing a stone in a large lake; the ripples spread, but are soonswamped by the effect of the existing waves. For instance, a time traveler couldassassinate a politician who led his country into a disastrous war, but the politician'sfollowers would then use his murder as a pretext for the war, and the emotional effect of that would cancel out the loss of the politician's charisma. Or the traveller could prevent acar crash from killing a loved one, only to have the loved one killed by a mugger, or falldown the stairs, choke on a meal, killed by a stray bullet, etc. In some stories it is only theevent that precipitated the time traveler's decision to travel back in time that cannot besubstantially changed, in others all attempted changes will be "healed" in this way, and instill others the universe can heal most changes but not sufficiently drastic ones. This isalso the explanation advanced by the Dr. Who roleplaying game, which supposes thatTime is like a stream; you can dam it, divert it, or block it, but the overall direction it isheaded will resume after a period of conflict.

It also may not be clear whether the time traveler altered the past or precipitated thefuture he remembers, such as a time traveler who goes back in time to persuade an artist-- whose single surviving work is famous -- to hide the rest of the works to protect them.If, on returning to his time, he finds that these works are now well-known, he knows hehas changed the past. On the other hand, he may return to a future exactly as heremembers, except that a week after his return, the works are found. Were they actuallydestroyed, as he believed when he traveled in time, and has he preserved them? Or was



their disappearance occasioned by the artist's hiding them at his urging, and the skill withwhich they were hidden, and so the long time to find them, stemmed from his urgency?

Examples of this set of theories include:

Oedipus Rex, where the actions undertaken to thwart a prophecy bring it about: Cronus'swallowing of his children to prevent their usurping his power is what encouraged Zeusto overthrow him, and Oedipus's being abandoned led him to meet his mother without being aware of her identity. This, and other folk tales involving prophecies (wherein the'time travel' is of information), form the oldest known occurrences of the predestination paradox.The 2002 movie version of The Time Machine, in which the main character cannot savehis girlfriend by going back in time, as he only started building the time machine out of frustration at her death. This loop is not present in the original book.In the film Twelve Monkeys, the main character not only is unable to prevent a tragic past event from occurring, but even realizes that, as a child, he witnessed his adult self

failing in the attempt. Moreover the perpetrator of some of the related events was inspiredto bring them about as a result of speaking to the protagonist.In the final chapters of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, the characters travel back in time and their own actions cause a number of events which they had alreadyexperienced from another perspective, such as Harry casting a Patronus Charm whichsaves his (3-hour) younger self from a group of dementors.Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker Series makes use of this resolution for light-hearted andcomic plots; for instance, an Infinite Improbability Drive, designed by life-forms, travels back in time and rearranges a group of atoms, thereby creating life.[citation needed]Harry Harrison's The Technicolor Time Machine uses this resolution for light-heartedand comic plots; when a film-maker goes back in time to make a film of the Vikingcolonization of America, it proves, in the end, to be the cause of the Vikings' colonizationof America, with the film-maker himself appearing in the sagas they used as their source.In Castle Roogna, Piers Anthony has the magician Murphy persuade the time-traveler Dor to remain out of a conflict, because he might tamper with the past, but Dor'ssubsequent actions did affect it, and in his own time, while everything appears unaltered,a discussion points out that later disasters may have made his beneficial effect appear tohave disappeared.In the 1969 science fiction novel Behold the Man by Michael Moorcock,the protagonistKarl Glogauer builds a time machine in order to travel back to the Holy Land 2000 yearsin the past. His intention is to prove the existence of Jesus Christ. When he discovers thatin fact Christ actually suffered from severe physical and learning disabilities, Glogauer decides to act out his role as recorded in the Bible, faking the miracles and finally beingcrucified. This implies that the person called "Jesus Christ" that Glogauer had read aboutin the Bible, and that spurred his decision to travel back in time, was actually himself allalong, an example of a predestination paradox.An especially vicious example is Eric Norden's novella "The Primal Solution". Anelderly Jewish scientist - Holocaust survivor, who had lost his entire family - discovers away of "mental time travel", which enables him to project his mind into the past and takeover the body of the young Adolf Hitler in the Vienna of the early 1910s. Resolved to



force Hitler into suicide, the vengeful professor can't resist humiliating him first andforcing him to drink sewer water in front of surprised passers by, before making him jump into the Danube - but in the moment before drowning, Hilter regains control of his body and returns home shaken. The Professor is trapped inside Hitler's mind, but is ableto "hear" him think "The Jews? Why did the Jews do this to me? I have never harmed

them!". Being able to access Hitler's memories, the trapped Professor suddenly realizesthat until this moment the young Hitler had not at all been an Antisemite and was in facton good terms with some Jews. Only because something inexplicable had entered Hitler'smind - something which totally hates him and is implacably bent on his destruction, andwhich identifies itself as being Jewish and acting on behalf of all Jews - that he would become the genocidal Hitler known to history. Never daring to tell anybody of this presence in his mind, for fear of being considered insane, Hitler would gradually developthe idea that only by killing all Jews would he be free of that haunting presence. In short -the very act intended to avert the Holocaust ends up being its direct cause.

[edit] Relative timelines resolution

It could be that the universe does not have an absolute timeline that is permanentlywritten after events happen (or, in the deterministic view, at the start of time). Instead,each particle has its own timeline and therefore, humans have their own timeline. Thismight be considered similar to the theory of relativity, except that it deals with a particle'shistory, rather than its velocity.

Physical forces affect physical particles. If your body's physical particles go back in time,you will be able to kill your grandfather (no physical forces will mystically stop you), andnothing will physically happen to you as a result, because there are no physical forcesthat can "figure out" what happened and this new timeline develops, because the universesimply has no mechanism for unmaking it. Your younger self does not need to be born inorder to fulfill a destiny of going back in time, because there is no written-in-stoneabsolute timeline that needs to be followed. If you were able to find and observe theyounger versions of the particles that make you up, they too would follow physical lawsand hence wouldn't form into a younger version of you (because one of your parentswouldn't be there to form you).

This theory is similar to the parallel universes theory, except that it happens within oneuniverse. If parallel universes cannot interact again after time travel occurs, thenessentially the parallel universe resolution and the relative timelines resolution are thesame as there is no way of proving a parallel universe still exists or ever did exist.

Examples include:

Alfred Bester's short story The Men Who Murdered Mohammed, posits that, once youchange the past, you create a solipsistic universe where you can make whatever changesyou like, including preventing your own birth. Each time traveller has their ownsolipsistic time line.



Orson Scott Card used this theory to allow his characters to travel back in time andchange the history of European colonization in the New World in his novel Pastwatch:The Redemption of Christopher Columbus.Similarly, this model also appears in James P. Hogan's novel Thrice Upon a Time,although Hogan confusingly uses the term "universes" to describe different moments on

the same timeline rather than separate timelines.In Poul Anderson's Time Patrol, the Patrol's purpose is to prevent such changes in time,and when they have occurred, undo the changes as neatly as possible, to revert to the"normal" timeline. Such a Time Patrol, under one name or another, is a common featurein stories using this resolution.In the film, The Lake House, Kate Forster communicates with Alex Wyler by means of amysterious mail box even though she lives in 2006 and he lives in 2004. She can sendinformation back through time and he can send it forward. Kate finds out that he died inan automobile accident and warns him not to cross the street that day. Thus forewarned,Alex does not cross the street and is able to join Kate at the mailbox shortly after shedelivers the warning. Thus the past that Kate remembers has been changed (Alex hasn't

died), and no harmful consequences seem to ensue from this paradox.In the television series Seven Days, NSA Agent Frank Parker uses a device called thechronosphere to go back in time, usually one week, to "undo" catastrophic events. Thiswould only be possible if the relative timelines resolution holds, because if Parker succeeds, there would never have been any reason to send him back in time.In the essay The Theory and Practice of Time Travel, Larry Niven proposes that, after some unknown number of revisions of history, the effect of some episode of time travelwill be to create a universe where time travel, although possible, is simply never discovered. Such a timeline is stable, and in it no paradoxes occur, and so need noresolution.In some works, the replacement is not complete. Characters may "remember" their livesin the original timeline, and more drastic effects may occur. In Jasper Fforde's Thursday Next books, time travelers caused Thursday's husband to drown as a child, but Thursdayremained pregnant with his child.

[edit] Destruction resolutionSome science fiction stories suggest that causing any paradox will cause the destructionof the universe, or at least the parts of space and time affected by the paradox. The plotsof such stories tend to revolve around preventing paradoxes.

Examples include:

In the Back to the Future trilogy, it is speculated by Doc Brown that an encounter between a person and their former self "could create a time paradox, the results of whichcould cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-timecontinuum and destroy the entire universe. Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. Thedestruction might, in fact, be very localized, limited merely to our own galaxy".However, actual paradoxes are generally averted in the films, so it is never shown if Doc's speculations are correct. The filmmakers, in their commentary on the second film



of the series, say that they avoided showing one full grandfather paradox, fearing thatmany viewers would not comprehend what was happening; however, when the character Biff returns from the 1955 to the 2015, he suddenly appears very ill, the camera stopsfocusing on him, and we never see him again in that time period. This is because hisinterference in his own past led to his death before 2015. Marty preventing his parents

from meeting has the same ultimate effect of the grandfather paradox. He starts to be"erased from reality", and had he not reversed the effect by getting his parents back together, he would not have been in existence to go back in time and disrupt his parents'meeting in the first place.The 2005 Doctor Who series episode Father's Day provided a unique version of thedestruction resolution. A paradox causes a wound in space-time, which attracts flyingcarnivorous monsters, Reapers. The Reapers act like bacteria around a real wound,devouring everything, starting with the youngest people and objects, until the wound is"sterilized" and the paradox resolved by its destruction. The deadly rift would havenormally been prevented by the Gallifreyians, the TimeLords, but they had all beendestroyed in a war with the Daleks, and the monsters were the universe's own way of

preventing the event.John Cramer's novel Einstein's Bridge depicts a multiverse consisting of individualBubbles, normally isolated one from another, except that certain high-energy activitiescan send signals between Bubbles. The calibration runs of the Superconducting Super Collider (yes, it was built in that timeline) generate a signal which is detected by twocivilizations in other Bubbles, one benevolent and one hostile. Transmission of matter between Bubbles is impossible, but information and small amounts of energy can betransferred; the hostile civilization invades our universe in this way, constructingnanomachines by remote control and proceeding to assimilate our world and remake it intheir image. To halt and undo the destruction of our civilization, members of the benevolent civilization and two humans construct a "time vortex," an impossiblecondition which induces our entire universe to unravel itself back a distance of seventeenyears, before the SSC brought attention to us. The two humans are somehow pushed back into the past by the vortex, and they use their knowledge of the general course of eventsto acquire wealth and power and make sure the SSC is not built.

[edit] Observation resolutionSome speculations suggest that, under no circumstances whatsoever you would be able to"kill your grandfather". The only result of the time travel would be your knowledge thatyou've caused some event in the past. For example, if a protagonist kills his grandfather,it would turn out that the victim is not his grandfather at all.

[edit] Other examplesThe Grandfather Paradox, or similar, is also used in the following:

A well known, typical example of the paradox is the first Back to the Future film: MartyMcFly travels to 1955 and accidentally prevents his mother's romantic attraction to hisfather. While trying to find out a way to return to his own year, he observes that hissiblings begin to fade out from a picture he was carrying with him since he averted their



own birth. Towards the end of the film, he starts to fade from reality as well, until hemanages to make his parents fall in love "again".The Futurama episode, "Roswell That Ends Well", in which a main protagonist, PhilipFry, travels back in time and accidentally causes the man he believes to be hisgrandfather to be killed in a nuclear weapons test, after which he humorously solves the

paradox by unintentionally becoming his own grandfather (an action that would,indirectly, result in him getting cryogenically frozen and setting up the entire series).Robert A. Heinlein's short story "—All You Zombies—"Spider Robinson's short story Father ParadoxConnie Willis's novel To Say Nothing of the DogThe Terminator series of moviesThe Butterfly Effect filmsStar Trek episode The City On The Edge Of Forever - McCoy, with an accidentaloverdose on medicine, went through a time portal and saved the life of a woman, alteringhistory in such a way that the Federation was never created. Kirk and Spock must find the point at which McCoy altered time and reverse the change, by allowing the woman to

die. In the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations", which usedfootage from the original series to create a time travel episode with Kirk and crew in it,Julian Bashir flirts with a girl he later realizes may be his ancestor and, in a spoof of the paradox, begins to worry that he may be faced with the choice of becoming his own progeny or ceasing to exist.The popular webtoon Bonus Stage episode 87, Bonus Stages, where main character, PhilArgus, goes back in time to the first episode of the series, and kills his old self, putting aslightly different twist on the paradox, and destroying the rest of the Bonus Stageuniverse.The online machinima comedy series Red vs. Blue - The character Church travels back intime to prevent his own death, and to avert the events and disasters that put the charactersinto their current situation. He ends up causing all of the problems and situations of thefirst 48 episodes — including his own death — entirely by accident.The Red Dwarf episode, "Tikka To Ride", episode 7.1, in which the future version of thecrew destroy the present crew; therefore, the future crew no longer exist and therefore areunable to go back in time and kill themselves, hence they survive. Also in this episode,the crew accidentally kill Lee Harvey Oswald, preventing the JFK assassination, anddestroying life on earth in an atomic war. Ultimately, they convince a slightly older and politically destroyed JFK to go back in time to assassinate himself from the Grassy Knoll,to ensure the survival of the planet and his own legacy.The Red Dwarf episode, "Ouroboros", episode 7.3, in which Lister discovers he is hisown father and travels back in time to place his son, aka himself, under the pool tablewhere his adoptive parents first found him.In Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater, after Revolver Ocelot and the Ocelots are knockedout, it is possible to shoot Ocelot. This however results in an instant game over screen,with the words "TIME PARADOX" replacing "GAME OVER". This occurs due to thefact that Ocelot is a vital factor in the Metal Gear Solid games, and that none of themwould have happened if Ocelot died. Also, if the main character, Naked Snake, dies inany way, the "TIME PARADOX" message also replaces the "SNAKE IS DEAD" screen.



This is due to the fact that Naked Snake is actually Big Boss, the father of Solid Snake,who is the most critical character in the previous Metal Gear games.The Invader Zim episode, Bad, Bad Rubber Piggy, in which Zim tries to use a space-timeobject replacement device to send a Hunter-Destroyer robot to destroy Dib before he becomes Zim's enemy. GIR warns Zim that if Dib doesn't become Zim's enemy, Zim

won't send the robot, and then Dib won't be destroyed and will become Zim's enemy, andthen Zim will send the robot, Dib will be destroyed and won't become Zim's enemy (Gir keeps telling it until his head explodes). The paradox never occurs because Zim hadfailed at destroying Dib.K. A. Applegate's Megamorphs #3: Elfangor's Secret (of the Animorphs series) featured astoryline wherein the Animorphs are shown an alternate universe where slavery anddisease are rampant, which will become reality unless they can follow a certain alien foe,Visser Four, through time in order to stop him. Visser Four travels to world events suchas Washington's crossing of the Delaware and D-Day attempting and succeeding inaltering the timeline with the Time Matrix to make it favorable for the invading Yeerks.The successful Yeerk abandons his host, and the Animorphs take that opportunity to ask

the dying human when his parents met with the intention of preventing his birth to savethe timeline, which they do.In Lost Highway the main character Fred seems to be stuck in endless "grandfather paradox" in which he kills his wife, her "friends" and lover.In The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages, when Link gets possessed Impa to the areawhere Nayru is singing, Veran emerges from Impa and possesses Nayru. After Ralph puts away his sword and steps away from possessed Nayru, possessed Nayru goes back in time and turns almost everyone into stones and possesses Queen Ambi to make theBlack Tower, thus causing a paradox to change the future. Link goes back in time to fixthe paradox.In The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Link learns the Song of Storms from the manin the windmill in Kakariko Village. Later, he must teach this song to the Windmill manin the past, for a certain event to happen, an event that occurred because of Link'smeddling, but what the player hasn't been able to do yet, because the player didn't knowthe Song of Storms. The event is triggered by teaching the Windmill Guy the Song of Storms. The song is in fact spawned by a time paradox. This could alternately beexplained with the sequel The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask, in which the song islearned again through another source.In Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Harry sees a figure on the other side of thelake (who he believed to be his deceased father) which saves him and Sirius Black with aPatronus Charm. Later he travels back in time and discovers that the figure was himself.He casts the Patronus and saves himself and Sirius. In fact, only because Harry sawhimself already conjure the Patronus was he able to muster the self confidence to be ableto conjure the Patronus.In Prince of Persia In the first part of the new Prince of Persia trilogy, the Prince releasesthe Sands of Time. The second game reveals that whoever releases the Sands must die.The Prince attempts to reverse his fate by going back in time to before the sands weremade, at which point he discovers that he himself makes the Sands. He finally overcomeshis fate when he puts on a mask that sends him back in time again, stopping his actionthat made the sands. As the Prince acts in paradox (if the sands were never created, he



wouldn't be trying to destroy them), he is pursued by a beast called the Dahaka, aguardian of the timeline who ensures consistency through force.

[edit] Other considerationsConsideration of the grandfather paradox has led some to the idea that time travel is by its

very nature paradoxical and therefore logically impossible, on the same order as roundsquares. For example, the philosopher Bradley Dowden made this sort of argument in thetextbook Logical Reasoning, where he wrote:

Nobody has ever built a time machine that could take a person back to an earlier time. Nobody should be seriously trying to build one, either, because a good argument existsfor why the machine can never be built. The argument goes like this. Suppose you didhave a time machine right now, and you could step into it and travel back to some earlier time. Your actions in that time might then prevent your grandparents from ever havingmet one another. This would make you not born, and thus not step into the time machine.So, the claim that there could be a time machine is self-contradictory.

However, most philosophers and scientists agree that time travel into the past need not belogically impossible as long as there is no possibility of changing the past, as suggested,for example, by the Novikov self-consistency principle. Bradley Dowden himself revisedthe view above after being convinced of this in an exchange with the philosopher NormanSwartz which is recorded here.

Consideration of the possibility of backwards time travel in a hypothetical universedescribed by a Gödel metric led famed logician Kurt Gödel to assert that time might itself be a sort of illusion.[4][5] He seems to have been suggesting something along the lines of the block time view in which time does not really "flow" but is just another dimensionlike space, with all events at all times being fixed within this 4-dimensional "block".

The cover of the first novel in the Hitchhiker's series, from a late 1990s printing. Thecover features the 42 Puzzle devised by Douglas Adams.The Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy, a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams, debuted as a radiocomedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978. Since then it has been adapted to other formats, slowly becoming an international multi-media phenomenon over a span of several years. Adaptations have included stage shows, a series of five books first published between 1979 and 1992 (the first of which was titled The Hitchhiker's Guide tothe Galaxy), a 1981 TV series, a 1984 computer game, and three series of three-partcomic book adaptations of the first three novels published by DC Comics between 1993and 1996. There were also two series of towels, produced by Beer-Davies, that areconsidered by some fans to be an "official version" of The Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy, as they include text from the first novel.[1][2] A Hollywood-funded film version, produced and filmed in the UK, was released in April 2005, and adaptations of the lastthree books to radio were broadcast from 2004 to 2005. Many of these adaptations,including the novels, the TV series, the computer game, and the earliest drafts of theHollywood film's screenplay, were all done by Adams himself, and some of the stageshows debuted new material written by Adams.



The title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[3] is often abbreviated as "HHGTTG", (asused on fan websites) or "H2G2" (first used by Neil Gaiman as a chapter title in Don'tPanic and later by the online guide run by the BBC). The series is also often referred to as"The Hitchhiker's Guide", "Hitchhiker's", or simply "[The] Guide." This title can refer toany of the various incarnations of the story of which the books are the most widely

distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005[4]. The title canalso refer to the fictional guidebook The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an eccentricelectronic encyclopedia that features in the series.

Although the various versions follow the same basic plot, they are in many placesmutually contradictory, as Adams rewrote the story substantially for each new adaptation.In all versions, the series follows the adventures of Arthur Dent, a hapless Englishmanwho, with his friend Ford Prefect, an alien from a small planet somewhere in the vicinityof Betelgeuse and researcher for the eponymous guidebook, escapes the demolition of Earth by a bureaucratic alien race called the Vogons. Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford's semi-cousin and part-time Galactic President, unknowingly saves the pair from certain death.

He brings them aboard his stolen spaceship, the Heart of Gold, whose crew rounds outthe main cast of characters: Marvin the Paranoid Android, a depressed robot, and Trillian,formerly known as Tricia McMillan, a woman Arthur once met at a party who he soonrealises is the only other survivor of Earth's destruction. After this, the characters embark on a quest to find the legendary planet of Magrathea and the Question to the UltimateAnswer.

[edit] Origin of The GuideThe first radio series comes from a proposal called 'The Ends of the Earth': six self-contained episodes, all ending with the Earth being destroyed in a different way. Whilewriting the first episode, Adams realised that he needed someone on the planet who wasan alien to provide some context, and that this alien needed a reason to be there. Adamsfinally settled on making the alien a roving researcher for a "wholly remarkable book"named The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As the first radio episode's writing progressed, the Guide became the centre of his story, and he decided to focus the serieson it, with the destruction of Earth being the only hold-over.[5]

Adams claimed that the title came from a 1971 incident while he was hitch-hiking aroundEurope as a young man with a copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe book, and whilelying drunk in a field in Innsbruck with a copy of the book and looking up at the stars,thought it would be a good idea for someone to write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy aswell. However, he later claimed that he had told this story so many times that he hadforgotten the incident itself, and only remembered himself telling the story. His friendsare quoted as saying that Adams mentioned the idea of "hitch-hiking around the galaxy"to them while on holiday in Greece, in 1973.[6]

Adams's fictional Guide is meant to be an electronic guidebook to the Milky Way galaxy,originally published by Megadodo Publications, one of the great publishing houses of Ursa Minor Beta. The narrative of the various versions of the story are frequently punctuated with excerpts from the Guide. The voice of the Guide (Peter Jones in the first



two radio series and TV versions, later William Franklyn in the third, fourth and fifthradio series, and Stephen Fry in the movie version), also provides general narration.

[edit] Original radio series

See also: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series) and The Hitchhiker's Guideto the Galaxy Primary and Secondary PhasesThe first radio series of six episodes (called "Fits" after the names of the sections of Lewis Carroll's nonsense poem The Hunting of the Snark)[7] was broadcast in 1978 onBBC Radio 4. Despite a low-key launch of the series (the first episode was broadcast at10:30 p.m. on Wednesday, 8 March 1978), it received generally good reviews and atremendous audience reaction for radio.[8] A one-off episode (a "Christmas special") was broadcast later in the year. The BBC was in the practice, at the time, of commissioning"Christmas Special" episodes for popular radio series, and while an early draft of thisepisode of The Hitchhiker's Guide had a Christmas-related plotline, it was decided to be"in slightly poor taste" and the episode as transmitted served as a bridge between the two

series.[9] This episode was released as part of the second radio series and, later, TheSecondary Phase on cassettes and CDs. The Primary and Secondary Phases were aired, ina slightly edited version, in the United States on NPR Playhouse.

The first series was repeated twice in 1978 alone and many more times in the next fewyears. This led to an LP re-recording, produced independently of the BBC for sale, and afurther adaptation of the series as a book. A second radio series, which consisted of afurther five episodes, and bringing the total number of episodes to 12, was broadcast in1980.

The radio series (and the LP and TV versions) greatly benefited from the narration of noted comedy actor Peter Jones as The Book. He was cast after it was decided that a"Peter-Jonesy" sort of voice was required. His sonorous, avuncular tones undoubtedlygave the series a tremendous boost and firmly established the tenor of the piece.

The series was also notable for its use of sound, being the first comedy series to be produced in stereo. Adams said that he wanted the programme's production to becomparable to that of a modern rock album. Much of the programme's budget was spenton sound effects, which were largely the work of Paddy Kingsland (for the pilot episodeand the complete second series) and Dick Mills and Harry Parker (for the remainingepisodes (2-6) of the first series.) The fact that they were at the forefront of modern radio production in 1978 and 1980 was reflected when the three new series of Hitchhiker's became some of the first radio shows to be mixed into 5.1 surround sound. This mix wasalso featured on DVD releases of the third radio series.

The theme tune used for the radio, television, LP and film versions is "Journey of theSorcerer", an instrumental piece composed by Bernie Leadon and recorded by The Eagleson their album One of These Nights. Only the transmitted radio series used the originalrecording; a soundalike cover by Tim Souster was used for the LP and TV series, another arrangement by Joby Talbot was used for the 2005 film, and still another arrangement,



this time by Philip Pope, was recorded to be released with the CDs of the last three radioseries. Apparently, Adams chose this song for its futuristic sounding nature, but also for the fact that it had a banjo in it, which, as Geoffrey Perkins recalls, Adams said wouldgive it an "on the road, hitch-hiking feel."[10]

The twelve episodes were released on CD and cassette in 1988, becoming the first CDrelease in the BBC Radio Collection. They were re-released in 1992, and at this timeAdams suggested that they could retitle Fits the First through Sixth as "The PrimaryPhase" and Fits the Seventh through Twelfth as "The Secondary Phase" instead of just"the first series" and "the second series".[11] It was about at this time that a "TertiaryPhase" was first discussed with Dirk Maggs, adapting Life, the Universe and Everything, but this series would not be recorded for another ten years.[12]

[edit] BooksThe books are described as "a trilogy in five parts", having been described as a trilogy onthe release of the third book, and then a "trilogy in four parts" on the release of the fourth

book. The US edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy" on the cover.Subsequent re-releases of the other novels bore the legend "The [first, second, third,fourth] in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy."

The plots of the television and radio series are more or less the same as that of the firsttwo novels, though some of the events occur in a different order and many of the detailsare changed. Much of parts five and six of the radio series were written by John Lloyd, but his material did not make it into the other versions of the story and is not includedhere. Some consider the books' version of events to be definitive, because they are themost readily accessible and widely distributed version of the story. However, they are notthe final version that Adams produced.

It was not truly clear that the series was over (since it was already a trilogy with five books) until Adams died of a heart attack at age 49 in 2001. Indeed, Adams said that thenew novel he was working on, The Salmon of Doubt, was not working as a Dirk Gentlystory, and suggested it might instead become a sixth book in the Hitchhiker's series. Hedescribed Mostly Harmless in an interview as "a very bleak book" and said he "wouldlove to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note". Adams also remarked that if hewere to write a sixth installment, he would at least start with all the characters in the same place.[13]

[edit] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Cover of the original UK paperback edition of the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy.Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (published in 1979), the characters visit thelegendary planet Magrathea, home to the now-collapsed planet building industry, andmeet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of



Norway. Through archival recordings, he relates the story of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer named Deep Thought to calculate theanswer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. When the answer was revealed as 42, they were forced to build a more powerful computer to work outwhat the Ultimate Question actually was, but their plans never come to fruition. (Later

on, referencing this, Adams would create a puzzle which could be approached in multipleways, all yielding the answer 42.)

The computer, often mistaken for a planet (because of its size and use of biologicalcomponents), was the Earth, and was destroyed by Vogons five minutes before theconclusion of its 10-million-year program. Two of the race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, who turn out to be Trillian's mice, want to dissect Arthur's brain tohelp reconstruct the question, since he is the last remaining survivor from Earth at themoment when it was destroyed. Trillian is also human but had left Earth six months previously with Zaphod Beeblebrox. Our protagonists escape, setting course for "TheRestaurant at the End of the Universe". The mice, in Arthur's absence, create a phony

question since it is too troublesome for them to wait 10 million years again just to cash inon a lucrative deal. Their new question was "How many roads must a man walk down?"

The book was adapted from the first four radio episodes. It was first published in 1979,initially in paperback, by Pan Books, after BBC Publishing had turned down the offer of publishing a novelisation, an action they would later regret.[14] The book reachednumber one on the book charts in only its second week, and sold over 250,000 copieswithin three months of its release. A hardback edition was published by Harmony Books,a division of Random House in the United States in October 1980, and the 1981 US paperback edition was promoted by the give-away of 3,000 free copies in the magazineRolling Stone to build word of mouth. To this day, it has sold over 14 million copies.[15]

A photo-illustrated edition of the first novel appeared in 1994.

[edit] The Restaurant at the End of the UniverseIn The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (published in 1980), Zaphod is separatedfrom the others and finds he is part of a conspiracy to uncover who really runs theUniverse. Zaphod meets Zarniwoop, a co-conspirator and editor for The Guide, whoknows where to find the secret ruler. Zaphod becomes briefly reunited with the others for a trip to Milliways, the restaurant of the title. Zaphod and Ford decides to steal a shipfrom there, which turns out to be a stunt ship which is headed for a star as effects in astage show. The main characters get Marvin to run the teleporter they find in the ship,which is working other than having no automatic control, and Marvin seeminglysacrifices himself. Zaphod and Trillian discover that the Universe is in the safe hands of asimple man living on a remote planet in a wooden shack with his cat.

Ford and Arthur, meanwhile, end up on a spacecraft full of the outcasts of theGolgafrinchan civilisation. The ship crashes on prehistoric Earth; Ford and Arthur arestranded, and it becomes clear that the inept Golgafrinchans are the ancestors of modern



humans, having displaced the Earth's indigenous hominids. This has disrupted the Earth's programming so that when Ford and Arthur manage to extract the final readout fromArthur's subconscious mind by pulling lettered tiles from a Scrabble set, it is "What doyou get if you multiply six by nine?" Arthur then comments, "I've always said there wassomething fundamentally wrong with the universe."

The book was adapted from the remaining material in the radio series — covering fromthe fifth episode to the twelfth episode, although the ordering was greatly changed (in particular, the events of Fit the Sixth, with Ford and Arthur being stranded on pre-historicearth, end the book, and their rescue in Fit the Seventh is deleted), and most of theBrontitall incident was omitted. Instead of the Haggunenon sequence, co-written by JohnLloyd, the Disaster Area stuntship was substituted — this having first been introduced inthe LP version.

[edit] Life, the Universe and Everything

In Life, the Universe and Everything (published in 1982), Ford and Arthur travel throughthe space-time continuum from prehistoric Earth to Lord's Cricket Ground. There theyrun into Slartibartfast, who enlists their aid in preventing galactic war. Long ago, the people of Krikkit attempted to wipe out all life in the Universe, but they were stoppedand imprisoned on their home planet; now they are poised to escape. With the help of Marvin, Zaphod and Trillian, our heroes prevent the destruction of life in the Universeand go their separate ways.

This was the first Hitchhiker's book originally written as a book and not adapted fromradio. Its story was based on a treatment Adams had written for a Doctor Who movie,[16]with the Doctor role being split between Slartibartfast (to begin with), and later Trillianand Arthur. In 2004 it was adapted for radio as the Tertiary Phase of the radio series.

[edit] So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish The front cover of The Hitchhiker's Quartet, a collection of the first four books in theseries, published in the United States by Harmony Books in 1986.In So Long, andThanks for All the Fish (published in 1984), Arthur returns home to Earth, rather surprisingly since it was destroyed when he left. He meets and falls in love with a girlnamed Fenchurch, and discovers this Earth is a replacement provided by the dolphins intheir Save the Humans campaign. Eventually he rejoins Ford, who claims to have savedthe Universe in the meantime, to hitch-hike one last time and see God's Final Message toHis Creation. Along the way, they are joined by Marvin the Paranoid Android, who,although 37 times older than the universe itself (what with time travel and all), has justenough power left in his failing body to read the message and feel better about it all before expiring.



This was the first Hitchhiker's novel which was not an adaptation of any previouslywritten story or script. In 2005 it was adapted for radio as the Quandary Phase of theradio series.

[edit] Mostly Harmless The front cover of The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, a collection of all five books in theseries, a leatherbound volume published in the United States by Portland House, adivision of Random House, in 1997.Finally, in Mostly Harmless (published in 1992),Vogons take over The Hitchhiker's Guide (under the name of InfiniDim Enterprises), tofinish, once and for all, the task of obliterating the Earth. After abruptly losing Fenchurchand travelling around the galaxy despondently, Arthur's spaceship crashes on the planetLamuella, where he settles in happily as the official sandwich-maker for a small villageof simple, peaceful people. Meanwhile, Ford Prefect breaks into The Guide's offices, getshimself an infinite expense account from the computer system, and then meets The

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Mark II, an artificially intelligent, multi-dimensionalguide with vast power and a hidden purpose. After he declines this dangerously powerfulmachine's aid (which he receives anyway), he sends it to Arthur Dent for safety ("Oh yes,whose?" — Arthur).

Trillian uses DNA that Arthur donated for travelling money to have a daughter, and whenshe goes to cover a war, she leaves her daughter Random Frequent Flyer Dent withArthur. Random, a more-than-typically troubled teenager, steals The Guide Mark II anduses it to get to Earth. Arthur, Ford, Trillian, and Tricia McMillan (Trillian in thisalternate universe) follow her to a crowded club, where an anguished Random tries to killher father. The shot misses Arthur and kills a man (the ever-unfortunate Agrajag).Immediately afterwards, The Guide Mark II causes the removal of all possible Earthsfrom probability. All of the main characters, save Zaphod, were on Earth at the time andare apparently killed, bringing a good deal of satisfaction to the Vogons.

In 2005 it was adapted for radio as the Quintessential Phase of the radio series, with thefinal episode first transmitted on 21 June 2005.

[edit] Other booksDouglas Adams and Geoffrey Perkins collaborated on The Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy: The Original Radio Scripts, first published in the United Kingdom and UnitedStates in 1985. A tenth anniversary edition was printed in 1995, and a twenty-fifthanniversary edition was printed in 2003.

A short story was also written, Young Zaphod Plays it Safe. This story first appeared inThe Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book a special large print compilationof different stories and pictures which raised money for the new (at the time) ComicRelief charity in the UK. It now appears in some of the omnibus editions of the trilogy,and in The Salmon of Doubt. It is almost, but not quite, entirely unrelated to the rest of



the trilogy. There are two versions of this story, one of which is slightly more explicit inits already heavy-handed political commentary.

A novel, Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic written by Terry Jones, is based on Adams'computer game of the same name, which in turn is based on an idea from Life, the

Universe and Everything.

Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, a character from Life, the Universe and Everything,also appears in a short story by Adams titled The Private Life of Genghis Khan whichappears in some early editions of The Salmon of Doubt.

For some information on understanding the philosophy of the Guide, or Douglas Adams'sinfluence on technology, see The Anthology at the End of the Universe, a series of essaysedited by Glenn Yeffeth, published in 2005.

Michael Hanlon published The Science of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 2005.

Topics include space tourism, parallel universes, instant translation devices and sentientcomputers.

Dirk Maggs, who adapted and dramatised the last three novels for radio, released acollection of their scripts in July 2005, with Maggs providing notes for each episode. Thissecond radio script book is entitled The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts:The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases. Douglas Adams gets the primarywriter's credit (as he wrote the original novels), and there is a foreword by Simon Jones,introductions by Bruce Hyman and Dirk Maggs, and other introductory notes from other members of the cast.

[edit] TV series Opening titles from the TV seriesMain article: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TVseries)The popularity of the radio series gave rise to a six-episode television series, directed and produced by Alan J W Bell, which first aired on BBC Two in January and February of 1981. It employed many of the actors from the radio series and was based mainly on theradio versions of Fits the First through Sixth. A second series was at one point planned,with a storyline, according to Alan Bell and Mark Wing-Davey, that would have comefrom Adams's abandoned Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen project (instead of simplymaking a TV version of the second radio series). However, Adams got into disputes withthe BBC (accounts differ: problems with budget, scripts, and having Alan Bell and/or Geoffrey Perkins involved are all offered as causes), and the second series was never made. The elements of the Doctor Who and the Krikketmen project instead became thethird novel, Life, the Universe and Everything.

The main cast was the same as the original radio series, except for David Dixon as FordPrefect instead of McGivern, and Sandra Dickinson as Trillian instead of Sheridan.



[edit] Other television appearancesSegments of several of the books were adapted as part of the BBC's "Big Read" surveyand programme, broadcast in late 2003. The film directed by Deep Sehgal starred

Sanjeev Bhaskar as Arthur Dent, alongside Stephen Hawking as Deep Thought and a hostof British alternative comedians influenced by the work of Douglas Adams.[citationneeded]

[edit] Radio series three to fiveMain article: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary to Quintessential PhasesOn 21 June 2004, the BBC announced in a press release[17] that a new series of Hitchhiker's based on the third novel would be broadcast as part of its autumn schedule, produced by Above the Title Productions Ltd. The episodes were recorded in late 2003, but actual transmission was delayed while an agreement was reached with The Walt

Disney Company over Internet re-broadcasts, as Disney had begun pre-production on thefilm.[18] This was followed by news that further series would be produced based on thefourth and fifth novels. These were broadcast in September and October 2004 and Mayand June 2005. CD releases accompanied the transmission of the final episode in eachseries.

The adaptation of the third novel followed the book very closely, which caused major structural issues in branching with the preceding radio series in comparison to the secondnovel. Because events in the second novel were written in a different order from thesecond radio series and several events were omitted, the two series split in completelydifferent directions. The last two adaptations vary somewhat — some events in MostlyHarmless are now foreshadowed in the adaptation of So Long and Thanks For All TheFish, while both include some additional material that builds on incidents in the thirdseries to tie all five (and their divergent plotlines) together, most especially including thecharacter Zaphod more prominently in the final chapters and addressing his altered realityto include the events of the Secondary Phase. While Mostly Harmless originallycontained a rather bleak ending, Dirk Maggs created a different ending for the transmittedradio version, ending it on a much more upbeat note, reuniting the cast one last time.

The core cast for the third through fifth radio series remained the same, except for thereplacement of Peter Jones by William Franklyn as the Book, and Richard Vernon byRichard Griffiths as Slartibartfast, since both had died. Sandra Dickinson, who playedTrillian in the TV series, here played Tricia McMillan, an English born, Americanaccented alternate-universe version of Trillian, while David Dixon, the television series'Ford Prefect, made a cameo appearance as the "Ecological Man". Jane Horrocksappeared in the new semi-regular role of Fenchurch, and Samantha Béart joined in thefinal series as Arthur and Trillian's daughter, Random. Also reprising their roles from theoriginal radio series were Jonathan Pryce as Zarniwoop (here blended with a character from the final novel to become Zarniwoop Vann Harl), Rula Lenska as Lintilla (and also



as the Voice of the Bird), and Roy Hudd as Milliways compere Max Quordlepleen, aswell as the original radio series' announcer, John Marsh.

The series also featured guest appearances by such noted personalities as Joanna Lumleyas the Sydney Opera House Woman, Jackie Mason as the East River Creature, Miriam

Margolyes as the Smelly Photocopier Woman, BBC Radio cricket legends Henry Blofeldand Fred Trueman as themselves, June Whitfield as the Raffle Woman, Leslie Phillips asHactar, Saeed Jaffrey as the Man on the Pole, Sir Patrick Moore as himself, and ChristianSlater as Wonko the Sane. Finally, Adams himself played the role of Agrajag... a performance adapted from his book-on-tape reading of the third novel, and edited into theseries he created some time after the author's death.

[edit] FilmMain article: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (film) Theatrical poster for the film of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.After years of

setbacks and renewed efforts to start production and a quarter of a century after the first book was published, the big-screen adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxywas finally shot. Pre-production began in 2003, filming began on 19 April 2004 and post- production began in early September of 2004.[19] After a London premiere on 20 April2005, it was released on 28 April in the UK and Australia, 29 April in the United Statesand Canada, and 29 July in South Africa. (A full list of release dates is available at theIMDb.[20]) The movie stars Martin Freeman as Arthur, Mos Def as Ford, Sam Rockwellas President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and Zooey Deschanel as Trillian, withAlan Rickman providing the voice of Marvin the Paranoid Android (and Warwick Davisacting in Marvin's costume), and Stephen Fry as the voice of the Guide/Narrator.

The plot of the film adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide differs widely from that of the radioshow, book and television series. A romantic triangle is introduced between Arthur,Zaphod, and Trillian; and visits to Vogsphere, the homeworld of the Vogons (in the books it was already abandoned), and Viltvodle VI are inserted. The film covers roughlyevents in the first four radio episodes, and ends with the characters en route to theRestaurant at the End of the Universe, leaving the opportunity for a sequel open.

Reactions to the film were mixed,[21] both within and outside fandom. Some fans feltessential elements of the humour and philosophy had been lost in the adaptation, and theintroduction of a romantic subplot was an unnecessary Hollywoodism, whereas criticismfrom some reviewers held that the film had good intentions but the pacing was problematic. It is therefore considered by many that the humour and philosophy elementswere purposefully slanted more towards the American market and to work within theconfines of a roughly two hour film, and hence, the story was reworked by Adams assuch. Commercially the film was a modest success, taking $21 million in its openingweekend in the United States, and nearly £3.3 million in its opening weekend in theUnited Kingdom.[22]



The film was released on DVD (Region 2, PAL) in the UK on 5 September 2005. Both astandard double disc edition and a UK-exclusive numbered limited edition "Giftpack"were released on this date. The "Giftpack" edition includes a copy of the novel with a"movie tie-in" cover, and collectible prints from the film, packaged in a replica of thefilm's version of the Hitchhiker's Guide prop. A single disc widescreen or full-screen

edition (Region 1, NTSC) were made available in the USA and Canada on 13 September 2005. Single disc releases in the UMD format for the PlayStation Portable were alsoreleased on the respective dates in these three countries.

[edit] Other adaptations The front covers of the LP record adaptations of the first radio series, as released in theUK.Hitchhiker's has also appeared as a stage show, three LP albums with condensed (andslightly contradictory) versions of the first six radio episodes, a text-only adventurecomputer game, and three series of comic books (with a set of collectors' cards spun off

containing art from and inspired by, the first set of comics).

[edit] Stage showsThere have been multiple professional and amateur stage adaptations of The Hitchhiker'sGuide to the Galaxy. There were three early professional productions, which were stagedin 1979 and 1980.[23][24]

The first of these was performed at the Institute for Contemporary Arts in London, between 1st-9 May 1979, starring Chris Langham as Arthur Dent (Langham later returned to Hitchhiker's as Prak in the final episode of 2004's Tertiary Phase). This showwas adapted from the first series' scripts and was directed by Ken Campbell, who went onto perform a character in the final episode of the second radio series. The show ran 90minutes, but had an audience limited to eighty people per night. Actors performed on avariety of ledges and platforms, and the audience was pushed around in a hovercar,1/2000th of an inch above the floor. This was the first time that Zaphod was represented by having two actors in one large costume. The narration of "The Book" was split between two usherettes, an adaptation that has appeared in no other version of H2G2.One of these usherettes, Cindy Oswin, went on to voice Trillian for the LP adaptation.

The second stage show was performed throughout Wales between 15 January and 23February 1980. This was a production of Clwyd Theatr Cymru, and was directed byJonathan Petherbridge. The company performed adaptations of complete radio episodes,at times doing two episodes in a night, and at other times doing all six episodes of thefirst series in single three hour sessions. This adaptation was performed again at theOxford Playhouse in December 1981 and also at the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry in July1983.

The third, and least successful stage show was held at the Rainbow Theatre in London, inJuly 1980. This was the second production directed by Ken Campbell. The Rainbow



Theatre had been adapted for stagings of rock operas in the 1970s, and both reference books mentioned in footnotes indicate that this, coupled with incidental music throughoutthe performance, caused some reviewers to label it as a "musical". This was the firstadaptation for which Adams wrote the "Dish of the Day" sequence. The production ranfor over three hours, and was widely panned for this, as well as the music, laser effects,

and the acting. Despite attempts to shorten the script, and make other changes, it closedthree or four weeks early (accounts differ), and lost a lot of money. Despite the badreviews, there were at least two stand out performances: Michael Cule and David Learner both went on from this production to appearances in the TV adaptation.

Future stage production rights got tied up with the rights to make the film, though variousamateur adaptations appeared worldwide at least up to 2004.

[edit] LP album adaptations

The front covers of the US cassette releases of the audio adaptations of the first radioseries. These are slightly abridged versions of the original LP editions, with a couple of scenes cut for timing.The first four radio episodes were adapted for a new double LP,also entitled The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, first by mail-order only, and later intostores. The double LP and its sequel were originally released by Original Records in theUnited Kingdom, in 1979 and 1980 with the catalogue numbers ORA042 and ORA054respectively. They were first released by Hannibal Records in 1982 (as HNBL 2301 andHNBL 1307, respectively) in the United States and Canada, and later re-released in aslightly abridged edition by Simon & Schuster's Audioworks in the mid-1980s.

Hitchhiker's theme, Journey of the Sorcerer, Original Records version excerpt (file info) — play in browser (beta)Problems listening to the file? See media help.The script in the first double LP very closely follows the first four radio episodes,although further cuts had to be made for reasons of timing. Despite this, other lines of dialogue that were indicated as having been cut when the original scripts from the radioseries were eventually published can be heard in the LP version. The Simon & Schuster cassettes omit the Veet Voojagig narration, the cheerleader's speech as Deep Thoughtconcludes its seven-and-one-half million year programme, and a few other lines from both sides of the second LP of the set.

Most of the original cast returned, except for Susan Sheridan, who was recording a voicefor the character of Princess Eilonwy in The Black Cauldron for Walt Disney Pictures.Cindy Oswin voiced Trillian on all three LPs in her place. Other casting changes in thefirst double LP included Stephen Moore taking on the additional role of the barman, andValentine Dyall as the voice of Deep Thought. Adams' voice can be heard making thePublic Address announcements on Magrathea.

Due to copyrights, the music used during the first radio series was either replaced, or inthe case of the title, it was re-recorded in a new arrangement. Composer Tim Souster did



both duties, and his version of the theme was the version also used for the eventualtelevision series.[25]

The sequel LP was released, singly, as The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Part Two:The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in the UK, and simply as The Restaurant at the

End of the Universe in the USA. The script here mostly follows Fit the Fifth and Fit theSixth, but includes a song by the backup band in the restaurant ("Reg Nullify and hisCataclysmic Combo"), and changes the Haggunenon sequence to "Disaster Area".

Reg Nullify and his Cataclysmic Combo excerpt (file info) — play in browser (beta)Problems listening to the file? See media help.Due to a misunderstanding, the second record was released before being cut down in a"final edit" that Douglas Adams and Geoffrey Perkins both had intended to make. Perkinshas said, "[I]t is far too long on each side. It's just a rough cut. [...] I felt it was flabby, andI wanted to speed it up."[26] The Simon & Schuster Audioworks re-release of this LPwas also abridged slightly from its original release. The scene with Ford Prefect and

Hotblack Desiato's bodyguard is omitted.

Sales for the first double-LP release were primarily through mail order. Total salesreached over 60,000 units, with half of those being mail order, and the other half throughretail outlets.[27] This is in spite of the facts that Original Records' warehouse orderedand stocked more copies than they were actually selling for quite some time, and thatPaul Neil Milne Johnstone complained about his name and then-current address beingincluded in the recording.[28] This was corrected for a later pressing of the double-LP by"cut[ting] up that part of the master tape and reassembl[ing] it in the wrong order".[29]The second LP release ("Part Two") also only sold a total of 60,000 units in the UK.[30]The distribution deals for the USA and Canada with Hannibal Records and Simon andSchuster were later negotiated by Douglas Adams and his agent, Ed Victor, after gainingfull rights to the recordings from Original Records, which went bankrupt.[31]

[edit] Interactive fiction and video gamesMain article: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (computer game)Sometime between 1982 and 1984 (accounts differ) the British company Supersoft published a text-based adventure game based on the book, which was released in versionsfor the Commodore PET and Commodore 64. One account states that there was a disputeas to whether valid permission for publication had been granted, and following legalaction the game was withdrawn and all remaining copies were destroyed. Another account states that the programmer, Bob Chappell, rewrote the game to remove allHitchhiker's references, and republished it as "Cosmic Capers".[32]

Officially, the TV series was followed in 1984 by a best-selling "interactive fiction", or text-based adventure game, distributed by Infocom. It was designed by Adams andInfocom regular Steve Meretzky and was one of Infocom's most successful games. Aswith many Infocom games, the box contained a number of "feelies" including a "Don't panic" badge, some "pocket fluff", a pair of peril-sensitive sunglasses, an order for the



destruction of the Earth, a small, clear plastic bag containing "a microscopic battle fleet"and an order for the destruction of Arthur Dent's house (signed by Adams and Meretzky).

In September 2004 it was revived by the BBC on the Hitchhiker's section of the Radio 4website for the initial broadcast of the Tertiary Phase, and is still available to play online.

[33][34] This new version uses an original Infocom datafile with a custom-writteninterpreter, by Sean Sollé, and Flash programming by Shimon Young, both of whom usedto work at The Digital Village (TDV). The new version includes illustrations by RodLord, who was head of Pearce Animation Studios in 1980, which produced the guidegraphics for the TV series. On 2 March 2005 it won the Interactive BAFTA in the "bestonline entertainment" category.

A sequel to the original Infocom game was never made. An all new, fully graphicalgame, was designed and developed by a joint venture between The Digital Village andPAN Interactive (no connection to Pan Books/Pan Mcmillan).[35][36] This new gamewas planned and developed between 1998 and 2002, but like the sequel to the Infocom

game, it also never materialised.[37] In April 2005 Starwave Mobile released two mobilegames to accompany the release of the film adaptation. The first, developed by Atatio,was called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Vogon Planet Destructor".[38] It was atypical top-down shooter and except for the title had little to do with the actual story. Thesecond game, developed by TKO Software, was a graphical adventure game named "TheHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Adventure Game".[39] Despite its name the newlydesigned puzzles by Sean Sollé were different from the Infocom ones, and the gamefollowed the movie's script closely and included the new characters and places. The"Adventure Game" won the IGN's "Editors' Choice Award" on May 2005.

[edit] Comic books The front cover of the DC Comics adaptation of the first book.In 1993, DC Comics, inconjunction with Byron Preiss Visual Media, published a three part comic book adaptation of the novelisation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. This wasfollowed up with three part adaptations of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe in1994, and Life, the Universe and Everything in 1996. There was also a series of collectors' cards with art from and inspired by the comic adaptations of the first book, anda graphic novelisation (or "collected edition") combining the three individual comic books from 1993, itself released in May 1997.

[edit] "Hitch-Hikeriana"Many merchandising and spin-off items (or "Hitch-Hikeriana") were produced in theearly 1980s, including towels in different colours, all bearing the Guide entry for towels.Later runs of towels include those made for promotions by Pan Books, TouchstonePictures/Disney for the 2005 movie, and different towels made for ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha,the official Hitchhiker's Appreciation society.[2] Another item that first appeared in themid-1980s were t-shirts made for Infocom (such as one bearing the legend "I got the



Babel Fish" for successfully completing one of that game's most difficult puzzles). Other official items have included "Beeblebears" (teddy bears with an extra head and arm,named after Hitchhiker's character Zaphod Beeblebrox, sold by the official AppreciationSociety), an assortment of pin-on buttons and a number of novelty singles. Many of theabove items are displayed throughout the 2004 "25th Anniversary Illustrated Edition" of

the novel, which used items from the personal collections of fans of the series.

Stephen Moore recorded two of the novelty singles in character as Marvin the ParanoidAndroid: "Marvin"/"Metal Man" and "Reasons To Be Miserable"/"Marvin, I Love You".The last song has appeared on a Dr. Demento compilation. There was also another singlefeaturing the re-recorded "Journey of the Sorcerer" (arranged by Tim Souster) on side Awith "Reg Nullify In Concert" by Reg Nullify, and "Only the End of the World Again" byDisaster Area (including Douglas Adams on bass guitar). These discs have since becomecollector's items.

The 2005 movie also added quite a few collectibles, mostly through the National

Entertainment Collectibles Association. These included three prop replicas of objectsseen on the Vogon ship and homeworld (a mug, a pen and a stapler), sets of "actionfigures" with a height of either 3 or 6 inches, a gun, based on a prop used by Marvin theParanoid Android that shoots foam darts, a crystal cube, shot glasses, a ten inch highversion of Marvin with eyes that light up green, and "yarn doll" versions of Arthur Dent,Ford Prefect, Trillian, Marvin and Zaphod Beeblebrox. Also, various audio tracks werereleased to coincide with the movie, notably re-recordings of "Marvin" and "Reasons to be Miserable", sung by Stephen Fry, along with some of the "Guide Entries", newlywritten material read in-character by Fry.

[edit] The origin of the towel joke Douglas Adams with an officially licensed Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy towel on hisshoulder.The full version of this story was first found in The Hitchhiker's Guide to theGalaxy: The Original Radio Scripts and reprised in The Salmon of Doubt, but the shortversion is as follows: Adams had gone on holiday in Greece, but every time he haddecided to go to the beach with his fellows, he discovered that his towel would disappear,and could only be found after hours of searching.

After the holiday had ended, he decided that anyone who really had their life in order would "know where his towel is". He had no idea that this towel joke, which firstappeared in the seventh radio episode, and subsequently in the first book, would catch onso brilliantly.

He assumed, after learning that so many people liked and understood the joke, that hewas not the only one with such an experience. After his death, Towel Day wasestablished on May 25 as a tribute.



[edit] Cultural referencesMain article: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy cultural referencesReferences to the series can be seen on websites, within TV and radio programmes,songs, and in console and computer games. Examples include borrowing Adams'scharacters' names, or references to the number 42, or other catchphrases, or even reusing

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to ..." to title other books and articles (which Adams himself had borrowed from Ken Welsh's Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe). Hitchhiker's references havealso appeared in several series and episodes of another famous British science fictionseries with which Adams was once affiliated: Doctor Who. The online Babel Fishtranslation service was also named in honour of a fictional creature that Adams createdfor the Hitchhiker's series. Also, the instant message program, Trillian is named after acharacter in Hitchhiker's series.

[edit] International phenomenonMain article: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as international phenomenon

Many science fiction fans and radio listeners outside the United Kingdom were firstexposed to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in one of two ways: shortwave radio broadcasts of the original radio series, or by Douglas Adams being "Guest of Honour" atthe 1979 World Science Fiction Convention, Seacon, held in Brighton, England, UK. Itwas there that the radio series was nominated for a Hugo Award (the first radio series toreceive a nomination) but lost to Superman: The Movie. A convention exclusively for H2G2, Hitchercon I, was held in Glasgow, Scotland, UK, in September 1980, the year that the official fan club, ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, was organised. In the early 1980s, versionsof H2G2 became available in the United States, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Swedenand Finland.

During the 1990s, as Hitchhiker's fans appeared on the Internet, many took notice first of Douglas Adams's USENET newsgroup, and then his website. After the latter was closedfollowing Adams's death, many fan websites and forums appeared on the World WideWeb to provide fans with another discussion venue.

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