feeling listless

Books The Illustrated Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. Published in 1994.

This edition of The Guide was published at time when a film was looking increasing unlikely, and an extra impetuous was perhaps required for the story within the market place. The premise is simple. Re-imagine the novel as a photographic picture book, scenes depicted without being handstrung by budget or casting.

At first glance it’s hard to imagine that the entire novel has been reproduced within its ninety-four pages. But upon reading everything is there, no guide entry lost, no dialogue guides omitted. This is the British version of The Book in all of it’s glory. But you can look elsewhere for a review of the text.

The actual format of the book resembles a magazine. There are box-outs highlighting famous quotes, the text appears in two columns, and the first sentence of each chapter is in big bold letters and underlined. In fact, in many ways this could be an up-to-date version of a medieval manuscript.

The quality of the images, is where the book flies. It would have been quite simple to recreate or re-stage scenes from the already deeply familiar tv series. But Douglas stated that he was never happy with some sections of that work, his ideas never quite being possible on the kind of BBC budget akin to Doctor Who.

Instead, everything changes, and in some cases this may even be for the better. At the time the book was produced, Simon Jones, everyone’s idea of Arthur Dent was still young enough to be imagined in the role. He was still perfect in the ‘making of’ spin-off video and in his work for ‘The South Bank Show’. So it’s somewhat disconcerting to find the earthman played by – Jonathan Lermit, perhaps because in this dressing gown he looks as much Dent-like as Jones did, particularly in the opening shot of Arthur shaving and noticing the bulldozer in his front garden.

Tom Finnis’s Ford Prefect (unlike David Dixon) is not as effecting, but does have a particularly moody shot, looking startled at a Babel Fish. The new Zaphod Beeblebrox (Francis Johnson) is dazzling and perhaps the most prominent of the four characters, the designers obviously pleased with themselves because they managed to get the two heads on both shoulders (and not the lump Mark Wing-Davy was saddled with on TV). Trillian is the oddest change. From the sloan of radio’s Sheila Hancock, to the American madness of Sandra Dickinson, we have someone called Tali, who looks unnervingly like Kim Wilde as though she’d followed Madonna’s lead in fashion during the ‘Like a Virgin’ era.

Of the other ‘actors’, we have a particularly gruesome Prosser imagined as Alexander The Great; Marvin becomes a skeletal wreck of over design and sadness; the Vogon Captain reminds me too much of Gilbert The Alien from kids tv show ‘Get Fresh’; Douglas himself appears as one of the space policeman hunting for Zaphod.

All of this is a shock to the system, until one realises that the designers are quite rightly attempting to reflect the prose of the radio show and not the tv. We assume Trillian would look like Sheila Hancock, because that is the voice we here. Actually Tali seems closer to the mark, given the girl’s recent studentship. Making Zaphod black just makes him cooler.

Amongst these scenes, with find the various guide entries, imagined in actuality – the towel, the Babel fish, the Earth (hamless). If these seem less successful, it’s because the tv guide was so vivid and as we might imagine The Book would look. There is also a feeling that these images have to be there, although only vague thought has gone into them.

The things missing are the sounds. And Peter Jones.

Hitchhiker’s collectors will probably have bought this book anyway, and if they haven’t they should hunt it out. If you’re more of a casual fan see if your library has it, at least so that you can revel in the glowing dust cover, which underneath (by the way) does indeed have the words ‘Don’t Panic’ in big friendly letters.

[Updated ... 10/09/2003 ... this was the review referred to in the post below ... just to keep things nice and tidy]