I've heard that it's good as a radio play, but I've never listened to it. I should get round to it some time.....
It is worth it, that was how it was intended. It didn't translate well to TV. It is such an iconic series though Arthur Dent, babel fish, number 42 have become part of everyday conversation which is fun.
Trillian for the lame reason she is a girl and had great hair in the TV show. Random Frequent Flyer Dent just for having the greatest name in fiction after Scunner Campbell from Supergran.
I absolutely love Hitchhiker's Guide. Douglass Adams is my hero. "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they pass by." The only issue I had was the final book he wrote. Too serious compared to the rest of the "Trilogy".
Seconded; the radio series is by far the best version, with the books coming in a good second. The TV series, stage play and film all had problems, partly because Adams threw in a few throwaway gags that depended on the listener not being able to see what was happening ("He only had one head then, and two arms...") that caused more problems in visual media than the gags were worth.
Douglas Adams was a true genius. I enjoyed all the saga, except for the last book that in my country was edited as a simple collection of the last fragments of his writings.
I loved this. My dad introduced me to it, via the radio plays (on cassette) used to play them in the car on long journeys. Love loved loved it, very funny. My favourite characters were, Ford, and Marvin the paranoid android.... We too used to use random words or phrases in everyday life, that people around us who had never read or listened to it, had no idea what we were going on about, good times. ooh ooh, and the guy who designed Norway, with all the fjords and fiddley bits.
I wasn't aware that there was more than one book. :O I just finished the first one last week. Not was I was expecting, but great stuff anyway. Dunno who was my favorite character, because I thought they were all pretty great. But maybe Zaphod? I found him really interesting.
I love the humor in these books. Some of the offhand conversations are great, and well written to boot.
I was too young to understand a lot of the jokes the first time I read the series. I revisited it a few years ago and had a laugh. I did notice a slip in the quality of the story telling in the latter books, but a good series nonetheless.
I did them in reverse order. First I watched the movie with Martin Freeman and Zooey Deschanel, then I saw the BBC series, then I read the book. Oddly enough I don't have a favourite of the three; I love them all for different reasons.
I read the first three books back in high school, and later saw the miniseries as well as the latest movie adaptation. I reread the first book a couple of years ago while procrastinating on schoolwork. I don't remember many details, but I do remember laughing constantly. Great books. Are the last two worth reading?
If I were you, I'd try to get hold of the BBC Radio 4 adaptations. For me, they're truer to the original tone of the series than the books are. Much as I love hitch-hiking the galaxy (having re-read the first one again this week because I wanted to read something light that I knew I'd enjoy), books four and five just don't quite have it.
I've read book one and book two. Besides Catch 22, I haven't read fiction as funny as HGTTG. The jokes are so good you want to commit them to memory as you read them. "Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big mistake in coming down from the trees in the first place. And some said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans."
Im a huge fan of this series with book 2 taking the cake. My favorite character, sadly, is Marvin. I use the adjective sadly because I can relate to some of the every day depressions he experiences. My other favorite character is the story teller himself when he explains the world or how a whale coming into existence experiences the world. One of the best passages in any book is when he explains the cloaking device "somebody else's problem."
