Showing results by author "Douglas Adams" in All Categories

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with.

In consequence of a number of stunning catastrophes, Arthur Dent is surprised to find himself living in a hideously miserable cave on prehistoric Earth. However, just as he thinks that things cannot get possibly worse, they suddenly do. He discovers that the Galaxy is not only mind-boggingly big and bewildering but also that most of the things that happen in it are staggeringly unfair.

When Earthman Arthur Dent learns that first his house and then his planet are about to be bulldozed, it’s the beginning of an interplanetary adventure for him and his friend, Ford Prefect. After fleeing Earth they hitch a lift with hoopy frood Zaphod Beeblebrox, who hurtles from one improbability to another - literally. With Trillian and Marvin the Paranoid Android in tow, the answer to life, the universe and everything is soon revealed: 42. But what was the question?

What do a dead cat, a computer whiz-kid, an electric monk who believes the world is pink, quantum mechanics, a chronologist over 200 years old, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (poet) and pizza have in common? Apparently not much, until Dirk Gently, self-styled private investigator, sets out to prove the fundamental interconnectedness of all things by solving a mysterious murder, assisting a mysterious professor, unravelling a mysterious mystery and eating a lot of pizza - not to mention saving the entire human race from extinction along the way (at no extra charge).

A dynamic remastering of the original BBC Radio 4 full-cast serial - Fit the First to Fit the Sixth - which spawned a phenomenal hitchhiking legend. The original series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, remastered by Dirk Maggs (director of the Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases) to give a full, vibrant sound, now with Philip Pope’s version of the familiar theme tune and specially re-recorded announcements by John Marsh.

Arthur Dent hadn't had a day as bad as this since the Earth had been blown up. Depressed and alone, Arthur finally settles on the small planet Lamuella and becomes a sandwich maker. Looking forward to a quiet life, his plans are thrown awry by the unexpected arrival of his daughter. There’s nothing worse than a frustrated teenager with a copy of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy in their hands. When she runs away, Arthur goes after her determined to save her from the horrors of the universe. After all - he’s encountered most of them before.… Volume Five in the Trilogy of Five.

In this book, Adams’ self-proclaimed favourite of his own works, the pair encounter animals in imminent peril: the giant Komodo dragon of Indonesia, the lovable kakapo of New Zealand, the blind river dolphins of China, the white rhinos of Zaire, the rare birds of Mauritius island in the Indian Ocean and the alien-like aye-aye of Madagascar. Inimitably witty and poignant, Last Chance to See is both a celebration of our most extraordinary creatures and a warning about what we have to lose if we do not act soon.

There is a knack to flying. The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss. It’s not an easy thing to do and Arthur Dent thinks he’s the only human who’s been able to master this nifty little trick - until he meets Fenchurch, the girl of his dreams. Fenchurch knows how the world could be made a good and happy place. Unfortunately she’s forgotten. Convinced that the secret lies within God’s Final Message to His Creation they go in search of it. And in a dramatic break with tradition - actually find it....

If you’ve done six impossible things this morning, why not round it off with breakfast at Milliways, the Restaurant at the End of the Universe? Which is exactly what the crew of the Heart of Gold plan to do. There’s just the small matter of escaping the Vogons, avoiding being taken to the most totally evil world in the Galaxy and teaching a space ship how to make a proper cup of tea. And did anyone actually make a reservation?

When a passenger check-in desk at Terminal Two, Heathrow Airport, shot up through the roof engulfed in a ball of orange flame, the usual people tried to claim responsibility. First the IRA, then the PLO and the Gas Board. Even British Nuclear Fuels rushed out a statement to the effect that the situation was completely under control, that it was a one-in-a-million chance, that there was hardly any radioactive leakage at all and that the site of the explosion would make a nice location for a day out with the kids and a picnic.

The complete BBC Radio collection bringing together two full-cast dramatisations of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently novels. In Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency Dirk Gently has an unshakable belief in the interconnectedness of all things, but his Holistic Detective Agency mainly succeeds in tracking down missing cats for old ladies. Then Dirk stumbles upon an old friend behaving bizarrely - and he's drawn into a four-billion-year-old mystery that must be solved if the human race is to avoid immediate extinction....

This sublime collection dips into the wit and wisdom of the man behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, uncovering his unique comic musings on everything from his school-trousers to malt whisky and from the letter Y through to his own nose, via atheism, hangovers and fried eggs. These hilarious collected writings reveal the warmth, enthusiasm and ferocious intelligence behind this most English of comic writers; a man who was virtually an unofficial member of the Monty Python team.

Don’t panic! The Hitchhiker’s saga returns once again with a full-cast dramatisation of So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, the fourth book in Douglas Adams’s famous ‘trilogy in five parts’. The Earth has miraculously reappeared and, even more miraculously, Arthur Dent has found it. Returning to his cottage after...well...ages, he falls in love with the girl of his dreams. But Ford Prefect is on to something which might well burst Arthur’s bubble.

Stranded on prehistoric Earth, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect find escape in the form of a time-travelling sofa. But as eleven homicidal, bat-wielding robots proceed to blow up Lord’s Cricket Ground, it seems that Arthur is far from Home and Dry. In fact, he is not even Home and Vigorously Towelling Himself. Off. Soon he is on an explosive quest to save the Universe, equipped with only a rabbit bone, a worn dressing gown, and a spaceship which looks remarkably like an Italian bistro.

Stranded on Prehistoric Earth since the end of the first series, Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect are once again trying to hitch their way off the planet. Zaphod finds his visit to the offices of the Guide rudely interrupted by Frogstar fighters, who further threaten to feed him to the Total Perspective Vortex. Eventually reunited, the three fetch up on the planet Brontitall and discover the indigenous species in something of a flap. Arthur meets Lintilla (several of her), Marvin gets to be a hero once again, and there is a meeting with the Man in the Shack who apparently runs the Universe....

In 1985, The Observer magazine sent Douglas Adams to Madagascar to look for the exotic and potentially extinct aye-aye lemur. There he met zoologist Mark Carwardine, and together they made a radio pilot about their travels, In Search of the Aye-Aye. This led to a hugely popular radio series, Last Chance to See, later adapted as a best-selling book. Douglas Adams died in 2001, but his friend Stephen Fry took his place for a follow-up 20th anniversary television series, broadcast on BBC Two in 2009.

Four exciting novelisations of classic TV stories in which the Doctor and his companions traverse the Fourth Dimension. This collection includes Doctor Who: The Space Museum, Doctor Who and the Day of the Daleks, Doctor Who: City of Death and Doctor Who: The Two Doctors.

At the centre of the galaxy, a vast, unknown civilization is preparing for an event of epic proportions: the launch of the greatest, most gorgeous, most technologically advanced spaceship ever built – the Starship Titanic. An Earthling would see the ship as something really, really big, but rather less provincial onlookers would recognize it as the design of Leovinus, the galaxy’s most renowned architect. Before the launch Leovinus is having one last little look round and begins to find that things just aren’t right.

One night in 1995, author Douglas Adams kidnapped an audience and held them hostage for 70 minutes at London's Almeida Theatre. The audience members were subjected to Adams's dramatic solo performances of excerpts and scenes from his wildly funny, wildly popular books The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, and Life, the Universe and Everything. LEARN how to fly! HEAR about Arthur and the Irrational Sofa! GROAN at Marvin's escapade with the Frogstar Battle Robot! Just keep laughing and nobody will get hurt!

While frequent flyer Arthur Dent searches the universe for his lost love, Ford Prefect discovers a disturbing blast from the past at The Hitchhiker’s Guide HQ. Meanwhile, on one of many versions of Earth, a blonder, more American Trillian gets tangled up with a party of lost aliens having an identity crisis. And just when Arthur thinks he has found his true vocation on the backwater planet of Lamuella, the original Trillian turns up with more than a little spanner in the works. A stolen ship, a dramatic stampede and a new and sinister Guide lead to a race to save the Earth...again. But this time, will they succeed?