The story begins with a man called Arthur Dent, described in the 1979 novelisation as "about 30. H2G2 – as Gaiman was the first to call the show – started life as a BBC radio sitcom in 1978 it went out with little publicity, but right away became a hit. Is this only because it's so funny, or is it because it's a story that begins with the total destruction of planet Earth?įor readers who need it, here is a brief recap. How curious, then, that this is so often the way fans talk about The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It's agreed, though, that the phenomenon has to do with shock – a death, a disaster, something that leaves everything catastrophically changed. "I was happy perfectly, unutterably happy." Among psychologists, no one is sure whether "flashbulb memories" – in which you see everything as it was, but heightened, as if your mind had lit up and snapped it – really happen or if people just think they do. "I would watch it almost every day." "I sat in the car in the driveway, getting cold, listening to Vogon poetry" – thus Neil Gaiman (b 1960), who before American Gods, before The Sandman, wrote a gushy fan-book called Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion (1988). 'I remember the early 1980s, a Betamax recording of the BBC series that my grandparents had taped," writes CMK, a blogger, born in 1979.
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