04 August 2007

DNA newly recovered episode

This interview with Douglas Adams was apparently recorded in 1979 and promptly failed to get sold to anyone: the tapes then spent two decades composting in a cupboard before being unearthed and published in Darker Matter. Lost episodes. How appropriate.

Especially interesting is that this has an early instance of the story of how the name hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy popped into his head. From this interview, we hear:

Then I suddenly remembered what had struck me six years previously – but I hadn't done anything about it and hadn't even remembered in the intervening time – which was when I had been hitchhiking around Europe, when I was a student or just before I went up to Cambridge, I had this book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. And I remember wandering into a campsite in Innsbruck late one night, being not entirely sober, and the stars were all out and I just remember thinking at that time 'Somebody should write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy.'


Contrast with the version at Wikipedia.

Edit: I see from looking at Darker Matter's Technorati tag that it's in the process of closing. Oops.

No comments: