The Bookseller.com

21st March 2010

Benedicte Page is associate editor of The Bookseller.

New Hitchhiker: Is Fowl fair?

18.09.08

Those in charge of literary estates now routinely look for opportunities to refresh their brand beyond the standard fare of repackages and TV adaptations. Commissioning sequels or other companion volumes is popular - whether Peter Pan in Scarlet, Rhett Butler’s People or Devil May Care.

Authors are commissioned to write the books, sometimes winning the commission in competition with other writers for the job. But a commissioned novel fits uneasily with the notion of creative inspiration, and critics often condemn them as being more concerned with marketing than masterpieces.

Disapproval is not generally as intense though as the fury being expressed online over the news this week that a new Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy novel is to come from children’s author Eoin Colfer, selected for the role (without a competition) by the Douglas Adams estate.

While Colfer fans seem pleased by the announcement, some contributors to the online fan site Douglas Adams Continuum clearly had their day ruined by the news. “I’m really, really, really upset,” wrote one. “I’m pissed as hell that someone thought this was in any way appropriate. Douglas hasn’t been gone a decade, and publishers are already plunging their grubby fingers into his creation.”

“With all due respect to Colfer, whom I confess to never having read, the entire idea is completely appalling. I don’t think I’d even touch the blasted thing to read the dust jacket,” said another. “It’s like Damien Hirst touching up the Mona Lisa to bring that old masterpiece up to date,” wrote a third. Others were more philosophical, if downbeat: “Yeah, don’t judge a book by its yet-to-be cover, but sheesh. Hitchhiker’s without Douglas is like... something that shouldn’t go without something else.”


The uniqueness and individuality of Adams’ world, as well as the tragedy of his early death at the age of 49, contributes to the protectiveness of his devoted fans - even though the new novel has been sanctioned by Adams’ widow Jane Belson. Another factor is that many have never before come across Eoin Colfer, the impish creator of criminal mastermind Artemis Fowl, and one of the most exuberantly comic children’s writers around.

But Colfer is a clever choice, a natural match with the Adams quirkiness and one of the few writers one can imagine making a win from the task.

Penguin promises that the new novel, And Another Thing, which is to be published under Colfer’s own name, will work as a combination of two compatible creative talents and will reach out to a new generation of Adams fans. Colfer is hard at work on the sixth Hitchhiker now and I can imagine him sitting at his desk chuckling heartily as he gives his anarchic sense of fun full play.

My guess is that come October next year, all but the die-hard purists will find And Another Thing, if not the match of an original Adams novel, still surprisingly hard to resist.