Starship Titanic was the most recent big
project of The Digital Village and Douglas Adams. Its full name
is in fact Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic, a computer
game released Easter 1998 and consequently still available in the
shops. Douglas has played an integral part in the writing of the
game, being one of the "ideas men". It's for Macs & PCs.
The Starship Titanic novel was also published,
written by Terry Jones (of Monty Python fame), who also voices
the demented parrot in the game itself. This novel was published
just in time for Christmas 1997. It's published by Pan Macmillan,
and it costs £5.99.
It seems pointless to supply too much more
information here when a great deal of official information can be
found at the official Starship Titanic web site at:
Some discussion about playing the game has taken place on the comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.adventure
newsgroup, as well as on alt.fan.douglas-adams.
Reviews are, frankly, mixed. It's also possible to find solutions
for the game on the Web, in such places as http://www.gamefaqs.com.
"Dark Ship Titanic" was a very early
(around 1990, possibly even earlier) working title for the
project that eventually became Starship Titanic (above). Either that, or it was a badly overheard
and corrupted rumour. Either way, it doesn't exist in its own
right.
The Digital Village (TDV) are the multiple media
company with whom Douglas Adams works, although Douglas is only
one of the eight directors, and TDV are involved in quite
a large number of projects, several of which do not directly
involve Douglas at all.
Their first major release is Starship Titanic
(see C.1.). After that, a project with
Douglas' backing and part-involvement is an online Hitch
Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy (see C.3.1.).
http://www.tdv.com.
Well, the recently-launched http://www.douglasadams.com/
might be what you're looking for!
The site is brand spanking new and updated on a very regular
basis (much more regular than this FAQ), now has forums and
stuff.
It borrows a few elements from what had been Douglas Adams'
previous personal page at http://www.tdv.com/html/douglas_a.html,
which is still there for the time being.
The online Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is at http://www.h2g2.com/. It is big, and quite neat. Most of the participants of a.f.d-a are also contributors to h2g2.
The sixth book in the Hitch Hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy trilogy may well be The Salmon of Doubt, or
it just as likely may not be- see C.4.
It's worth nothing that this particular section, C.3.3., is
almost without any doubt inaccurate or downright wrong, for all
sorts of reasons. The very nature of movies means that details
change on a daily basis, and there's still a lot we don't know.
Here's what we may or may not have known last time we updated the
FAQ. You will almost certainly find more information on this
subject at http://www.douglasadams.com/.
Disney are, sort of, doing a Hitch Hiker's Guide
movie. With the emphasis on 'sort of', because Disney may well
have made Bambi but it also made Pulp Fiction, as
Douglas Adams has pointed out.
An agreement was reached between Douglas Adams
and Hollywood Pictures (a division of Disney) for production of a
movie to be released summer 2000. Roger Birnbaum (of Caravan
Pictures, an independent company whose productions tend to be
released by Disney) will produce, Jay Roach will direct and
Douglas will write the screenplay and co-executive produce.
Douglas is working on the screenplay now; he
says it's based on the first book with some new material added.
Jay Roach, the director, last finished Austin
Powers II.
The recent story suggesting Jim Carrey will be
in the movie has been refuted by DNA himself, right here on the
group. He has also even more recently downplayed the Disney
connection as well as pointed out that Roger Birnbaum and Caravan
have been responsible for such notable pictures as Rain Man and
Gorillas in the Mist.
Douglas Adams sold the rights to a Hitch
Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy movie in the early 1980s, to his
regret, and then bought them back in the early 1990s at
considerable personal expense. It was also at one time in the
hands of Michael Nesmith's production company Pacific Arts.
A lot of people are quite optimistic about it this
time. Douglas Adams himself even posted a message to
alt.fan.douglas-adams in order to quel a rumour that Jim Carrey had been
cast in the film. A comprehensive post he made in September '98 can be found here.
A script for the movie was adapted in
1986, not by Douglas Adams but by somebody who seems to have very
little concept of where the jokes in Hitch Hiker's Guide...
actually are (this person's name is unknown and they've probably
been in hiding ever since). Copies of this script may still be available
through "Script City" in the USA but no more details are
supplied but this.
There was also a supposed 'extract' from the new script posted to the Douglas Adams newsgroup a few months ago, although this has been denied by Douglas Adams himself as being official; however, if you want a read, it can be found here.
Even though the movie looks closer to being made now than it
has looked for some time, discussions about who should play who
in the movie are wearing seriously thin and most people are now
bored of it.
The Salmon of Doubt may or may not be
Douglas Adams' next book, depending on what he thinks of in the
bath. However, it is quite definitely not published yet,
no matter what any number of online bookstores might want to tell
you. It has had publishing dates dating back to 1994, but it has
still not been written. So there. And we are right and
unless you agree with us you are wrong, unless you happen to be Douglas Adams, then you are always right.
The Salmon of Doubt was originally going to
be called A Spoon Too Short, and it was going to be a Dirk
Gently book. The blurb went something like this:
- A gorgeous woman approaches Dirk Gently,
holistic detective, and requests his help in finding the
missing half of her beloved cat. He looks at her with the
disdain he reserves for achingly beautiful women he knows
will never go out with him. 'I don't do cats,' he sneers.
Happily, he doesn't have time to regret his decision
before untraceable deposits in Dirk's checking account
indicate that someone has indeed hired him. But who? And
for what? Acting on his principle that all things are
interconnected, he tails the very next person who walks
by his London apartment. "The following day, in Los
Angeles, Dirk finds himself enmeshed in a case that will
turn up the missing bit of cat, replenish his depleted
finances, and answer the most important question of all:
What is the salmon of doubt,
anyway?"
At one point an American trade journal even
featured a front cover for the novel, with the subtitle "a
Dirk Gently novel". Dirk was eventually written out of The
Salmon of Doubt because he was the "wrong fit." It is
possible that The Salmon of Doubt may now be the sixth book in
the immensely inaccurately-named Hitch Hiker's Guide to
the Galaxy trilogy, but even in this case, the book will not
show up in the immediate future. In interviews even more recent
than that, Douglas has begun to speculate that the novel may
either (a) not be the sixth Hitch Hiker's novel, or (b)
not be called The Salmon of Doubt any more.
ISBN numbers have been bandied around for this
book but none of them are currently relevant or useful. If you
have ordered the Salmon of Doubt through a bookshop, cancel the
order.
Tim Browse, of The Digital Village, said this
about The Salmon of Doubt:
The first ever public stage production of Dirk
Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, entitled simply Dirk,
was performed at the Old Fire Station Theatre, Oxford in May
1995, and was a complete success praised by a large number of
people.
The show was recently redone, at the bigger and
better venue of the Oxford Playhouse, between 5th and 8th
November 1997. The same producer, Matt Wreford, was at the helm
(and a very nice bloke he is too), but a newly-improved script
accompanied a new cast and even more ideas. It did indeed turn
out to be a fantastic performance.
And as of 6th January 2000, the official play has a brand new web site. Check it out:
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