Trivia / The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy

• Creator Breakdown: Regarding the Downer Ending of Mostly Harmless and the mixed-to-negative reaction from fans, Adams conceded, "I just had a thoroughly miserable year, and I was trying to write a book against that background." He intended a sixth book to give the series a better conclusion, but...
• Died During Production: Adams died while working on the sixth book. His last published collection of pieces, The Salmon of Doubt, contains an early draft of a Dirk Gently novel that Adams was hoping to rework into a Hitchhiker book.
  • Adams never envisioned Hitchhiker's Guide as an ongoing series of adventures with Arthur, Ford, Zaphod, Trillian, and friends. He was reduced to recycling his own unused Doctor Who script for the third book. And he wanted to make the fourth book an Earth based romantic comedy with Arthur and Fenchurch as the central characters (Zaphod and Trillian are Put on a Bus and Ford is Demoted to Extra). The romantic comedy aspect is the reason why Adams agreed to do a fourth book at all. He wanted to bust himself out of the Sci Fi Ghetto and he wanted to conclude the "Trilogy" (technically a tetralogy at that point) and get on to fresher comedy ideas that he had.
• Executive Meddling: In Life, the Universe and Everything, the Silver Bail of Peace is the Rory Award for "Most Gratuitous Use of the Word 'Fuck' in a Serious Screenplay". US censors were offended, and Adams, bowing to their wishes, promptly changed the offending word to "Belgium". Fortunately, the resulting passage was much funnier, as Adams modified the surrounding conversation to fit the change, as well.
  Arthur: "Have you ever been to Belgium in fact?"

---