The Guardian is reporting that Eoin Colfer will write the sixth book in Douglas Adams‘s unfinished, five-volume, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy. According to the Guardian, Adams’s widow, Jane Belson, chose Colfer to write And Another Thing…, which Penguin will publish in October 2009. Sophie Hicks and Ed Victor of Ed Victor, Ltd., who are the literary agents for both Colfer and the Adams estate, handled the deal. No one involved in the project has released any details of the plot, but a sixth book was almost necessary.
Adams himself had planned to write it, saying in an interview, “People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. And it was a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so give seems to be a wrong kind of number; six is a better number.”
Adams died in 2001, at the age of 49, cutting short an already wonderful, and still promising, writing career. In addition to the five books of the classic comedy science fiction Hitchhiker’s trilogy (The Hithchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe, and Everything, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, and Mostly Harmless)—which actually began life as a serial radio drama in 1978—he also wrote two volumes in the Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency series, several non-fiction books, computer games, and more. Hitchhiker’s follows Earthman Arthur Dent, who is forced onto a universe-spanning adventure when the Earth is destroyed at the beginning of the first book. Dent and his companions, Trillian, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Marvin the perpetually depressed robot, also made the jump to the big screen in the 2005 feature film.
Colfer says he has been a fan of the series since he was a teenager, and having the opportunity to continue it is “like suddenly being offered the superpower of your choice. For years, I have been finishing this incredible story in my head, and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world. It is a gift from the gods. So, thank you, Thor and Odin.” Colfer is best known for his now-six-volume young adult fantasy series Artemis Fowl (Artemis Fowl, The Arctic Incident, The Eternity Code, The Opal Deception, The Lost Colony, and The Time Paradox), about a teenaged criminal mastermind.
The book will quite clearly be by Colfer, but, according to publisher Penguin’s Marketing and Publicity Director Joanna Prior, “with the cast of Hitchhiker.”
Prior, who was surprised by the proposal, said “It was something I guess [Belson] had been mulling over for some time, and we jumped the minute we got the call—we could immediately see what a fantastic project this would be.”
Penguin Managing Director Helen Fraser said, “In 1992 I was lucky enough to be involved in the publication of Mostly Harmless, Douglas Adams’s last brilliant volume of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He was an extraordinary writer, with an ability to come at the reader from the most unexpected angles, knock them off balance and make them laugh at the same time. Eoin Colfer is an inspired choice as Douglas’s successor. Eoin burst on the world in 2001 with his incredibly popular Artemis Fowl series, which is beloved by readers of all ages. He is a huge talent and a fantastically funny writer, and this new book will bring as many new young readers to Douglas Adams’s work as it will introduce adults to the brilliance of Eoin Colfer.”