Can you really still call it a trilogy when it is comprised of six books? It seems to be the sort of silliness that Douglas Adams, now deceased writer of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, would have approved of. Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series, is undertaking the daunting task of resurrecting Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian (we hope) in the new book to be titled "And Another Thing". Fans of the series will be watching closely. It doesn't seem right to me to take over another author's work although it has certainly been done before, with Margaret Mitchell's "Gone With The Wind" being a prime example. The only rendition of her story I enjoyed other than the original was Carol Burnett's spectacularly hilarious parody "Went With The Wind". How do you feel about an author co-opting the characters and storylines developed by another writer?
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Charlie Jane Anders at reasonably points out that the true genius of Hitchhiker’s was the original radio plays, but the Hitchhiker’s book series rapidly degrades in quality after the first two or three entries. Seriously, there’s no reason to read beyond Life, the Universe, and Everything. It just gets bleak and derivative after that, with most of your favorite characters miserable, dead, or both. Adams should have quit while he was ahead (and stopped some of the more awful adaptations of his work from getting made, if possible).
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I never understood the appeal of The Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, which she wrote to explain the life of the madwoman in the attic from Jane Eyre. The book won critical acclaim, etc. but how can you really explain the life of someone else's character? It seems to me it should only be Charlotte Bronte's story to tell or to leave hidden. My 2 cents.
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