DNA

This year, what with having an mp3 player and all, I've been listening to audio books from the library. Helps to while away those working hours, y'know. Hands busy, brain in freefall. Anyway, as an advanced Xmas pressie off my brother, I've treated myself to a boxset of the original BBC 'Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' radio plays. I've read all of Douglas Noel Adams's books, the radio scripts, watched the TV shows, even read Neil Gaiman's 'Don't Panic' and MJ Simpson's biography. I'm a fan. But, I've never actually heard the original radio plays that spawned the whole shebang.

They're brilliant fun! Well, the first 3 discs are anyway. That's all I've heard so far.

The thing that's really struck me is, I know from Neil Gaiman's 'Don't Panic' that these were written with a tight deadline, with DNA not really knowing what he was going to do from one week to the next. And yet the sheer abundance of comic sf ideas he throws out, he could have written a hundred short stories. I don't admit confessing, I listened to the first three discs (series one) in awe. I've heard people say that DNA was just lucky, that he managed to wrap up Monty Python humour in shiny SF clothing and pass it off as something new. To which I say a hearty Bollocks! I mean, all those segues from the HHGG (played wonderfully straight by Peter Jones) sound as fresh now as they must have done nearly thirty years ago. I cannot think of a single writer of comic SF who has come close to the HHGG.

DNA dried up in later years, suffering writer's block, famously watching deadlines go past with a whooshing noise . . . You'd never guess it hearing those first radio plays. S'quite sad, really..