Yearly Archives: 2004

Twenty-five years after the original radio series of Douglas Adams? The Hitchhiker?s Guide To The Galaxy exploded into the public consciousness, the further exploits of its bewildered hero, Arthur Dent, are being brought to life in their original medium and with the (mainly) original cast.

The last three books of the ?trilogy in five parts?, Life, The Universe And Everything; So Long And Thanks For All The Fish and Mostly Harmless, have been dramatised as two new series (none of them were previously produced for radio).

As the original two series were dubbed the Primary and Secondary Phases by Douglas Adams, these new series form the Tertiary, Quadrenary and Quintessential Phases.

Thanks to the wonders of digital technology, Douglas Adams himself can be heard playing the part of Agrajag.

Although Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875-1950) is justifiably famous as the creator of Tarzan of the Apes, that uprooted Englishman was not his only popular hero. Burroughs’s first sale (in 1912) was A Princess of Mars, opening the floodgates to one of the must successful–and prolific–literary careers in history. This is a wonderful scientific romance that perhaps can be best described as early science fiction melded with an epic dose of romantic adventure. A Princess of Mars is the first adventure of John Carter, a Civil War veteran who unexpectedly find himself transplanted to the planet Mars. Yet this red planet is far more than a dusty, barren place; it’s a fantasy world populated with giant green barbarians, beautiful maidens in distress, and weird flora and monstrous fauna the likes of which could only exist in the author’s boundless imagination. Sheer escapism of the tallest order, the Martian novels are perfect entertainment for those who find Tarzan’s fantastic adventures aren’t, well, fantastic enough. Although this novel can stand alone, there are a total of 11 volumes in this classic series of otherworldly, swashbuckling adventure.