The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy/Talk

My edition of the book is titled "The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide", and it also uses "Hitchhiker" consistently, as one word. Does the British version perhaps use two words? I note that the h2g2 web site also uses one word.

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My copy of the novel has "Hitch Hiker" on the spine and "Hitch-Hiker" on the cover. My copy of the radio scripts has "Hitch-Hiker" on both cover and spine. Both are British editions. Since Douglas Adams was British, it seems logical to use the British version if that's why there's a difference. --Pinkunicorn

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Yes, it's the British edition that has two words. There are also some differences between the American and British texts, one of them being rather major and involving a bad word. -- STG

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I made "Hitchhiker" before checking here. www.douglasadams.com says "Hitch Hiker" and seems to be as official as it gets. My bad.

STG: Can you provide details about the change? --Yooden

Sure. In book 3, at the flying party, Arthur meets an actor who won an award. In the British version, the award was for "The Most Gratuitous Use of the Word 'Fuck' in a Serious Screenplay". In the American edition, the word 'fuck' was replaced with 'Belgium', and about half a page was added explaining why Belgium was such a horribly taboo word everywhere except Earth. There are a few other differences too, mostly revolving around the difference between the American and British billion.

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(gratuitous comment) "Now that DNA (as he is often referred) has passed on, we can know for certain that there will not be a 6th book in the series." The death of an author has not always prevented the extension of a series (examples: Robert Howard, Ian Fleming). -- RjLesch

Absolutely. He was actually working on a sixth book, so it may well be published. I've edited the article to reflect that. -- STG

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(less gratuitous comment) There was a short story, "Young Zaphod Plays it Safe", which appeared in an all-in-one volume collection of the first three books. I never read it, so I don't know -- was it folded into book 4 or 5, or is it a separate piece of work? --RjLesch

"Young Zaphod Plays it Safe" was never folded into the "trilogy", but remained a separate short story. -- STG

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42 (the meaning of life, the universe, and everything) should be mentioned somewhere... It will be... sjc

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I've made a note on the page proper regarding the name ambiguity, and also a note of wikipedia's usage. Updates a few named references to match this.

Regarding the US differences? The Belgium joke was written for the radio series, and lifted directly into the US versions of the book. --Nemo

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...42 reference inserted. --KamikazeArchon

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Aside...back in the 1980's when I was a college student I had a Dymo? label reading DON'T PANIC on my HP11C?.

I was looking for a good "DON'T PANIC" sticker for my TI-83 graphing calculator...it looks almost like a Guide should be, with all the little buttons and screen and everything...:) --dreamyshade