Speaking of towels...

One must assume a towel or towels will be making appearances in the increasingly unwritten-by-Douglas-Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Linked to already today by the entirety of Geekdom was this Guardian story, “Eoin Colfer to write sixth Hitchhiker’s Guide book”.

Douglas Adams’s increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy trilogy is to be extended to six titles, after Adams’s widow Jane Belson sanctioned a project which will see children’s author Eoin Colfer taking up the story.

Spoiler alert for the already-published fifth book in the next quoted paragraph. However, if you have not read it, you should probably turn in your geek card to the appropriate authorities.

And Another Thing… by Colfer, whose involvement with the project was personally requested by Belson, will be published next October by Penguin. No information has yet emerged about the plot of the novel but Hitchhiker fans will be hoping for a resurrection of much-loved characters Arthur Dent, Trillian and Ford Prefect, who were all apparently blown to smithereens at the end of the fifth novel, Mostly Harmless.

Why am I suddenly suspicious Douglas Adams has been dead these seven years only for tax purposes?

Anyhow, Eoin “It’s pronounced Owen!” Colfer (website) is Irish, so he has that going for him, but is also reportedly a megabestselling fantasist (see Artemis Fowl series) with quite a following of his own. So we shall see. He’s off to a good start saying this:

Colfer, who has been a fan of Hitchhiker since his schooldays, said being given the opportunity to continue the series was “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,” he added. “It is a gift from the gods. So, thank you Thor and Odin.”