Bringing back the Radio Shows

At some point in the late 1970’s on one of my treks through the science fiction section of my favorite book store I fleetingly noticed a book that had on the cover what appeared to be a cartoon planet with a mouth. The mouth was laughing and its tongue was sticking out. Obviously this book cover was trying to tell people that what was inside was hysterically funny. I thought it looked stupid. Anybody trying that hard to make you think they are funny, must be pretty lame. I bypassed the book. I was wrong.

The book was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. It was a few years later when the book was forced upon me by a friend. It was not forced upon me in book form however. My former physics professor, who had become friends with my wife and I, produced some cassette tapes she had of the BBC radio show of the Hitchhiker’s Guide. It was wonderfully funny, reminiscent of Monty Python. My wife and I had the best time sitting there listening to those shows. Sometime later we even decided to throw a Hitchhikers party at that professor’s house: come as your favorite character (My wife and I came as a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias. I was the whale).

The story unfolding from the radio show was not only entertaining, but it made me realize how much we have missed out by not having radio dramas in this country. Television killed the radio shows in America, but the BBC still produced them, and now, many years later, that form of entertainment is making a comeback with the advent of the podcast. Audio dramas were/are their own unique art form that deserve a place in the pantheon of creative endeavors. I just recently listened to a science fiction podcast series called Exoplanetary that was quite inventive. But I digress . . .

The radio show got me to finally read the book series, which I enjoyed as much as the radio series. Later I found a British television series of the Hitchhikers Guide. That was not quite as good as the earlier forms, for one thing because it was extremely low-budget, and for another because the images conjured in my head from the books or radio show were just better than what I was watching. In this respect I think radio (or podcast) is a similar experience to reading a book, because the information you are taking in has to be supplemented by your own imagination. Whereas watching something on TV or at the movies is a more passive experience. All the information is provided for you. You just have to sit back and take it in. Instead of my imagination’s version of what that space ship looks like, we get fed the director’s vision of it. Instead of my imagination’s vision of what the heroine looks like, we get the casting director’s vision.

A number of years later, the movie version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy came out. This was no low budget thing like the TV series had been. This had a great cast and big budget special effects. Despite the fact that there were some genuine laughs in it, the movie overall fell kind of flat for me. See, movies are different than books in other ways too. When making a movie from a book you have to decide what to leave out because you cannot possibly fit it all in there. Also, Movies have different pacing requirements than books. To get the same emotional effect on the audience as a book, a movie may have to add new material or change it to make it work. It is a tricky thing to get right.

So if you want to experience The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the way it was meant to be experienced, buy the books, or listen to the radio show.

(My novel Star Liner, is now available as an e-book or paperback through Amazon, or the other usual online sources)

Star Liner