HHGTTG

Any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with. — The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

In addition to The Lord of the Rings, and without all the tedious walking associated with that, there is another book about a long journey, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The BBC (also known as the British Broadcasting Corporation) did an adaptation of this second book as well. In fact, in the case of HHGTTG, the radio version preceded the novel.

I first heard about it in 1980, when the book came out. Douglas Adams, being interviewed, said that the idea came to him while drunk one night, lying on his back in a campground, staring up at the starry sky, in the middle of a hitchhiking trip around Europe.

I bought a copy.

Within a year or so I managed to capture the broadcast from one radio station or another. Eventually tapes went extinct, and my tape deck died too. It was all gone. I missed it.

One day last year I did some searching around and located the series stored at archive.org. For some reason. Adams died, so it's not like grabbing a free copy from there is going to hurt him, but the original link is now dead, probably for copyright violation. Luckily for you, if you're quick enough, there is an alternate link that still works.

For now...

• For the mp3 files, go to rss_hhgttgl
• For the text, see induceddyslexia.
• For some quotes, see douglasadamsquotes. (Ignore the "The ORIGINAL 12 Radio Episodes") link there — that's the dead one.
• And for more quotes, see 42 Of The Best Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Quotes. Such as "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes."

And there is some info on Wikipedia too (there always is):

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (radio series).

Thumbs up then, and carry on.

P.S. It is a well known fact that those people who most want to rule people are, ipso facto, those least suited to do it. To summarize the summary: anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job. — Douglas Adams

 

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Me? Been chasing my tail a lot the last few days. (It's fun!)

LOTR

How about a story?

How about a long story about a long walk?

How about the best long story about the most interesting of all long walks?

You can grab it.

It's the BBC audio presentation of J. R. R. Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" (LOTR).

I bought this on cassette tapes when it first came out. It's still available, at various prices, in various conditions, on CD or even on tape, if you want to spend enough time digging around on Amazon.com or elsewhere.

But CD? Tape?

When I gave up the apartment I had lived in for 18 years and 11 months and moved out of the U.S., I had a little cassette player that I had bought after my $2000 stereo system died. It was one of the last in the world it seemed. I had bought it as insurance, and before moving I wanted to digitize my tapes while I could, but the player decided not to work any more either, so I had a box of tapes, useless, and now long discarded (donated to the local "Friends of the Library").

So what then?

A few weeks ago I decided to search around online because why not?

Bingo.

I grabbed the whole 13-hour series. Twice. Thirteen hours worth of BBC-quality dramatization, performed by real talent. Such as...

Michael Hordern as Gandalf
Peter Woodthorpe as Gollum
Ian Holm as Frodo
John Le Mesurier as Bilbo
Robert Stephens as Aragorn
All the way down to Shagrat and Gorbag

I found this on SoundCloud, and another full copy at the Internet Archive. I downloaded both to be sure I got it everything at the best quality available. (I have only one working ear, and that used to be my bad ear. Life, it can bite.)

The quality is not the best, when listened to online, through my browser (boo). But. I found that the sound quality is excellent off the downloaded mp3 files when played through the VLC media player that I use, even for me (yay) with seriously degraded hearing (nother boo). The total file size for both sets together came to 974 MB, about half that if you choose only one set. The SoundCloud files are larger, and so might be better quality.

Recommended for anyone who may have read the book, and who thought that the movie series was pretty good. Compared the the BBC's work though, the movie series is complete crap. Comic book level crap. This is the actual real adult-level deal.

 

Info

LOTR at SoundCloud: 'Lord of the Rings Full Episodes for Radio'
LOTR at Archive.org: 'Lord Of The Rings by J R R Tolkein' [sic]

The Daily Dot: 'The simple way to download anything from SoundCloud'
Two SoundCloud download options from The Daily Dot
(1) This worked for me: 'SingleMango'
(2) Didn't try this one: 'KlickAud'
General LOTR info
Review of the BBC series
'The Lord of the Rings (1981 radio series)' at Wikipedia
VLC media player

VLC is a free and open source cross-platform multimedia player and framework that plays most multimedia files as well as DVDs, Audio CDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols.

 

Just as an unrelated teaser, I also found 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' a year or two back, and grabbed those audio files as well, while they were available. Stellar production. Now mostly forgotten. Very little walking in the story, but much intelligence. Douglas Adams

 

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Me? Still wondering if monkeys really have more fun.