Jag tycker att det är en svår fråga att svara, helt enkelt för att det finns så många skillnader. Kanske ska jag göra bäst för att citera Douglas Adams egna erinringar, som gjordes i introduktionen till The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , en samlad verkvolym publicerad 1995.
Under rubriken Några otillbörliga kommentarer från författaren , förklarar Douglas det -
Writing episodically meant that when I finished one episode I had no idea about what the next one would contain. When, in the twists and turns of the plot, some event suddenly seemed to illuminate things that had gone before, I was as surprised as anyone else.
Han fortsätter att lägga till -
People I talked to seemed to like Marvin the Paranoid Android, whom I had written in as a one-scene joke...
och i en radiointervju på BBCs hemsida från den här perioden ( The Doctor och Douglas ), inspelad när han var scriptredigerare av Doctor Who tv-serien, beskriver med lite glädje hur man skrev Hitchhiker's var i grunden en process att bara sitta vid skrivmaskinen och försökte tänka på en följd av skämt och ibland fick en av hans karaktärer komma ut med en enstaka anmärkning för att få honom ur ett plotthål som han hade grävt sig in i.
Han påminde om att den första romanen bara handlade om en del av den ursprungliga radion serierna - på grund av att hans förläggare gick upp och gick igenom allt han skrev upp till den tiden, efter att han saknat den 10: e deadlineen (ännu hade fortfarande bara novellerade de första 4 skript):
[It] was a substantially expanded version of the first four episodes of the radio series, in which some of the characters behaved in entirely different ways and others behaved in exactly the same ways but for entirely different reasons, which amounts to the same thing but saves rewriting the dialogue.
Och om den andra romanen:
In the fall of 1980, the second Hitchhiker book was published in England ... It was a very substantially reworked, reedited and contracted version of episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 5 and 6 (in that order) of the radio series... [and] was called “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”, because it included the material from radio episode 5 ... which was set in a restaurant called Milliways, otherwise known as the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Och se! Det var också TV-seriens inflytande:
Meanwhile, a series of six television episodes of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” was made by the BBC and broadcast in January 1981. This was based, more or less, on the first six episodes of the radio series. In other words, it incorporated most of the book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” and the second half of the book “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”. Therefore, though it followed the basic structure of the radio series, it incorporated revisions from the books, which didn’t.
Men det var som ingenting. För då hände det här:
In the summer of 1982, a third Hitchhiker book was published simultaneously in England and the United States, called “Life, the Universe and Everything”. This was not based on anything that had already been heard or seen on radio or television. In fact it flatly contradicted episodes 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 of the radio series. These episodes of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” you will remember, had already been incorporated in revised form in the book called “The Restaurant at the End of the Universe”.
Och detta:
I wrote a fourth and last (sic) book in the trilogy, “So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish”. This was published in Britain and the USA in the fall of 1984 and it effectively contradicted everything to date, up to and including itself.
Så där har du det. En tydlig och sammanhängande historia om jag någonsin hört en. Som sagt till Oolon Coluphid av någon som kanske hade förväntats veta bättre ...