Hitchhiker's Fan-Site Started By Douglas Adams Shows Why Authors Shouldn't Panic Over Derivative Works

from the bring-a-towel dept

Wed, May 1st 2013 3:14am — Timothy Geigner

We've talked a great deal about how content creators handle derivative works in the past, be it musicians, TV/film makers, or authors. The responses are predictably varied, with some creators embracing derivatives, some abhorring them, some that draw the line on commercial use, and others that use derivatives to build even further works. The least controversial of the lot is work done by fans, of course. Few creators want to go to war with fans that love their work so much they make fan films, or write fan fiction. But what would happen if a creator not only allowed derivatives of their work, but actually made the conscious decision to build an entire platform for it themselves to encourage the practice?

Well, you'd end up with something like h2g2, otherwise known as the fan-created build of the Earth-version of the Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy. They recently posted on April 28th to celebrate their 14th "birthday", congratulating the community on making the site a wonderful place for Hitchhiker fans to contribute with their own submissions. They also rightly said thanks to the book series' author, Douglas Adams, as it was Adams who started the site from the beginning.

Although h2g2.com might not yet quite be a complete guide to Life, The Universe and Everything it is a thriving online community, where Hitchhiker's fans and many other creative folks can work on The Guide and help fulfill Douglas' vision of a real-life, mostly useful, Earth Edition of his fictional Guide (not, incidentally, a real-life version of the Encyclopedia Galactica).

Today we welcome everyone, active and returning researchers, new researchers, visitors and viewers, to celebrate. Thanks to Douglas Adams, who saw a way to bring his idea of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy into an actual Guide, the Earth Edition, we have been around for 14 internet years!

Resulting in, or from, the immense popularity of the Hitchiker series, h2g2.com is hugely popular with fans. Whether the books caused the site's popularity more than the site has caused sales from the book is an unknown, but that each has an effect on the other is undeniable. The site's history is interesting and somewhat convoluted, but what is unquestioned is Adams' wish to embrace fans of the books and set them off on building their own guide of Earth. And, while ownership of the site has transitioned several times, from Adams to the BBC and so on, it is back in the hands of die-hard fans that have an allegiance to its community. Hell, the site puts out its own broadsheet newspaper.

All of this thanks to an author who wasn't misguided in seeing derivatives as a threat, but rather as a wonderful way to connect with fans, all the while pointing them back to the original works off which they were based.

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Filed Under: douglas adams, hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy

27 Comments

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Zakida Paul (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 4:11am

Common sense
Step 1 Person checks out a derivative of a person's work
Step 2 Enjoys it
Step 3 Asks 'what was the original like?'
Step 4 Checks that out
Step 5 Enjoys it
Step 6 Original creator gets a new fan
Step 7 New fan checks out that persons other work
Step 8 $$$
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Liz (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 4:53am

Re: Common sense
The last time anybody made a list of the top hundred character attributes of New Yorkers, common sense snuck in at number 79.
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Josef Anvil (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 5:06am

Abolition of IP laws
Mostly harmless.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 5:22am

Deeper than that
It goes deeper than that. To properly enjoy a lot of the derivative works, you have to know well the original.

For instance, most fan fiction does not try to rewrite the original, but instead adds to it. You have to already know the characters, setting, and past events, else you will miss lots of details. Some of these details might completely change the meaning of some scenes.

So it is not just "what was the original like". It is also "I have to check out the complete original and then check out this derivative work again, so I can understand it properly."
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gnudist, 1 May 2013 @ 5:31am

Re: Common sense
This is how it went for me and ranma 1/2
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Zakida Paul (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 5:59am

Re: Deeper than that
I was trying to simplify it as much as possible for the trolls. That is my rule, always dumb it down to the lowest common denominator.
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out_of_the_blue, 1 May 2013 @ 6:53am

Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Confession: I mis-spent some of my precious youth reading all three HG books on advice of friend. -- I knew better and was confirmed. -- Mildly amusing in places, but much better if you skip attempts at continuity between scenes that even the author internally admitted were infinitely improbable. If you can't keep your brain from analyzing, you notice how lousy it is; for teens at best.

Decades later I made the severe mistake of watching the movie. To my horror, it points up the lack of sense and the flaws in the books. So after a few minutes I just held down the fast forward key, slowing only to gasp at HOW bad it was, a new reference low. And of course I'm not alone in that opinion.

Anyhoo, what Timmy has taken for topic isn't new, it's just clutching at yet another "Oooh, LOOKY HERE! This author doesn't mind fans!" as if only true in the internet age.

But the real question is: HOW the HELL could Adams let such crap as the movie be made? -- Notice I don't ask WHY, 'cause was for MONEY he didn't need. -- But IF Adams had ANY common sense or perspicacity, he would have avoided the movie deal.
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ShellMG, 1 May 2013 @ 7:10am

We have a white towel signed by Douglas Adams. My husband, in Chicago for college in the mid 80's, went to a book signing and Adams was happy to oblige.
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Leigh Beadon (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 7:22am

Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Blue, Douglas Adams died 4 years before the movie was finished
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 7:34am

Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
What
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 7:35am

Re: Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Now blue is sad have you no shame?
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jupiterkansas (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 8:13am

Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Blue has an opinion about everything, and that opinion is he hates it, no matter what it is and even when he's completely ignorant of the subject matter like he is here.

Hanging out on TechDirt every day hating everything. What a life.
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G Thompson (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 9:08am

Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Now we might all understand OOTB's major reason..

He's actually Marvin without the brain the size of a planet (walnut maybe) who's imbibed too many Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters and who has never listened to the original radio series nor seen the original BBC TV series.
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Dark Helmet (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 9:11am

Re: Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
This is the greatest thing ever...
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Marcel de Jong (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 10:58am

Authors should realize that fans are mostly harmless and could lead them to the eternal life.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 11:26am

Even if a derivative work does outshine the original in popularity, so what? It's called "fair market competition." The idea behind copyright is to promote the arts, not to promote any particular person's art. If a fanfic writer can sell better than the original author, good, let 'em.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 1:35pm

Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
I listened to the radio version, then watched the tv mini-series.
I should have avoided the movie.
(Not surprisingly, OotB is a latecomer who saw ONLY the movie.)
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 1:40pm

Re:
"Even if a derivative work does outshine the original in popularity, so what? It's called "fair market competition.""

For example, the James Bond films are far better-known than the original novels.
I enjoy both, and accept/acknowledge the differences, but most people I know have seen nost or all of the movies and never read the books.
OTOH, the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes novels are more popular than any one media incarnation of the character...
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ltlw0lf (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 2:34pm

Re: Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
I listened to the radio version, then watched the tv mini-series. I should have avoided the movie.

I read the books when I was in junior high, had a "borrowed" copy of the radio play from BBC (did I just admit to being a pirate?,) the original miniseries from the BBC on video, all six books in both paperback and hardcover (and now in e-book format,) as well as all of Adams other books.

I don't understand why people didn't like the movie. It wasn't at the same level as HHGTG, but it also wasn't written by Adams either. It had a lot of the original work, and a couple "new" things from Adams (the point of view gun was awesome Adams,) but for the most part it was written by an American who, like myself, missed a lot of the original English Comedy when we read the book (it took me five years to get the joke about moving little green pieces of paper around, and that wasn't particularly English humor.)

I enjoyed the movie, knowing full well it was called Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but was really little more than a homage piece to Adams.

And Blue, there were five original books written by Adams for HHGTG, six if you include Mostly Harmless (which I do.)
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ltlw0lf (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 2:36pm

Re:
We have a white towel signed by Douglas Adams. My husband, in Chicago for college in the mid 80's, went to a book signing and Adams was happy to oblige.

Now I am envious, all I have is a signed copy of Starship Titanic.
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Anonymous Coward, 1 May 2013 @ 3:54pm

Re: Re: Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Exactly. I love the fact there are six books in the trilogy...
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ltlw0lf (profile), 1 May 2013 @ 4:48pm

Re: Re: Re: Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Exactly. I love the fact there are six books in the trilogy...

Especially from an author who said in an interview with the BBC before his untimely death that he hated writing and would miss deadlines on purpose because he liked the sound they made when they whooshed by.
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Ninja (profile), 2 May 2013 @ 3:53am

Fan-fiction should be allowed by default, inscribed into law. To avoid stupidity we've seen ad nauseam out there. It's fair use, simple as that.
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Anonymous Coward, 2 May 2013 @ 7:24am

Re: Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
Well his copyright should have prevented the movie from being made for at least 70 years AFTER his death...

AMIRITE?
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Sheogorath (profile), 3 May 2013 @ 9:48am

Re: Superior sense: if you like HHGTG, DON'T WATCH THE MOVIE!
OMG, OOTB commented on an article not written by Mike! That's akin to Jesus walking on water, turning water to wine, and feeding the five thousand all at once!
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movie, 2 Jun 2013 @ 5:35am

The least controversial of the lot is work done by fans, of course. Few creators want to go to war with fans that love their work so much they make fan films, or write fan fiction. But what would happen if a creator not only allowed derivatives of their work.
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guruandp, 10 Apr 2016 @ 10:59am

Douglas Adams - Related
For all the Douglas Adams fans - one of my friends has created this book and might interest you...

http://www.amazon.com/Guidebook-Dead-DOUGLAS-…/…/ref=sr_1_2…
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