Mostly Harmless issue 115 sent to ZZ9 members

A few weeks ago, I received my copie of Mostly Harmless issue 115. As usual there are some nice articles so here is a list of all the good things you miss if you're not a member of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha :

- First you really want to read "History of the kamikaze briefing sketch" by David Haddock. The Kamikaze sketch is a famous sketch co-written by Douglas Adams and Chris Keightley and performed for the first time at the 1976 Footlights production "A kick in the stalls" which was directed by Douglas Adams. David Haddock interviewed Chris Keightley so we've got a detailed and nice article on the subject.


- There is also the second part of the interview with Eoin Colfer (by John Coxon). Here, Colfer talks about his writing for Hitchhiker "I did have to dense myself a bit, you know, put more jokes per page), the quintessential phase ("I just didn't want to listen to that, I just didn't want to get confused"), the writing of the catch-up ("can you imagine trying to put Hitchhiker's in two pages?" and the writing of the ending of the book.
-  A mixed and detailed review of "And another thing" by Lidia Dockray.
-  A nice hitchcon report by Keira Vallejo  and an Islington slouch (Super Saturday tour) report by me (well a large chunk is missing but it should be printed again in the next issue of Mostly Harmless).
- The towel corner
...

There is also details about The Year of the Plank. 2010 has been designated "the Year of the Plank" with the aim being to raise enough money to dedicate a plank on Brighon Pier to Douglas Adams (I'll try to write an other blog post about this because it's a nice project).

Mostly Harmless issue 114 sent to ZZ9 members

"Mostly Harmless" is ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha's quarterly magazine (ZZ9 is the offical DNA and H2G2 fan club). Issue 114 has just been sent to ZZ9 members. If you're not a ZZ9 member, you can join here.

The current edition includes some interesting stuff :

- The first part of a long interview with Eoin Colfer who answers with a lot of details to John Coxon's questions. In this first part, Eoin talks about the characters ("I think I went for Restaurant and took that kind of stage development... so when I started the book, that's whre they are and they're very recognisable as characters from the original series, especially the first two books"), Douglas' unique style of writing, one-liners, humour, deadlines, sequels, Hitchhiker as a cult (It's like a mainstream religion rather than a cult. I think there are a few people who might have gotten away with this without the faithful worrying about it, and I'm not one of them").

- David Haddock and friends try to remember what they were doing 30 years ago when the book was published

- "And another book about the science of Douglas Adams..." by Alexander Pawalk who is busily writing a book called "Die Wissenchaft bei Douglas Adams" (The science of Douglas Adams) which will be published in january 2010

- "Hitchhiker's and philosophy. Part two : the ethics of entertainment" by Nicholas Joll

- Reviews of "The rough guide to the Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy", "Dont panic" (5th edition) and two reviews for the first half of "And another thing" (one very positive, and a "could have been better" one)

Let's remember that as a ZZ9 member, you have access to their merchandise, which include the world famous Beeblebear, a Don't panic towel, and other fun stuff.

Don't forget to bookmark ZZ9's website