Photo by Jim Linwood

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch-Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopaedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Noel Adams.

If ever a book needed the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover, And Another Thing was it. Instead, we get a sort of Viking longboat, and the words Eoin Colfer.  The words Eoin Colfer are large, they are quite friendly, but they aren’t re-assuring.  They aren’t reassuring for the simple reason that they don’t spell out the name of the dearly departed Douglas Adams.

The writer might be different, but the cast we know. This is a group of characters we last saw in the dark days of 1992, facing absolute certain death on an alternate Earth (and all possible Earths besides). I’ll admit, I didn’t fancy their, or Mr Colfer’s chances.

I’ll admit even more freely that I was wrong.

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