The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is celebrating it's 30th anniversary with the release of a brand new installment in the series. Titled And Another Thing, the book was written by Eoin Colfer. Douglas Adams, the original author of the series died seven years ago.

Fans of any series will tell you that they are very skeptical when another author takes over the writing reigns of a series. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. I think many people are hopeful about this one. The book certainly has a fun official site. I do so like it when books have good websites.

When a new book is released in a long standing series, particularly when it's a book that's not written by the original author, maybe people ask why it's even being written at all. Bookwitch wonders who needs it.

Who needs to know? I mean, who doesn’t already know about it? There was a long description/history thing in the Guardian a week ago, and I just wondered what the point was.
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The point of the new book is surely to educate a new generation of readers, and anybody old who happened to miss it the first time?

(She also made me really want to listen to the radio series...)

There's been a lot of press for this new book. While many people can't decide if they are excited or wary, everyone is curious. Jenny Ross at Geeks.co.uk interviewed Eoin Colfer. What can we expect from the new installment? Well, not what Adams was planning.

“I wanted to do my own story,” he says, “I thought if I used his notes it would divide opinion, so I just did my own thing.”

So what can people expect from the latest novel?

“They can expect lots of the old characters back again, they can expect some new characters, they can expect an adventure. In a nutshell – same universe, same characters, new story.”

The Struggling Writer posted a Colfer video that gave him hope about the new edition.

In Colfer’s own words, he’s not trying to be Douglas Adams. Rather the book simply is “presenting you with a possible ending in a possible universe which you may find amusing”.

The Amazon-own Shelfari site was also able to speak with Colfer. Colfer seems to be taking the pottential nay-sayers in stride.

Amazon.com: Again, you were aware that there are easier lots in life than potentially being hounded from safe house to safe house by unruly Hitchhiker fans incensed that you've taken up this particular gauntlet?

Colfer: The only reason I could think of for not writing this book was that there were possibly people who would not want me to do it, so I argued with them in my head for a few days and eventually they came around to my way of thinking.

And if a new book isn't enough of a celebration for you, perhaps you might want to make a Pan Galatic Gargle Blaster. Some of Adams original ingredients are hard to come by so Kelly kindly provided some substitutions for us earthlings.

Contributing Editor Sassymonkey also blogs at Sassymonkey and Sassymonkey Reads.