In the style of Randal's movie narrative charts at https://xkcd.com/657/ , and using a program called "plotweaver" http://ogievetsky.com/PlotWeaver/ , I made a narrative chart of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy five part trilogy. It includes all five books (not the sixth which was written after Adams's death.) Sorry if I missed anything.
I also got interested in symmetrical Venn diagrams with more than three sets. I learned that one can make an interesting looking five-sided one. Then I was thinking of something that I could do that would fill in a good number of the available spaces in the diagram, and again I thought of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which conveniently has five major characters that interact in different combinations. Here is a rough attempt at showing when each combination of character was together in a location at the same time:
*Edit: 8/21/2015: Updated both charts. There was a minor error in both, regarding the fact that Ford Prefect left Arthur and Fenchurch before they rendezvoused with Marvin at the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains.
*Edit 9/27/2015: Changed things a bit in the timeline to show Trillian closer to Arthur near the beginning, per mathmannix's good suggestion. Also put a bit more detail around the part of the timeline around the "Hactar" event.
Hitchhiker's Guide XKCD style narrative plot
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Hitchhiker's Guide XKCD style narrative plot
Last edited by udqbpn on Mon Sep 28, 2015 12:23 am UTC, edited 2 times in total.
- mathmannix
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Re: Hitchhiker's Guide XKCD style narrative plot
Looks pretty good. Just to nitpick, shouldn't Arthur and Trillian start closer together, both being earthlings?
I hear velociraptor tastes like chicken.
Re: Hitchhiker's Guide XKCD style narrative plot
...Good point. Ok I updated it a bit
I should have seen that issue! Thanks for the suggestion! 


- somitomi
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Re: Hitchhiker's Guide XKCD style narrative plot
Neat.
Marvin's timeline got me thinking, since he might not have experienced certain events in the same order as other characters did. Or at least he says he is 37 times older than the universe shortly before seeing God's Final Message to His Creation. Apparently your drawing follows the timeline of the books, so I wonder how it would look like following the timeline of any particular character. Making a "universal timeline" version would be interesting as well, with some of the characters zig-zagging across time throughout the books.
Marvin's timeline got me thinking, since he might not have experienced certain events in the same order as other characters did. Or at least he says he is 37 times older than the universe shortly before seeing God's Final Message to His Creation. Apparently your drawing follows the timeline of the books, so I wonder how it would look like following the timeline of any particular character. Making a "universal timeline" version would be interesting as well, with some of the characters zig-zagging across time throughout the books.
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