Interesting stuff... it confirms pretty much what we thought, the real reason a sequel was never made was, surprise surprise, Douglas Adams lost interest. It wasn't the first or last project he did that to. I noticed an edge of bitterness in Bywater's comment on the fact that he was frequently cleaning up after projects that Adams had initiated and left fallow afterwards.

And as some of the Infocom designers said, it would have been better if they'd just gotten Adam's permission to go ahead and make something he could offer suggestions for and just sign off on, rather than expect him to be directly involved. I think Adams would have been very content with that, even thrilled; he always preferred a more collaborative writing environment. (He HATED writing the novels, because he had to do it alone. The reason the last book ends so... finally is that they promised him he'd never have to write another one, and he made certain that would be the case.)

I think the blogger did step out of bounds by posting without making an effort to contact some of the mentioned people. Although as one poster observed, a good journalist doesn't ask for permission, he confirms facts. But had he contacted some of the people first so he could throw in a "reaction" comment immediately after some of the e-mails, he could have mitigated some of the flames.

As is, it seems he managed to reach some kind of peace with Mr. Bywater, judging by his last few comments, and that Bywater intends to offer a more thorough write-up of the "Hitchhiker Sequel" fiasco from his own viewpoint, probably on his blog. All good stuff.