Deplorable imitation.

I'm going to start this post like an American stand-up comedian starts his routine: what's the deal with originality these days!? And when I say originality, I mean the suspicious lack thereof.

"Originality is the art of concealing your sources," Benjamin Franklin once said, and it's a credo that got me my Master's degree (I kid, I kid), but Hollywood can't even get that right.

And it's not just Hollywood, either. It seems that every bit of media (excluding the internet) that reaches our ears, eyes and minds exists already, albeit in a slighty different shape or form. When exactly did we, as a species rightfully proud of our intellect and creative capabilities, become incapable of creating a single original idea?

Are we dumbing down that much?

Virtually every film playing at our local cinemas seems to be a rehash of an earlier premise, every song on our radios a remix of an existing tune. Sure, Christopher Nolan did all right with his reboot of the Batman franchise, and yeah, J.J. Abrams' reimagining of the Star Trek universe made it cool to be a Trekkie again, but do we really need a prequel to A L I E N ? A sequel to Predator? A remake of The A Team, V., The Prisoner (the latter two on the small screen)? Don't even get me started on Teen Wolf, Short Circuit and The Never Ending Story.

If this is frustrating for me (and perhaps you), imagine the slap in the face this is to every talented screenwriter out there, working a dead-end job because no one will read their work. Studio big wig, if you're really too busy to read screenplays (which is, essentially, your job), pay someone to read 'em. Hell, pay me to read 'em for you; I'd love that gig.

And now, books, too. A year ago I wrote about Eoin Colfer's intention to write the sixth installment in the legendary Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, late Douglas Adams' brain child. And guess what? Despite himself, despite Adams' inimitable style, despite humanity shaking its collective head dejectively, the guy went ahead and did as promised: 'And Another Thing...' is available at your local bookstores right now, ellipses and all. As appealing as it may seem to be able to traverse Adams' universe once more (or someone else's approximation of it), did anyone, anywhere genuinely think this was a good idea?

I suppose my plea, in short, is this: people of the world, please, stop it with the rebooting, reimagining, remixing, remaking, rehashing, prequeling, sequeling, recycling of every idea that ever made anyone a buck in the past. Seriously.

However, I shall end on a positive note.

Flipside! (I almost, but not quite, felt like Busta Rhymes there.)

Whether Eoin Colfer's sequel is any good or not, it is a delight to see that the inimitably singular Douglas Adams still has not vanished from our collective consciousness. Whether it's through this literary (ahem) sequel, or Stephen Fry's and Mark Carwadine's continuation of Adams' environmentalist book Last Chance To See in the form of a series of documentaries on endangered wildlife, the BBC's plans to turn Adams' Dirk Gently novels into a tv series, or even a NASA probe quoting Adams seconds before it slammed into the moon, it is undeniable that the deluge of ideas Douglas Adams unleashed upon us unsuspecting Earthlings is still ceaselessly percolating through the cracks of reality and into our lives.

And that can never be a bad thing.