Douglas Adams' widow Jane Belson has personally chosen Irish author Eoin Colfer, the creator of teenage superthief Artemis Fowl, to continue the saga of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

And Another Thing... will be published by Penguin in October 2009, although details of the plot have not yet been released. Adams himself said he wanted to write a sixth story, as the fifth book Mostly Harmless was "a very bleak book", but he died in 2001 before he could pen the tale.

"For years I have been finishing this incredible story in my head and now I have the opportunity to do it in the real world," Colfer told The Guardian. "I feel more pressure to perform now than I ever have with my own books, and that is why I am bloody determined that this will be the best thing I have ever written."