Turan is a historical region in Central Asia. The term is of Iranian origin and may refer to a particular prehistoric human settlement, a historic geographical region, or a culture; the original Turanians were an Iranian tribe of the Avestan age. In ancient Iranian mythology, Tūr or Turaj is the son of the emperor Fereydun. According to the account in the Shahnameh the nomadic tribes who inhabited these lands were ruled by Tūr. In that sense, the Turanians could be members of two Iranian peoples both descending from Fereydun, but with different geographical domains and at war with each other. Turan, comprised five areas: the Kopet Dag region, the Atrek valley, the eastern Alborz mountains, Helmand valley and Margiana. A association of the original Turanians with Turkic peoples is based on the subsequent Turkification of Central Asia, including the above areas. According to C. E. Bosworth, there was no cultural relationship between the ancient Turkic cultures and the Turanians of the Shahnameh.

The oldest existing mention of Turan is in the Farvardin yashts, which are in the Young Avestan language and have been dated by linguists to 2300 BCE. According to Gherardo Gnoli, the Avesta contains the names of various tribes who lived in proximity to each other: "the Airyas, Sairimas and Dahis ". In the hymns of the Avesta, the adjective Tūrya is attached to various enemies of Zoroastrism like Fraŋrasyan; the word occurs only once in the Gathas, but 20 times in the parts of the Avesta. The Tuiryas as they were called in Avesta play a more important role in the Avesta than the Sairimas and Dahis. Zoroaster himself hailed from the Airya people but he preached his message to other neighboring tribes. According to Mary Boyce, in the Farvardin Yasht, "In it are praised the fravashis of righteous men and women not only among the Aryas, but among the Turiyas, Sairimas and Dahis. Hostility between Tuirya and Airya is indicated in the Farvardtn Yast, where the Fravashis of the Just are said to have provided support in battle against the Danus, who appear to be a clan of the Tura people.

Thus in the Avesta, some of the Tuiryas believed in the message of Zoroaster while others rejected the religion. Similar to the ancient homeland of Zoroaster, the precise geography and location of Turan is unknown. In post-Avestan traditions they were thought to inhabit the region north of the Oxus, the river separating them from the Iranians, their presence accompanied by incessant wars with the Iranians, helped to define the latter as a distinct nation, proud of their land and ready to spill their blood in its defense. The common names of Turanians in Avesta and Shahnameh include Frarasyan, Biderafsh, Arjaspa Namkhwast; the names of Iranian tribes including those of the Turanians that appear in Avesta have been studied by Manfred Mayrhofer in his comprehensive book on Avesta personal name etymologies. From the 5th century CE, the Sasanian Empire defined "Turan" in opposition to "Iran", as the land where lay its enemies to the northeast; the continuation of nomadic invasions on the north-eastern borders in historical times kept the memory of the Turanians alive.

After the 6th century the Turks, pushed westward by other tribes, became neighbours of Iran and were identified with the Turanians. The identification of the Turanians with the Turks was a late development made in the early 7th century. According to Clifford E. Boseworth: In early Islamic times Persians tended to identify all the lands to the northeast of Khorasan and lying beyond the Oxus with the region of Turan, which in the Shahnama of Ferdowsi is regarded as the land allotted to Fereydun's son Tur; the denizens of Turan were held to include the Turks, in the first four centuries of Islam those nomadizing beyond the Jaxartes, behind them the Chinese. Turan thus became both an ethnic and a geographical term, but always containing ambiguities and contradictions, arising from the fact that all through Islamic times the lands beyond the Oxus and along its lower reaches were the homes not of Turks but of Iranian peoples, such as the Sogdians and Khwarezmians; the terms "Turk" and "Turanian" became used interchangeably during the Islamic era.

The Shahnameh, or the Book of Kings, the compilation of Iranian mythical heritage, uses the two terms equivalently. Other authors, including Tabari, many other texts follow like. A notable exception is the Abl-Hasan Ali ibn Masudi, an Arab historian who writes: "The birth of Afrasiyab was in the land of Turks and the error that historians and non-historians have made about him being a Turk is due to this reason". By the 10th century, the myth of Afrasiyab was adopted by the Qarakhanid dynasty. During the Safavid era, following the common geographical convention of the Shahnameh, the term Turan was used to refer to the domain of the Uzbek empire in conflict with the Safavids; some linguists derive the word from the Indo-Iranian root *tura- "strong, sword", Pashto turan "swordsman". Others link it to old Iranian *tor "dark, black", related to the New Persian tār, Pashto tor, English dark. In this case, it is a reference to the "dark civilization" of Central Asian nomads in contrast to the "illuminated" Zoroastrian civilization of the settled Ārya.

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"Roll Me Away" is a song written by American rock artist Bob Seger on the album The Distance by Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band. The song peaked at number 27 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. According to Seger the song was inspired by a motorcycle trip he took to Wyoming, he stated: I wanted to do that for a long time. It was fascinating being out; the first night it was 42 degrees in northern Minnesota. It was just feeling nature. Rolling Stone critic Dave Marsh described it as an "anthemic" song and considers it Seger's best single. Marsh interprets the song as being about "leaving a shattered home for a life that has to be better, though it never quite is." Marsh elaborates that the narrator of the song has lost his love and so goes off on a cold and lonely journey while he "lets his frustrations and confusion congeal into one sad cry that dissolves his fate into what has happened to the whole crazy mess of a world in which he lives. He sings that he plans to straighten things out for as long as he is searching but at the end he admits that only next time will they be able to get it right.

Marsh feels that Roy Bittan's "elegaic" piano chords drive home the point that the time for wild rockers to settle down. Los Angeles Times critic Richard Cromelin says that in the song Seger uses the continental divide as a metaphor for "confront questions of right and wrong," allowing him to "shake off his spiritual malaise."The song is featured on the Armageddon soundtrack. In addition, the song is played in its entirety in the final scene and closing credits of the 1985 film Mask starring Cher and Eric Stoltz, it was the closing song from the 1984 film Reckless, as Aidan Quinn and Daryl Hannah drove off on Aidan's motorcycle. It was used as Seger's opening song on his Face the Promise tour in 2006-2007, his first tour in a decade. Lyrics of this song at MetroLyrics

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a BBC television adaptation of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, broadcast in January and February 1981 on UK television station BBC Two. The adaptation follows the original radio series in 1978 and 1980, the first novel and double LP, in 1979, the stage shows, in 1979 and 1980, making it the fifth iteration of the guide; the series stars Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, David Dixon as Ford Prefect, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox, Sandra Dickinson as Trillian and Stephen Moore as the voice of Marvin. The voice of the guide is by Peter Jones. Simon Jones, Peter Jones, Stephen Moore and Mark Wing-Davey had provided the voices for their characters in the original radio series in 1978/80. In addition, the series features a number of notable cameo roles, including Adams himself on several occasions. Although thought by BBC executives to be unfilmable, the series was produced and directed by Alan J. W. Bell and went on to win a Royal Television Society Award as Most Original Programme of 1981, as well as several British Academy Television Awards for its graphics and editing.

After the success of the first seven episodes of the radio series, all broadcast in 1978, while the second radio series was being recorded, Douglas Adams was commissioned to deliver a pilot script for a television adaptation on 29 May 1979, to be delivered by 1 August. A animated version was discussed in the autumn of 1978, but it was decided to make most of the series feature "live action" and only animate The Guide's entries. John Lloyd, who had worked with Adams on the first radio series, is credited with starting the process of adapting the series for television, after the receipt of the pilot script, with a memo to the head of light entertainment in September 1979. Adams was still working on scripts for the second radio series of Hitchhiker's and working as script editor for Doctor Who, thus the BBC extended the deadline for the pilot script of the television adaptation to the end of November; the script for the pilot was delivered in December 1979, terms for the five remaining scripts were agreed upon in January 1980.

While there was some resistance to a project considered "unfilmable," Alan J. W. Bell was given the duties to produce and direct the TV adaptation. John Lloyd was signed as associate producer. In early 1980, production on the pilot episode began on several fronts. Rod Lord of Pearce Animation Studios directed a 50-second pilot, hand-animated, giving a'computer graphic' feel to the Babel Fish speech of the first episode. Douglas Adams and Alan J. W. Bell were both pleased with the animation, Lord was given the go-ahead to do all of the animation for episode one, subsequently the complete TV series. Narration for the first episode was recorded by Peter Jones in March 1980; the filming of two green-skinned aliens reacting to Pan Galactic Gargle Blasters was done on 8 May 1980. Further filming of crowd reactions to the Vogons, location filming of Arthur's house and a scene in a pub were done between 11 and 16 May 1980. Scenes aboard the Vogon ship were recorded on 7 June 1980, in the BBC's TC1 studio.

The final edit of the pilot episode was completed on 2 July 1980, it was premiered for a test audience three days later. Further test screenings were held in August 1980. Based on successful test screenings, the cast was reassembled to complete the six episodes of the series in September 1980. Production continued with filming and recording occurring out of order. Recording and production of the final episode continued into January 1981; the gap in production made for some continuity problems between the remainder. Notably, Simon Jones's hair was cut short for another role and he wears a noticeable hairpiece in episodes. Conversely, David Dixon's hair appears longer. One major change first appeared in the stage show and LP adaptations, made its way into the novels and TV adaptation. Nearly all of the sequences from episodes five and six in the first radio series that were co-written with John Lloyd were cut, thus the Hotblack Desiato character and Disaster Area make appearances in TV episode five, Ford, Arthur and Trillian are all randomly teleported off of Disaster Area's stunt ship in TV episode six.

Lloyd does receive a co-writer's credit on episode five, for the material on the statistics about the universe. The complexities of adapting the material for television meant that some episodes became as long as 35 minutes; the programme is notable for its mock computer animation sequences produced on film using traditional cel animation techniques. There have been several different edits of the series: Some, but not all, American PBS stations recut the series into seven 30-minute episodes when they began transmitting the episodes nearly two years in December 1982. Other PBS stations re-edited the programme into TV movies, broadcasting more than one episode at a time without interruption; the UK videotape release was on two cassettes, each consisting of three episodes edited to run together and adding some unseen material. The soundtrack was remixed into stereo; the North American VHS tape released by CBS/Fox Video included this material on a single video cassette. The DVD edition claims to be the definitive version of the six TV episodes.

Another production problem was that, being a visual adaptation, a solution had to be found to display Zaphod's three arms and two heads, a joke written for radio. In a previous stage adaptation, a version of a pantomime