The author of the Artemis Fowl novels is to write the first posthumous installment to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.

James Bond and Peter Pan have enjoyed high profile recent literary revivals long after the deaths of their original creators thanks to Sebastian Faulks and Geraldine McCaughrean.

Now it is the turn of the hapless Arthur Dent to be brought back for a new generation of readers.

Mostly Harmless, the fifth and last of the cult Hitchhiker books, was written by its creator Douglas Adams 16 years ago. Adams died of heart failure in 2001, at the age of 49 but always hoped to write a sixth book.

“I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note,” he said in one interview. “Five seems to be a wrong kind of number, six is a better kind of number.”

The author’s widow, Jane Belson, has given her approval to a plan by Penguin to resurrect Dent in a sixth book, entitled And Another Thing...

The novel will be written by Eoin Colfer, known for Artemis Fowl, the best-selling titles about a teenage criminal mastermind who wreaks havoc in this world and the next. The publisher is anticipating a bestseller.

Adams’ Hitchhiker books have sold around 16 million copies and been translated into 35 languages.

The Artemis Fowl series have sold more than 18 million copies worldwide and a film adaptation is due to go into production next year.

Colfer, 43, was a primary school teacher in Ireland before he secured the largest ever advance for a children’s novel by an unknown author.

He said he was “terrified” by the prospect of creating a new Hitchhiker book almost a quarter of a century after being introduced to what he described as a “slice of satirical genius” in his late teens.

“My first reaction was semi-outrage that anyone should be allowed to tamper with this incredible series.

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