Well, part of it is. The good news is that there is now a BBC DVD set containing what remains of "A for Andromeda" (the whole of the last episode, and stills from the others linked with text commentary plus a few scenes which were probably taken by people filming their TV sets, or possibly from copies of copies sent to TV companies abroad) and the whole of the sequel "The Andromeda Breakthrough". The bad news is that it is now extremely unlikely that we will ever see the 'lost' episodes, unless some alien race intercepted the TV transmissions from 1962...
Having been a bit too young to watch them when they were originally televised (I was only 6 at the time, and only just remembered that they existed when I found the novelisations as a teenager) but having read and reread the books many times, I was thrilled to find the DVD set. I just wish that more of the first series had survived with Julie Christie (don't get me wrong, I've completely fallen in love with Susan Hampshire's Andromeda, but I wish I had more of Julie Christie's for comparison as well).
Dr. Fred Hoyle has a special place for me, he was the author who first got me interested in computers (through his book "The Black Cloud" which contains a description of programming in those days, as well as AforA). Many of his themes were very advanced for the time and still relevant. Some of his scientific ideas are currently discredited (for instance he supported the "steady state" hypothesis, that the universe has always existed, instead of the "Big Bang") but both his fiction and nonfiction was among the best at the time. Unlike many modern SF authors his romance was low-key and suggested rather than explicit, and his plots are thoughtful rather than full of action, but I find that a nice change from modern Hollywood and TV productions, and many modern SF writers.
