Every year, on May 25th, sci-fi geeks the world over don their towels in honor of the late, great Douglas Adams and the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom that he so generously gave to us, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Why towels you ask? The guide has this to say on the subject of towels:
"A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value. You can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santranginus V, inhaling the beady sea vapors; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a miniraft down the slow heavy River Moth; wet it for use in hand-to-hand combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or avoid the Ravenouse Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mind-bogglingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can't see it, it can't see you--daft as a brush, but very very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough." I myself have found my towel to make a lovely little scarf against the wind today!
I've had this post started for absolutely ages but what better day than today to kick it out into the cold void of space... I mean the internet? Appropriate too, as Adams himself seemed to have trouble getting anything written in a timely fashion famously saying, "I love deadlines. I like the wooshing noise they make as they go by."
Thus, I give unto you, in celebration of this most festive of days, the first installment of a series of people who I find extremely brilliant, talented, and straight up cool.
#1 Douglas Adams
I have a large leather bound book with gold edged pages and a ribbon page marker. It is well worn and always lives where ever I am living. I have read it many times, some parts of it more than others. Guess what book it is? Did you guess the Bible? Well you'd be wrong. Mostly. It's kind of my own personal bible. Not in a blaspheming way, just in that I think it provides important insights and valuable lessons, though, at times, they are hard to discern. Sounds bibley right? You can turn to the bible and ask the meaning of life, the universe, and everything and find that, "The meaning of the Christian life is in the living of it" (Bible and Ethics in the Christian Life, by Bruce C. Birch, Larry L. Rasmussen). Interesting... if a bit ambiguous, certainly valid in many ways. However, there are times when I prefer my own book's answer to the ultimate question simply for its clarity and brevity. The answer is 42. Apparently it is the question that needs sorting. This deep and enigmatic book that I turn to for guidance in life (really, I do, please don't judge me) is none other than The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams which contains within it all five books of the series (and a bonus short story, oh yeah!).
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| Also, uh, hello... Martin Freeman and Mos Def! |
The idea for the guide came to him while he was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck looking up at the stars thinking how helpful it would be to have a general sort of guide to all of it. From that point on it has seen countless incarnations in radio, television, film, video games, theater, and books. My first experience with the Guide was in the form of the 2005 movie remake which I immediately loved. This set me off in search of the books which are undoubtedly the cause of my subsequent sci-fi habit. There are so many things that I love about his books but the best thing has to be the story itself, well stories. They're fun, they're unprecedented, they're exciting, suspenseful, dramatic, sci-fi, romance, off the wall, out of the box, all around weirdness. Sure there are about 50 bazillion subplots, none of which with any semblance of an actual ending, and probably a third of the actual content of the books have nothing to do with any of the stories' plots. Still they're all little golden nuggets of imagery and detail of the wonderfully weird universe only he could imagine.
I'm not going to tell you about the stories for two reasons: 1) I wouldn't want to ruin it should you take this post to heart and go read them for yourself, and 2) they are basically impossible to sum up, as it were, "due to the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" (bonus points to you if you recognize that quote). Instead I am going to tell you about a few of the other things that make these books so dear to me.
1) The clever writing Adams is as descriptive as he is funny. Take this line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where he describes enormous alien spaceships, "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't". I mean come on, how great is that? You can totally picture it! Plus, I love the way his imagery will have you following along, thinking you know where it's going up until the last minute when he finally draws the comparison to something completely out of context. It's exactly that sudden shift into lunacy that keeps me chuckling through the series every time I read it. Here’s one more little witty gem of imagery from Life, the Universe and Everything for the road, "Stones, then rocks, then boulders pranced past him like clumsy puppies."
2) The hidden philosophy lessons In my first year of college I took a foundations of philosophy class that I absolutely loved. Over the quarter we went through some of the questions that have been making Homo Sapien scratch his big ol' brain cavity ever since he realized that sticks make for good scratching devices. Well... maybe not that long ago but certainly for many centuries. With each new question we addressed I couldn't help but be struck by how some part of the Guide resembled it, only, of course, with more comedic aliens. Adams had some really fascinating takes on many of the fundamental principles of philosophy though they are often hidden in dizzying story lines and rapid fire wit. My favorite example has to do with a philosophical principle commonly associated with Locke which, essentially, deals with reality as being dependent on the perception of the individual (History of Philosophy by Alfred Weber). It is this question that stoned teenagers broach when they ponder whether the blue that they see is really the red that their friends see. Adams tackles the question in his usual manner of comedy so aloof you may not even catch it in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe when a crazy man who lives in a hut on the beach with a cat nonchalantly asks a man who has been questioning him, "How can you tell there's anything out there? The door's closed." The old man seems like just a crazy old recluse but he is constantly making poignant observations. Much like in the real world, you can't always tell if someone's theories are just far out conjecture or verging on some fundamental untold truth. Hell, people thought Galileo was insane to have said that the Earth revolves around the sun and look how that theory turned out. Galileo, old man in a shack on the beach with a cat, who's keeping track? Brilliant. I must share one other little tidbit of philosophical humor found in Life, the Universe, and Everything, "He hoped and he prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife." A passing comment in an action scene as our main character tumbles toward what he is sure will be his demise, I just love its overly casual approach to and subsequent dismissal of the enormous question of religion's role in the eternal existence of the soul (if there even is one). Again I say, brilliant.
I'm not going to tell you about the stories for two reasons: 1) I wouldn't want to ruin it should you take this post to heart and go read them for yourself, and 2) they are basically impossible to sum up, as it were, "due to the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" (bonus points to you if you recognize that quote). Instead I am going to tell you about a few of the other things that make these books so dear to me.
1) The clever writing Adams is as descriptive as he is funny. Take this line from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where he describes enormous alien spaceships, "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't". I mean come on, how great is that? You can totally picture it! Plus, I love the way his imagery will have you following along, thinking you know where it's going up until the last minute when he finally draws the comparison to something completely out of context. It's exactly that sudden shift into lunacy that keeps me chuckling through the series every time I read it. Here’s one more little witty gem of imagery from Life, the Universe and Everything for the road, "Stones, then rocks, then boulders pranced past him like clumsy puppies."
2) The hidden philosophy lessons In my first year of college I took a foundations of philosophy class that I absolutely loved. Over the quarter we went through some of the questions that have been making Homo Sapien scratch his big ol' brain cavity ever since he realized that sticks make for good scratching devices. Well... maybe not that long ago but certainly for many centuries. With each new question we addressed I couldn't help but be struck by how some part of the Guide resembled it, only, of course, with more comedic aliens. Adams had some really fascinating takes on many of the fundamental principles of philosophy though they are often hidden in dizzying story lines and rapid fire wit. My favorite example has to do with a philosophical principle commonly associated with Locke which, essentially, deals with reality as being dependent on the perception of the individual (History of Philosophy by Alfred Weber). It is this question that stoned teenagers broach when they ponder whether the blue that they see is really the red that their friends see. Adams tackles the question in his usual manner of comedy so aloof you may not even catch it in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe when a crazy man who lives in a hut on the beach with a cat nonchalantly asks a man who has been questioning him, "How can you tell there's anything out there? The door's closed." The old man seems like just a crazy old recluse but he is constantly making poignant observations. Much like in the real world, you can't always tell if someone's theories are just far out conjecture or verging on some fundamental untold truth. Hell, people thought Galileo was insane to have said that the Earth revolves around the sun and look how that theory turned out. Galileo, old man in a shack on the beach with a cat, who's keeping track? Brilliant. I must share one other little tidbit of philosophical humor found in Life, the Universe, and Everything, "He hoped and he prayed that there wasn't an afterlife. Then he realized there was a contradiction involved here and merely hoped that there wasn't an afterlife." A passing comment in an action scene as our main character tumbles toward what he is sure will be his demise, I just love its overly casual approach to and subsequent dismissal of the enormous question of religion's role in the eternal existence of the soul (if there even is one). Again I say, brilliant.
3) Pure creative genius In 815 pages Adams introduces us to more alien races, distant planets, and fictional technologies than I ever want to attempt to tally. Over the five books there are four important main characters who are all so well developed you feel like they are old friends of yours and a slew of supporting characters who all have distinct personalities of their own. More than that, there are characters who appear only once, and briefly even then, whose stories are so detailed you have the feeling of being some sort of all knowing outside observer. Which, I guess, you are in the context of most reading experiences. For example there is a character in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy called Mr. Prosser who is only around to demolish Arthur’s house in a silly allusion to foreshadowing who we know is a direct descendant of Genghis Khan with a penchant for fuzzy hats. Did we need to know this for the purposes of the plot? No. Does it make even the most inconsequential of characters more interesting? Yes!
Beyond his imaginative characters are the wonderful people they meet and places and situations they find themselves in. A restaurant that the end of the universe where there are cow like animals that have been bred to want to be eaten. A rock star who is spending a year dead for tax reasons. And, of course, a queer fellow called Slartibartfast who travels the universe in an Italian restaurant that is actually a cutting edge, five-dimensional ship powered by the bistromathic drive. Not only does Slartibartfast build custom ordered, designer planets (he won an award for Norway) and lead the campaign for real-time in an effort to sort out the convulsions of space-time, he also helps our gang of main characters save the universe from the evil ways of the Krikkit army who sought to destroy the stars. What I’ve described here is literally a fraction of the books and I could never in my wildest dreams come up with such interesting, new, and inventive ways to look at the universe!
Three bonus cool points for Adams:
1) He was clearly a Beatles fan, trust me, I can tell.
2) He worked on Doctor Who in its early days!
3) He was often touted as an honorary scientist even by the famed biologist Richard Dawkins, who spoke very kindly of him and his humble yet deeply rooted love for science that seem to exude from his work in this lovely eulogy.
We humans know so very little in the grand scheme of things (a point the Guide makes several times) and I love how Adams is not afraid to go barreling into our great unknowns full steam ahead.
He said it best himself in a speech at Cambridge when he said,
“There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.” In his customary style it is an eloquent and clever take on human perspective, the scientific pursuit of truth, and the ever unanswered questions of life, the universe, and everything. If you know me at all, you will see in this alone why I admire Adams and his work so much. In closing I would like simply to say Thank You to Mr. Adams; you, your wit, and your talent will never be forgotten here on Earth! Here’s to the hoopiest frood of them all!
*** Since having drafted this entry I have had the enormous pleasure of living for several months in Islington, London. If youknow your stuff you will recall that Islington is where Arthur once attended a fancy dress party and met some very important characters. I'm not going to lie and tell you that this did not occur to me while I was choosing my study abroad program or that it was not the first thing I told my fellow fans about. While I was there I came to learn that Adams actually lived in Islington! It made perfect sense reading back through the Guide and some of his other books to find them riddled with references to places that I had come to know well! So, in closing (for real this time), I will leave you with this little nugget of Hitchhiker's joy which struck me my very first weekend in London. I know that my fellow fans will recognize it straight away and for those of you who don't get the reference, aren't you just dying to know? I guess you'll have to start reading! Enjoy!
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