Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.
– Douglas Adams
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The answer to the great question of Life, the Universe and Everything is … forty two.
– Douglas Adams
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We have normality. I repeat, we have normality. Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.
– Douglas Adams
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Douglas Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was I think a brilliant & creative writer, he is known as a humourist and dramatist. He is most famous for his so-called ‘trilogy’ of five books! The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy (HHGTTG).
HHGTTG started as a popular BBC radio series in 1987, Adams then expanded the story of hapless human Arthur Dent’s bizarre adventures in space and time with a motley crew of aliens and a paranoid android, into series of best-selling books, over 15 million copies so far have been sold. The HHGTTG was made into a TV series in 1981, stage shows, DC (Superman) Comics ran the trilogy and a movie was finally made in 2005, after Adams’s death. The movie did reasonably well and in DVD format, however we wonder what Douglas would have thought of the movie adaptation from his creation.
HHGTTG cleverly surreal and played around with philosophy, the meaning of life, Big Bang, End of the Universe, aliens, space travel, rock stars , real astronomical stars and of course hitch hiking!
Please read the books or listen to the recorded original radio series of which I think were the best iterations of the stories.
The wikipedia entry expands on HHGTTG
Adams also appeared in cult comedy Monty Pythons Flying Circus and he was a script writer and Editor for the BBC classic sci fi series Dr Who.
After HHGTTG, Adams created Dirk Gently an eccentric ‘Oxbridge’ educated private detective, who ran the ‘Holistic Detective Agency’, Dirk believed that all things and events were interconnected somehow making a complete bigger ‘picture’ (Holism), and tracing these interconnections would help Dirk solve any case he was presented with.
The Dirk Gently character from the books were made into a BBC radio and TV series, sadly the BBC recently cut funding for a third TV series, just when it was getting popular 🙁
Adams died suddenly aged 49 when his fame was growing, he will be sadly missed for his original and unique thinking.
HHGTTG has built up a cult following.
As a tribute to Douglas, on 25 May each year since his passing, fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour. They also take pictures of themselves with their towels and post it everywhere on the net. Some fans gather to celebrate the event. Towel day is an act of love, and love is always better when you’re not a poor individual sitting on your own, alone. On this day, you’re also welcome to drink six pints of bitter and eat some peanuts (at lunchtime if possible). (you need to read the book to understand this!)
BUT WHY A TOWEL?
Serious hitchhikers on long travels must carry a towel
Let’s quote here The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy?
“A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker 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 Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft 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 to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a bush, 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.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitchhiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitchhiker might accidentally have “lost”. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is clearly a man to be reckoned with”.
– Douglas Adams: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
