Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Early in the weekend, I purchased Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy from audible.com. I have been listening to the audiobook on my iPod at every opportunity — while thinking about going to lunch, while waiting in line to order my lunch, while eating lunch, during a repair session for my parents’ ailing computer, and while driving in my car to and fro between thinking, eating, and repairing.
I have to say that I just absolutely love this book. I grew up reading the Hitchhiker series, a trilogy in five parts, written by the late British author Douglas Adams, who sadly died of a heart attack at the age of 49 in 2001.
As a teenager, I listened to the radio show and watched every episode of the short-lived TV series (there were only 6 episodes). My paperback copies are in very poor condition from being read so many times throughout my youth, but still sit alongside alongside what I consider to be the other great trilogies of my youth — J.R.R. Tokein’s Lord of the Rings and Madeleine L’Engle’s Wrinkle in Time. None of the books in the other trilogies appear to have suffered through as many repeated late-night readings as the Hitchhiker books, which contain many dog-eared pages loosely held between the dangling and taped covers.
“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.” — The opening sentence of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
For the uninitiated, I should mention that the five books in the series are The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish (1984), and Mostly Harmless (1992). From the titles, you might guess that the contents of the books are somewhat silly, and you would be right.
If you’ve never read them, then you should. A word of warning though: you will either get the humor or you won’t. I don’t say that to be rude or anything, but I have met many people who just don’t like the sarcasm, seemingly pointless banter, and the odd characters and situations that Adams created in his books. And then I’ve met so many more people who love these stories just as much as I do!
What fascinates me most about the books is how the humor, wit, and thought combine together in such unique ways throughout every chapter. There are passages, which at first read, make me double over in laughter at the sheer silliness of it all. Then on second and third read, the same words cause me to become lost in thought as I consider the implications of the underlying social commentary and scientific theories held within each sentence.
I find it difficult to speak about the books without also mentioning more about the author. To understand the series, it may be necessary to understand something more about Douglas Adams. He was a satirist, an author, an “honorary” scientist, a thinker, a visionary, and a great supporter of technology (he reportedly owned the first Macintosh sold in the UK). I should point out that Adams was an avowed atheist, yet from what I see in his writings, he was the sort of man who never stopped questioning the existence and implications of a god in the universe. I completely respect that. That’s more than some religious people ever do. I’ve always thought of Adams as the modern-day Mark Twain, if you would forget that Twain was still alive at what might be considered the beginnings of the modern day.
I don’t have the space or time at the moment to say as much as I would like to about Douglas Adams. I’ll have to return to that at another point. I can only say that I would have loved to have met him while he lived and that I know he is sadly missed by many.
Read Lament for Douglas by Richard Dawkins or maybe some of Adam’s own words for a better perspective.
I’ll be off listening to the rest of the audiobook on my iPod while you read. Enjoy!
“Douglas’s ear for science was finely tuned. He thought like a scientist, but was much funnier.” — Richard Dawkins, eulogy for Douglas Adams, September, 17, 2001
This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself inóan interesting hole I find myself inófits me rather neatly, doesnít it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!í This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, itís still frantically hanging on to the notion that everythingís going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.” — Douglas Adams, Is there an Artificial God?
Other Hitchhiker-related Links:
There’s going to be a new movie based on the books in theaters starting in April 2005. That’s awesome!
There’s a great Wiki on Douglas Adams, the trilogy, and notable phrases.
And here’s an impressive Wiki listing characters, places, and things mentioned in the series with page references: The Ultra-Complete Index to the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
“First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII — and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.” — Douglas Adams
