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“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” turns 42
- cagenut 7y agoman if only he knew what digital watches turned into
- dboreham 7y ago"The Book" surely?
- spongeb00b 7y agoI would love to know what Douglas would think of the modern smartphone. I’ve also always wanted to laser engrave “DON’T PANIC” in large friendly letters on the back of my phone
- ultrablack 7y ago"The sound of several thousand people saying "whoop" at once": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzivgKuhNl4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DzivgKuhNl4
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- 76543210 7y agoI think the book was written to teach us the importance/uses of towels and bags. We just take it for granted.
- b06tmm 7y agoThis. I was going to reply to the anti-christian attitudes but decided I like your surmise better.
- dboreham 7y agoWe need those telephone sanitizers now.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoIn modern culture, they'd be touchscreen kiosk sanitizers.
- tomerbd 7y agoGalaxy S42
- alblue 7y agoThe BBC are re-releasing the episodes as from tonight: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g55m/episodes/guide https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g55m/episodes/guide
- Angostura 7y agoAnd for those of you who would like to hear the original Radio Series again, it's being repeated on BBC Radio 4 Extra right now: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g55m https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g55m I wonder if they will have the original Pink Floyd music when they land on Magrathea, or whether it will be edited out, as it was in the BBC recordings due to rights issues.
- hef19898 7y agoThanks for sharing!
- rjsw 7y agoI think I still have casette tapes of the original run.
- Finnucane 7y agoHeh, when it was first broadcast here, I taped it off the radio, but I think my tapes are long gone.
- Angostura 7y agoI still have the C90s somewhere
- kwhitefoot 7y agoYou can download the episodes with https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer https://github.com/get-iplayer/get_iplayer
- Graham24 7y agoI have them too, both series.
- epanchin 7y agoThe game is also on the bbc, for anyone feeling nostalgic for the BBC Micro game. I spent many frustrated hours dying in that game as a child. https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-game-30th-anniversary-edition https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN...
- lwb 7y ago> Douglas Adams’s masterwork is blithely comic in tone but deeply serious in purpose. I thought it was just a funny book. What is its "deeply serious purpose"?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- TimTheTinker 7y agoPerhaps to call the Christian worldview into question using sarcasm and sardonic humor.
- jhbadger 7y agoCertainly that was part of it, anyway. Adams was a self-described "radical atheist" before that was a popular stance, and he and Richard Dawkins were mutual fans of each others' works and became personal friends.
- 76543210 7y agoWhat particular bits?
- yarrel 7y agoAny of the very clealy labelled bits about religion.
- Eyght 7y agoThe contemporary resurgence of populism in politics feels a lot like the description of democracy in the "Wrong lizard won"-passage. You can read it here: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very-ancient-democracy-you-see-you https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/162557-it-comes-from-a-very...
- 76543210 7y agoI have questions about populism. Hearing about Roman populism makes me think it's better than Nobel rule. At least occasionally the masses get a policy that benefits them. For instance the Trump tax cuts and Obamacare took money from the 10% and gave it to the masses. (I'm a bitter 10%er that thinks it's time for the 10% to unite) So what's wrong with populism? The class warfare? Is the actual issue demagogry like Trump and Bernie that have fake policy that wins the emotional and uneducated Masses?
- WillFlux 7y ago“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”
- userbinator 7y ago"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
- noobly 7y agoWhile I’ve never heard this before, I did have a rather unfortunate chemically-induced experience that viscerally explored this idea in more detail.. :-)
- dylan604 7y agoIf you've never heard this before, you NEED to read it.
- dijksterhuis 7y ago> The story so far: In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.
- neonate 7y agohttps://archive.md/m1Pnl https://archive.md/m1Pnl
- radicalbyte 7y agoIt's quite fitting that we have Zaphod Beeblebrox clones in both Nr 10 and the White House.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y agoI always thought that the fragment about presidency being there to distract people from real power was ridiculously spot on.
- radicalbyte 7y agoDouglas Adams had a great example at home with the Royal Family. It really hit him when I went to America and was exposed to the media. Television there is in this perpetual state of total war, it's as if the news programs have to compete with the adverts for time and attention. On a slow news day you'd wake up there would be some loud fat man screaming about how the President had cornflakes for breakfast instead of Sugar Puffs. Thankfully they'd break after 30 seconds for another 20 minutes of loud and colourful commercials for various opiates with funky names (but the same active ingredient).
- 76543210 7y agoI agree. Do we know the actual rulers? I'm thinking a few Russians who gave Trump loans and owners of American steel companies, but I'm not sure who the specific billionaires are.
- mattkevan 7y agoI do hope the true ruler of things turns out to be an old bloke in a hut with no interest in anything beyond a vague affection for his (possibly imaginary) cat. Otherwise we’re really in trouble.
- foobar1962 7y ago> an old bloke in a hut Wasn't he OUTSIDE the hut?
- tapper 7y agoI love these books, but why post a pece that is paywalled?
- thombat 7y agoIt isn't for me, in Continental Europe. Where are you?
- stuartd 7y agoUK reader here. “Continue reading this article Register with an email address”..
- kwhitefoot 7y agoSame here in Norway.
- RachelF 7y agoPaywalled in US too. The Economist have a new paywall.
- jaclaz 7y agoOpens fine from Italy with Javascript disabled, maybe they failed at making it foolproof: “A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
- ErikAugust 7y agohttps://beta.trimread.com/articles/7070 https://beta.trimread.com/articles/7070
- pachico 7y agoAs anecdote, my girlfriend teaches philosophy and has used fragments of this book more than once. I personally find it to be a modern Alice in Wonderland, don't you think?
- frankling_ 7y agoI recently reread Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan" and was really surprised to notice to what degree Adams drew inspiration from that book. He did acknowledge it as an influence [1], but some ideas my naive self had attributed to Adams are closer to well-done rearrangements/retellings of elements from Sirens of Titan (which certainly wasn't written in a vacuum either) in a different comedic voice. Both works are fantastic, though. [1] http://www.darkermatter.com/issue1/douglas_adams.php http://www.darkermatter.com/issue1/douglas_adams.php
- stuartd 7y agoLoved those interviews. Thank you.
- samplatt 7y agoI read Sirens for the first time just recently, and I'm now frustrated with myself for not spotting the similarities... but then it's been nearly two decades since I last read H2G2...
- smichael 7y agoI had the same feeling when listening to the audio version of Robert Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles. (Recommended!)
- yarrel 7y agoBoth the first book and the start of the second series are among the very funniest things I have ever encountered. They have a density of invention that is truly joyous to follow.
- pierremenard 7y agoIncredible how many people and things were inspired by H2G2, including Radiohead: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ev4ga7/thom-yorke-confirms-ok-computer-is-nerdy-as-shit https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ev4ga7/thom-yorke-confirm...
- dwd 7y agoNaming a song Paranoid Android (my personal all-time favourite) was pretty obvious, though it is not about Marvin. I do dispute his opening statement - Ok Computer was their best album and one of very few albums that you can just leave on repeat without skipping tracks.
- kristianp 7y agoMy first exposure to "Hitchhiker's" was probably the t.v. series. I loved the almost monochrome green graphics and text of the sections covering the Guide's topics, such as [1], which compared Encyclopedia Galactica's entries to the guide's. The narration of Kurzgesagt science videos reminds me fondly of the hg2g [3]. I also loved the bits about people who'll be "the first against the wall when the revolution comes".[2] [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvtPglw5ftk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvtPglw5ftk [2] https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Sirius_Cybernetics_Corporation https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Sirius_Cybernetics_Corpo... [3] https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt/ https://www.youtube.com/user/Kurzgesagt/
- robomartin 7y agoWell, that is going to explain so much about 2020. It’s like the planets aligning. I fully expect Vulcans to make contact with humanity this year. Or Klingons.
- vidarh 7y agoAs long as it isn't Vogons
- simonebrunozzi 7y agoObligatory mention for every fan of Douglas Adams: "Parrots, the Universe, and everything". [0] Watch the whole thing. You will thank me later. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc
- mooze 7y agoBack in 2004 I had the H2G2 website (h2g2.com) bookmarked on my Nokia 3100 and would read it whenever I was waiting for the bus (this was before Google Reader). A cheeky, entertaining precursor to Wikipedia.
- AJCxZ0 7y agoTV Series available on Amazon Prime at https://smile.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07CGTY13F https://smile.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B07CGTY13F Radio series CD box set available in my car's changer, currently on disc three of the Tertiary Phase.