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So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams
- quijoteuniv 2y agoOde to Douglas Adams: A Vogon Tribute Oh blubbering nebulae of bureaucratic slime, Hearken to this most dolorous rhyme! For Douglas Adams, that scribe of renown, We vomit forth verses of gelatinous brown. With squelching syntax and belching prose, We honor his mind where improbability flows. Hitchhiker’s Guide! A tome most absurd, Turning logic to gibbering, flailing bird. Behold the beauty of bureaucrats vile, Whose forms in triplicate stretch mile by mile. For Adams, dear Adams, saw through the farce, And sculpted with words a galactic arse. The number 42! Oh cosmic decree! A joke of the universe, but not for thee! With Marvin the Paranoid, sighing so deep, And whales who contemplate death in their sleep. O Adams, grand spinner of nonsense profound, May your soul in hyperspace ever be found. Yet should you return, we promise you this: More poetry! More Vogon! More hideous bliss!
- rusk 2y agoDoes anyone know was Tim Berners Lee a fan and was he influenced or did he have any inkling he was manifesting the infrastructure for the guide?
- zabzonk 2y agoI think both Adams and Berners Lee were influenced/inspired by Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
- predictsoft 2y agoTed actually collaborated with Adams on Hyperland TV show.
- mike-the-mikado 2y agoIt's quite likely that he heard the original radio broadcasts in 1978. Entertainment choices were much more limited then and it was very popular, particularly among young people with technical interests.
- hinkley 2y ago“As We May Think”, Vannevar Bush, 1945 Mother of All Demos, Douglas Engelbart, 1968
- zabzonk 2y ago[flagged]
- CPLX 2y agoHe did. The parallels between Trump and Zaphod are not subtle.
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoSomeone fetch Trump a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster post haste! Oh, someone already did a few decades ago.
- zabzonk 2y agoBetter still, fetch him a Bugblatter Beast of Traal, and let the two of them duke it out.
- JadeNB 2y ago> He did. The parallels between Trump and Zaphod are not subtle. Zaphod was monstrously self-centred, and it could make him callous, but I don't think he was ever reported to experience hatred, or intentionally stoke it in others.
- mattkevan 2y agoIn Adams’ universe people realised early-on that under no circumstances should anyone capable of having themselves elected president actually be allowed to do the job. Presidents had too much fun being president to notice they didn’t have anyp power. Zaphod even gave himself a lobotomy to become stupid enough to be president, unlike the current lot who don’t even have that going for them.
- keepamovin 2y agoMultiverse Employee Handbook is like something from the Time Variance Authority, the Adjustment Bureau, or Everything Everywhere All at Once - with a few shades of Severance I like these themes about the seeming absurdness and banal transcendence of capitalist systems and work today. Fight Club also echoes.
- 6forward 2y agoThe TVA comparison is spot-on, bureaucracy across realities is universally soul-crushing. Severance's work/life divide feels like our quantum break room that exists in multiple states (you never know what you’ll find in the fridge). And yes, Everything Everywhere captures that cosmic-meets-mundane vibe I'm after. Corporate structures and cosmic physics share an absurd truth: both function through rules nobody fully understands but everyone pretends to follow
- keepamovin 2y agoThanks! Glad you enjoyed the riff and associations. Have you see TAB ? Do you feel there's any Fight Club connection? If you haven't seen either (for a while) they are definitely worth a rewatch!
- RGX9 2y agoThere's "The Salmon of Doubt", an excellent collection of misc essays and writings of Douglas Adams published after his death, and it contains his last unfinished Dirk Gently novel. It's about one third finished, and it's really just wild: There's one narrative strand about Dirk Gently, a private detective, receiving mysterious anonymous payments and deciding to follow random strangers, one about a paragliding genius architect who's all by himself in a weird future architect's utopia, and one about an escaping rhinocerous that's mainly narrated in terms of what it smells. It's fantastically creative and incredibly sad that we won't get to read AD's ending, although I doubt that he actually knew where he was going with it at the time he wrote the bits that are there. It's this grand setup that really leaves you wondering what it means and how it's supposed to come together. I'd encourage anyone to read it and try to come up with an ending. It feels like a fiendishly hard puzzle, and really gets you in the authors head. And do let me know if you have a good one!
- BLKNSLVR 2y agoThere were four episodes of a Dirk Gently TV series done by the BBC which I really found both clever and charming in just the right way for Dirk Gently. Some of it grated, but in a way that I feel it was correctly intended to. It's a shame it was cancelled before it could do a bit more exploration. They seemed to be onto a good thing. The US TV Series I also enjoyed, but it's much more of a radical departure from the books than the British TV show is. But it's chaotic, it has interesting characters, and the whole crazily chaotic storyline is choreographed well and ties together cleverly.
- usrusr 2y agoOh, that US series! Never has a book license been touched more gently (pun really not intended, can't think of a good replacement to avoid it). "Yeah, we can't turn this into an at least tolerably good TV series, let's do this completely unrelated things instead". And yet they captured the spirit so well!
- jemmyw 2y agoThe BBC series was really excellent. Stephen Mangan was perfectly cast. I enjoyed it way more than Sherlock or anything else at the time that took itself too seriously.
- stevage 2y agoI always kind of wish HHGttG was as good as the geekdom's fondness of it suggests. I read it, I enjoyed it, but really, it is such a depressing series. And there is very little that's particularly funny or interesting after the first book and a half. So many dull and drawn out scenes of characters in miserable situations. And that whole tortured Krikkit gag trying to explain the origins of cricket. Sigh.
- RGX9 2y agoI completely agree, it's one of those works where the pop culture lens filters a lot of things. I think Adam Douglas himself mentions in an interview that the later HHGttG books reflect his personal depression, and the enormous time pressure they were written in. Probably the whole series should have been one book, but it also makes it feel a bit human - here's this really smart guy with a lot of brilliant ideas, he just didn't manage to fully finish everything before it's shipped.
- stevage 2y agoAh, they were written under time pressure? That actually explains a lot.
- atq2119 2y agoI believe it's more that Douglas Adams was a huge procrastinator.
- sooperserieous 2y ago"I love deadlines. I love the WHOOSHING sound they make as they go be." -- DA
- thom 2y agoI consider myself an enormous Douglas Adam’s fan, but I only really enjoy the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, so I don’t think I can get too uppity about your comment. I’m not sure I’d call it depressing though, if anything it’s absurd in the tradition of Camus, and lit up my world during some bleak periods in my youth. The cultural impact of those early works is still enormous, at least in the UK, so I can’t begrudge the later works, and I still find the end of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish quite moving.
- mykowebhn 2y agoIn my senior year of high school, it was midterms and I had to study. I had a horrible problem with procrastination. So there I was in the library about to start studying when I happened upon the first book of his "trilogy". I finished it without stopping to study. And then I found the next two books in the trilogy and devoured those too. I loved those books and luckily I passed my exams. It was stressful at the time knowing I had to study, but today I remember that time fondly.
- wrboyce 2y agoIn case you are unaware, the hhgttg “trilogy” is actually 5 (or 6, depending on your view) books long. “So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish” and “Mostly Harmless” are definitely worth a read!
- cptnapalm 2y agoI remember there being a collection of the first 3 called the Complete Hitchhiker's Guide. In typical Adam's fashion, after the 4th book was released a new compendium was released called the More than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide. That titling should have continued, so we'd have gotten the Even More than Complete Hitchiker's Guide and, finally, the Completest Complete Hitchiker's Guide.
- pnm45678 2y agoHah, yes. "Mostly Harmless" did have this on the front: "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy".
- chrisweekly 2y agoYes! Frank Zappa is the rarest of individuals cut from the same cloth as Adams, and your comment reminded me of his amazing 3rd release of instrumental cuts, aptly titled "Return of the Son of Shut Up 'N Play Your Guitar".
- bigstrat2003 2y agoI definitely felt like the series dropped off hard after Life, The Universe, And Everything. So Long And Thanks For All The Fish was kind of meandering, and Mostly Harmless was just plain depressing and a terrible ending for the series. So my personal advice would be to stop after the third book.
- NKosmatos 2y agoWhenever I see something about one of my favorite sci-fi authors, especially if the phrase existential terror is included, the Total Perspective Vortex comes to mind :-) https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex https://hitchhikers.fandom.com/wiki/Total_Perspective_Vortex
- demaga 2y agoI've found that in times of great stress, re-reading HHGTTG helps the most. Without fail, it makes me laugh and think about world more lightly, regardless of the circumstances. Wonderful books.
- voganmother42 2y agoIm with you! The Golgafrinchan government bits of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and the opening of Life the Universe and Everything are my retreats when things are rough, but the entire series is amazing!
- voganmother42 2y agoOh and I should say, I enjoy all the different Adams adaptations(even the movie!), but my personal favorite that I think is less well known: the HHGG audiobooks read by the author. The timing and phrasing of Douglas Adams was truly marvelous!
- cypherpunks01 2y ago“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-two 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.”
- prerok 2y agoYeah, climbing out of the water was a bad idea :)
- beardyw 2y agoI remember tuning in to the first episode on BBC Radio 4, having heard about it the previous evening. It was so absolutely tuned into my way of thinking it could have been written just for me. Even now, as they say, the pictures are better on radio. Other adaptations have always disappointed me, apart from the subsequent books, for the same reason. Douglas Adams was a great loss when he died, but what we had from him was the best.
- thom 2y agoExactly my feelings. The CD boxed set, now scratched and basically unplayable, is still one of my prized possessions. I've probably listened to it hundreds of times, often back to back.
- Angostura 2y agoSadly the CDs were a little different to the original radio broadcasts due to rights issues. Notably Marvin 'humming like Pink Floyd' on the surface of Magrathea was missing :(
- snozolli 2y agoOne of my greatest regrets in life is seeing a "ticket" on the back of an EE trade magazine to see Douglas Adams give a presentation. I believe the event was in San Diego, and I was living in Arizona. The event was that upcoming weekend. I was tempted to drive out for the event, but thought, "nah, that's a torturous drive, I'll catch him another time." He died within a year. "The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't." This line alone did nearly as much to shape my adolescent sense of humor as all of Mel Brooks' movies combined.
- sidmitra 2y agoHitchhikers guide was a personality defining read for me when i was younger. I also recommend this video: Parrots, the Universe and Everything https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc Just this week i was looking for more humour writing like Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse. I came across this award which seems interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollinger_Everyman_Wodehouse_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bollinger_Everyman_Wodehouse_P... I plan to read some of them this year.
- JadeNB 2y ago> Just this week i was looking for more humour writing like Douglas Adams, PG Wodehouse. They are both masters of producing an absolutely perfect phrase that could have come from no-one but them—so's Pterry, by the way—but otherwise it'd never occur to me to lump them together. They seem radically different tonally to me.
- voganmother42 2y agoI highly recommend “High Vaultage” from that list (and the podcast that preceded it is also absolutely outstanding and hilarious). I am a huge fan of Sir Terry Pratchett and definitely second that recommendation as well, both offer a wonderfully unique perspective.
- Slow_Hand 2y agoI recommend 'The Cyberiad' by Stanislaw Lem. Get the Michael Kandel translation. As an Adams fan since high school I was floored when I eventually read The Cyberiad and realized that Lem had laid all of the groundwork fourteen years earlier. It's very much the proto Hitchhiker's Guide. It's got it all: Intergalactic protagonists on a series of highly absurd adventures, enabled by fantastical tech, and a playful approach to themes at the intersection of technology, philosophy, and contemporary physics. It is laugh out loud funny. Especially once you get into the first, second, and third sallys. The humor is fiendishly clever. Lem is incredibly punny and it blows my mind to know that it was translated from Polish(!). I hope Michael Kandel gets his due for keeping the spirit of this book intact, because it really hinges on some very clever use of language.
- salgernon 2y agoIn 1988 I was working on a Mac software package and I remember the thrill of his returned “Customer Registration” card arriving. We had a small display cabinet and it went in there (along with Stanley Kubrik’s and as few others) The Radio Series was the best, followed by the scripts to the radio series (more random access!) The TV series was actually pretty good too (like a Tom Baker Doctor Who (Adams was also a Who editor/writer during that time and had access to all manner of polyurethane monster kit!)) I also loved the Dirk Gently books but I always felt like they needed more of a denouement. Every passage before the end was like a hand carved chocolate frog, and the endings were said frog hitting a publisher at speed.
- hermitcrab 2y agoI've also had a few famous people buy my software. It is quite a thrill. Apart from the one that I detested.
- billforsternz 2y agoGo on, you can tell us who that one was and why you detested them.
- salgernon 2y agoWith all likelihood anyone still producing commercial (or free!) software today, or in the last 40 years, has users that they would love to see eaten by crows.
- hermitcrab 2y agoIt was a particularly loathsome British politician. But I'm not going to say which one. ;0)
- kristianp 2y agoThe tv series was my introduction to Hitchhiker's. I loved the presentation of the guide entries. E.g. the babelfish at 2m5s: https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=125 https://youtu.be/iuumnjJWFO4?t=125
- klep 2y agoWhen I was in high school in the mid-90s, I emailed Douglas Adams, who freely gave out his email address at the time. I told him how reading "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" got me more interested in my Physics class, and generally helped introduce me to a world beyond computer games. He wrote back: "Thanks for your note. Glad you enjoyed the books. I'm glad if I got you interested. But I'm always surprised that people are surprised to find that the world we unexpectedly find ourselves in is interesting. Best, Douglas Adams" Not his most pithy writing to be sure, but I love that I have this personalized bit of Douglas Adams wisdom that nobody else has ever seen (well, now they have).
- ninalanyon 2y agoI agree with DNA there, the world is such an endlessly interesting place that I can't understand how people don't find it mind blowingly fascinating.
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoHe was actually a keynote speaker at one of Apple's first WWDCs. He was a registered Apple Developer (so was Harry Anderson, who I also think was a keynote speaker). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UNG3cQoOEc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UNG3cQoOEc (not from the WWDC. I don’t know if there are recordings of the earliest ones).
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 2y agoUPDATE: I think I may be wrong. I think it was another conference. I know he attended WWDC, but maybe didn’t keynote. They had some whacky keynotes and speakers. I know that Ken Kesey was a rather interesting one.
- tombert 2y agoI don't know what you categorize it as (I usually call it an "educational standup"), but his last talk before his death "Parrots, The Universe, and Everything" is one of the greatest things I've ever seen. It's very funny, with a lot of interesting anecdotes about his life, with a lot of interesting facts about animals, and he manages to tie the entire thing together with a pretty clever theme about the environment. I genuinely think it's one of the greatest public speeches ever done, at least in the English language. If you haven't seen it, it's an hour and a half long, and it's totally worth it: https://youtu.be/_ZG8HBuDjgc https://youtu.be/_ZG8HBuDjgc