Douglas Noel Adams was born at Cambridge, England on this day in 1952. After earning both bachelors and masters degrees there, he did some comedy acting and writing, including work with a couple of the Monty Python gang, and eventually wrote a radio series for BBC called "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." It first became a TV series, then a book. Actually a trilogy, which means that there are three volumes, except that this one has five. It had some science fiction elements, there's a dash of philosophy, but it was comedy. Here's a sample:
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
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.
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.
My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre, and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.
This planet has - or rather had - a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy.
Totally mad. Utter nonsense. But we'll do it because it's brilliant nonsense.
- All from Douglas Noel Adams, 1952 - 2001
From Quotes of the Day
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Besides those quotes, I find value in this one:
"He was constantly reminded of how startlingly different a place the world was when viewed from a point only three feet to the left."
I find that to be a valuable insight about perspective.
Cheers
We will always miss him. but laugh as we do so.
Alas, we hardly got to know him... In homage, my favorite quotes:
"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."
"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."
"Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?"
Marvin the Paranoid Android, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Slartibartfast, Ford Prefect - brilliant names.
Best of all was Ford Prefects diagnosis of humanity: 'they keep talking because if their mouth stops moving their brain might start working'. The only version of Hitchhiker's worth your time is the original BBC Radio 4 series. All else - book, film, TV series - is dross.