So Long and Thanks for All the Words: A Toast to Douglas Adams
15 comments
·March 11, 2025stevage
I 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.
cjs_ac
I think it's a lot like a lot of the Monty Python stuff: a lot of it is reflecting on a social order that was particular to Britain and no longer exists in quite the same way, so a lot of the satire doesn't land any more. The offbeat quirkiness has also become mainstream in British comedy, and so has also lost its edge. I think the fandom remains stronger in the US because American comedy still feels industrially mass-produced, and so the absurdism is still a bit novel there.
thom
I 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.
RGX9
I 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
Ah, they were written under time pressure? That actually explains a lot.
quijoteuniv
Ode 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!
flucko
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keepamovin
Multiverse 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.
rusk
Does 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?
mike-the-mikado
It'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.
zabzonk
I think both Adams and Berners Lee were influenced/inspired by Ted Nelson and Project Xanadu.
zabzonk
Trump and Musk are creatures that only Adams could have invented. Thanks a lot, Douglas!
mattkevan
In 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.
CPLX
He did. The parallels between Trump and Zaphod are not subtle.
There'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!