On This Day…1952

11 March 1952

On this day in 1952 Douglas Noel Adams was born.

Douglas Adams was a friend to science, the Mountain Gorilla and the Black Rhino. To the millions he inspired and entertained through his writing he was a creative and satirical genius.  He died of a heart attack on 11 May 2001.  His fans have since that year on 25 May each year marked the anniversary of his passing (2 weeks later) as Towel Day derived from the importance given to the towel in his trilogy in 5 parts, the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.  

His other works include, the Dirk Gently books, contributions to the Dr Who television series and Monty Python series in which he appeared. 

Killer Quotes – Douglas Adams on the vastness of space

“Space is big. Really big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean you may think it’s a long walk down the road to the chemist, but that’s just peanuts to space.”

Douglas Adams – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams and his marvelous trilogy (in five parts) The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy remain one of the enduring memories of my childhood and greatest influences on me as I grew up.  Wonderfully entertaining and thought provoking, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy introduced my young, impressionable mind to the routine questioning of accepted or received wisdom and let me believe that there was something different out there than what we had all been told to us by our parents, our teachers and our churches.  More than anything else, however, it made the idea of knowledge, cleverness and learning about things fun.

Along with another great influence on my formative years, Carl Sagan, Douglas Adams is and remains one of my favourite thinkers and authors because of his unorthodox approach to the explanation of the every day and his preparedness to give established viewpoints a good hard shove in order to see what happens when they are tipped on their side, their head or onto someone else’s head.

Do yourself a favour and try to source the original BBC Television Series of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It still stands up well even after 30 years.  Also, avoid the American movie version like so many biblical plagues.