A Fictionwriter’s Guide to the Galaxy
Corbis
As saddened as I am by Douglas Adams, the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, leaving us at 49, I think he might agree there is fitting irony in having a heart attack after working out to stay in shape in a Santa Barbara health club.
His brilliant BBC Radiophonic Workshop radio series spawned books, a TV series, a multimedia company, a criminally unproduced screenplay. Adams, in younger days, took a moment to lay drunk in a field in Austria, his Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe nearby, and had an initial thought which would, years later, generate such mind-swizzling, comedic science fiction conceits as the Babelfish, which, once stuck in your ear, could translate any language. [Since this writing, there now exists an online language translation software by that name.] His Guide introduced us to Arthur Dent, who escapes with his friend Ford Prefect (who turns out to be an alien), the destruction of Earth so that the Vogon race can make room for a "hyperspace bypass."
He gave us Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed President of the Universe who acted like a rock star on permanent vacation. Adams introduced us to the most potent drink in existence, the Pan-Galactic Gargleblaster, which according to the Guide, "...was like having your brain smashed out with a slice of lemon wrapped around a gold brick."
I recall storming up Noe Street in San Francisco, just off the bus, stomping uphill into a quasi-gale force wind, in order to get home in time to tape yet another Guide. It was and is screamingly inventive; its marvelous concepts, wordplay, acting and impeccable sound design make it one of the most prized possessions in my audio tape archive.
I shall treasure the time I saw Adams read at Cody's Books in Berkeley, and the hysterical passage in which Marvin, the paranoid android, forever depressed, is left to stop a powerful, Cockney-accented Frogstar battle tank, whilst the humans run for cover. With hysterical, flat affect, Adams as Marvin explained he was unarmed and the humans left him nothing to protect himself. "Not even an electronic sausage."
The tank, in angry solidarity, starts firing its guns, unthinkingly shooting out part of the floor and plummeting to destruction.
I use that segment in my UCLA Extension class on Humorous Fiction and Nonfiction. Adams was that rare breed of high-tech giga-guru and wordsmith. His ability to come up with mega-concepts made him the Bucky Fuller of funny sci-fi.
He could muster a nasty bite in his creativity, like science fiction master Philip K. Dick. Adams, though, also gently chided us for our selfishness, our egocentric pride, our assumption of mastery over our fates and our implausible insistence that no other "intelligent life" but us could exist in a system we call the Universe and yet cannot begin to understand.
That's why Deep Thought, the computer created over centuries to come up with the ultimate answer to Life, the Universe and Everything, finally spits out, "42." Matt Ridley, author of the tome Genome: Autobiography of a Species in 23 Chapters, recently recalled the "42" concept at the UCLA Festival of Books. It's still unassumingly important. In a world this screwed up, are we asking the right questions?
The cover of the Guide simply had the words "Don't Panic." Douglas, my dear boy, easy for you to say, now.
(Originally published in Entertainment Today)
