Douglas Adams is the author of that SF masterpiece The Hitchhiker Guide of the Galaxy more people have seen in movies than actually read… (if you are one of them, shame on you. If there is a book non-SF lovers can enjoy nonetheless is this one. Get yourself a copy, you won’t regret it). But the Guide is more of a multimedia suite than just a novel or a movie. There are radio shows, videogames and even puzzles created out of this amazing fictional universe. Another famous thing is the fascination for a specific number, 42, that has quite a place in the Hitchhiker Guide. And we do love numbers, don’t we?
Therefore here it is your numerology guide to the Guide, in the wake of Towel Day, dedicated to his author.
5 – The novels are described as “a trilogy in five parts”, and Douglas allegedly died when writing the sixth one. Now, the number 5 itself has a glorious tradition in speculative fiction. I can’t but recommend the immortal The Illuminatus Trilogy, a series of three books written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson in 1975, mixing up satire, sci-fi and postmodernism all in one. A conspiracy theory classic well in advance of the Da Vinci Code and about a billion times better.
14 – years since Douglas Adams’ death. Even if many don’t remember it today, given his celebrity as the creator of the Guide, he was also a comedian and a TV show writers, co-authoring Monty Python and Doctor Who’s episodes and even starring in them. Awesome!
25 – (May) – aka Towel Day. Actually tomorrow, so go and get your towel ready. It’s “about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.” If you want to know why, read the Guide, chapter 3, or watch this video.
42 – Here it is, the magic figure of Adams’ fictional universe. What is 42? In the Guide, it is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything – even though – of course – nobody knows what the Question originally was. The other obvious question is why 42? Many theories have been proposed for it, all rejected by the author, which allegedly declared (https://groups.google.com/forum/#!original/alt.fan.douglas-adams/595nPukE-Jo/koaAJ3tPBtEJ) it was just a joke, with no special meaning.
Adams has later created the 42 Puzzle, a puzzle that can be solved in multiple ways, all resulting in the answer 42. Manga lovers will also recognise this number- it is the 42, the mysterious member of the Arcadia in Matsumoto’s Captain Harlock series, and associated to death in Japanese language (42 = shi ni = to death).
100 (and counting) – quotes from the Hitchhiker Guide, some of them very, very famous. Here a taste – for the whole set, just….read the books (or watch the movie).
“My doctor says that I have a malformed public-duty gland and a natural deficiency in moral fibre,” Ford muttered to himself, “and that I am therefore excused from saving Universes.”
A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.
For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much — the wheel, New York, wars and so on — whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man — for precisely the same reasons.
And remember….don’t panic!