Douglas Adams: So long and thanks for all the fun
June 25, 2006 | 12:00am
This Week’s Winner
Edrie Alcanzare, 22, is a huge Star Trek fanatic, an obsessed Dungeons & Dra-gons–Forgotten Realms player, and an occasional computer gamer. He has a psychology degree and "managed to get an admission to the College of Medicine of that same state university, thereby further eroding whatever vestiges of prestige that university had." Although he used to write prolifically in his online journal about his adventures there, he now spends most of his time in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Manila muttering the name "Joy Anne" over and over.
Douglas Adams died on May 11, 2001 while working out in a private gym. It was the absurd, sudden death most fans would have expected from the author of The Hitchhiker Trilogy. It was the kind of demise, I believe, he would have wanted, rather than a long battle with a degenerative disease or condition, because it was unexpected and ironic, considering that he had a heart attack while performing an activity that was meant to prevent heart attacks.
I did not hear of this event back then, when I was in the 11th grade, back when I was so close to starting a religion that would have him as a prophet. If I had, I would have immediately venerated him to divinity – his having saved me, through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from the mind-numbing sentimentality and melodrama that is the hallmark of high school life.
In the five books of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, Adams showed that death was not the end. The destruction of the Earth and the death of the human race to create a hyperspace bypass in the first book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, was just the beginning of the misadventures of Arthur Dent, the bumbling antihero, who goes on to "being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he had ever dreamed existed…."
In that same book, death is used "in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization" from Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent to prevent him from reciting a "twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles." For Adams, poetry is a tool for proliferating sentimentality, the most dangerous emotion, and death was used to save people from it.
For most of the series, however, the demise of characters is a release from the torture of existence. Arthur’s friend, Ford Prefect, had a father who died of shame, "a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy." Death was also an escape for Prak, a man who knows the location of The Question (because the answer is 42) to Life, The Universe and Everything, in the third book with the same name. Here, Arthur Dent has degenerated into a sappy, melodramatic idiot and Prak dies in exasperation.
This same usage of death would resurface in the fourth book, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, when Marvin, an android with a brain "the size of a planet," passes away. His existence, which spanned longer than the universe, thanks to various temporal paradoxes and long errands by the organic imbecile life-forms around him, was marred by an incurable depression brought about by being a prototype robot with the Genuine People Personalities feature.
Those who are denied death as an escape from the nightmare called life often lose their dignity and their minds. The best example of this is Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who appears in Life, The Universe and Everything. Wowbagger had "immortality inadvertently thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands." To cope with his inability to die, he resorts to insulting everybody in the universe, "not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit," but a purpose that would give him something to do for the rest of his days.
One of my teachers back in high school once remarked that the easiest and cheapest way for a mediocre author to end story is to kill off the protagonists. This might seem true for Mostly Harmless, the fifth and last book of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, except this was Douglas Adams and he was no novice writer. In it, Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian – three characters who have appeared in earlier books – are stuck on an alternate planet Earth that is once again about to be demolished. Their demise provides a bleak ending to The Hitchhiker series with no possibility of a forthcoming book, but Adams explained in an interview that killing off the characters was his way of organizing things, providing a neat start for the planned, but never finished, sixth book, which was to be titled, Salmon of Doubt. He admitted that Mostly Harmless’s bleak nature (reminiscent of Marvin) was caused by him having a bad year and that he wanted Salmon of Doubt to end The Hitchhiker Trilogy on a more upbeat note.
The last book, of course, never came. Douglas Adams was notorious for writing delays because he wanted the finished product to be perfect and not just mindless drivel churned out by the publisher’s desire to earn money by exploiting his fans. His death became the insurmountable obstacle that prevented The Hitchhiker Trilogy from ending on a more positive manner.
In a sense, the manner of his death, just like the deaths of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian in Mostly Harmless, became his final message to his fans. Douglas Adams was a prophet, being the second person to own a Macintosh computer in Great Britain. His death, when the new millennium was just a few months old, was a warning that things were not looking good. Consider how he died in 2001, several months before the terrorist attacks on the United States, which subsequently led to the polarization of Western Civilization between pro-war advocates under the leadership of George W. Bush and anti-war activists, with the former winning most of the time. It was like a return to the nightmare of the 1980s with Ronald Reagan and his cowboy diplomacy, the only person Douglas Adams ever personally reviled. In the short story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe," a prequel to The Hitchhiker Trilogy, he said that Reagan is one of "the most dangerous creatures that ever lived because there is nothing [he] will not do if allowed, and nothing [he] will not be allowed to do…" alluding to how Reagan recklessly still adhered to the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction and rejection of the No First-Use Policy.
In Mostly Harmless, which has the alternate Earth set in the mid-1980s, Reagan is satirized as President Hudson, a man who would consult his astrologer over almost anything, from choosing the flavor of his dessert to whether or not to bomb Damascus.
To Adams, George W. Bush is just a clone of Ronald Reagan, except with less charisma and a smaller brain. Bush’s noncommittal stance on the Kyoto Protocol, the first step in trying to curb greenhouse emissions, attests to this fact. Douglas Adams was a staunch environmental activist and has gone on expeditions to see endangered animal species, writing a book, Last Chance to See, about the last chance to see these fast disappearing fauna.
The green Vogons, who did not make an appearance in the third or fourth books, represent the bureaucrats whose decisions bring about the destruction of rainforests, jungles, lakes, seas, and rivers. The fact that they return in Mostly Harmless draped in a "corporate gray" color scheme signifies the evolution of yesterday’s bureaucrats to today’s corporate executives who will not hesitate to destroy the planet just to increase the contents of their pockets.
Thus, the abrupt ending of The Hithchhiker series, with the main characters’ deaths, is seen not as an un-glorious surrender but more of a challenge. In effect, Douglas Adams is telling his fans that corporations are selfishly destroying the environment. Who will stand up to them?
This is why I have been morbidly harping about death. Douglas Adams’ demise revealed to fans the great effort and resources he gave in protecting the environment. In life, these details remained secret, but now that he is gone, he has led the way for others to follow.
It is Douglas Adams’ talent for satire that saves his writing from becoming the preachy rhetoric that would scare away most readers. The Hitchhiker series manages to be seamless both as a "closed" work or as satire.
As a "closed" work, The Hitchhiker Trilogy can be taken for what it is on the surface: a science fiction story revolving around the lone human male, Arthur Dent, who has survived the destruction of the Earth. While most would count him as extremely lucky, the events that happen to him after prove that the universe can be a very insulting place.
As an allegory, however, it shows Douglas Adams’ great talent. Its potency lies in the fact that while it is warning us of how the environment is being marred, it also entertains us. The subtle message Adams leaves is more powerful than any pamphlet on the evils trans-national corporations have committed against the planet where we live. For him, one can save the environment and still laugh along the way.
Edrie Alcanzare, 22, is a huge Star Trek fanatic, an obsessed Dungeons & Dra-gons–Forgotten Realms player, and an occasional computer gamer. He has a psychology degree and "managed to get an admission to the College of Medicine of that same state university, thereby further eroding whatever vestiges of prestige that university had." Although he used to write prolifically in his online journal about his adventures there, he now spends most of his time in the psychiatric ward of a hospital in Manila muttering the name "Joy Anne" over and over.
Douglas Adams died on May 11, 2001 while working out in a private gym. It was the absurd, sudden death most fans would have expected from the author of The Hitchhiker Trilogy. It was the kind of demise, I believe, he would have wanted, rather than a long battle with a degenerative disease or condition, because it was unexpected and ironic, considering that he had a heart attack while performing an activity that was meant to prevent heart attacks.
I did not hear of this event back then, when I was in the 11th grade, back when I was so close to starting a religion that would have him as a prophet. If I had, I would have immediately venerated him to divinity – his having saved me, through The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, from the mind-numbing sentimentality and melodrama that is the hallmark of high school life.
In the five books of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, Adams showed that death was not the end. The destruction of the Earth and the death of the human race to create a hyperspace bypass in the first book, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to The Galaxy, was just the beginning of the misadventures of Arthur Dent, the bumbling antihero, who goes on to "being alternately blown up and insulted in more bizarre regions of the Galaxy than he had ever dreamed existed…."
In that same book, death is used "in a desperate attempt to save life and civilization" from Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent to prevent him from reciting a "twelve-book epic entitled My Favorite Bathtime Gurgles." For Adams, poetry is a tool for proliferating sentimentality, the most dangerous emotion, and death was used to save people from it.
For most of the series, however, the demise of characters is a release from the torture of existence. Arthur’s friend, Ford Prefect, had a father who died of shame, "a terminal disease in some parts of the Galaxy." Death was also an escape for Prak, a man who knows the location of The Question (because the answer is 42) to Life, The Universe and Everything, in the third book with the same name. Here, Arthur Dent has degenerated into a sappy, melodramatic idiot and Prak dies in exasperation.
This same usage of death would resurface in the fourth book, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, when Marvin, an android with a brain "the size of a planet," passes away. His existence, which spanned longer than the universe, thanks to various temporal paradoxes and long errands by the organic imbecile life-forms around him, was marred by an incurable depression brought about by being a prototype robot with the Genuine People Personalities feature.
Those who are denied death as an escape from the nightmare called life often lose their dignity and their minds. The best example of this is Wowbagger the Infinitely Prolonged, who appears in Life, The Universe and Everything. Wowbagger had "immortality inadvertently thrust upon him by an unfortunate accident with an irrational particle accelerator, a liquid lunch and a pair of rubber bands." To cope with his inability to die, he resorts to insulting everybody in the universe, "not a very good purpose, as he would have been the first to admit," but a purpose that would give him something to do for the rest of his days.
One of my teachers back in high school once remarked that the easiest and cheapest way for a mediocre author to end story is to kill off the protagonists. This might seem true for Mostly Harmless, the fifth and last book of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, except this was Douglas Adams and he was no novice writer. In it, Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian – three characters who have appeared in earlier books – are stuck on an alternate planet Earth that is once again about to be demolished. Their demise provides a bleak ending to The Hitchhiker series with no possibility of a forthcoming book, but Adams explained in an interview that killing off the characters was his way of organizing things, providing a neat start for the planned, but never finished, sixth book, which was to be titled, Salmon of Doubt. He admitted that Mostly Harmless’s bleak nature (reminiscent of Marvin) was caused by him having a bad year and that he wanted Salmon of Doubt to end The Hitchhiker Trilogy on a more upbeat note.
The last book, of course, never came. Douglas Adams was notorious for writing delays because he wanted the finished product to be perfect and not just mindless drivel churned out by the publisher’s desire to earn money by exploiting his fans. His death became the insurmountable obstacle that prevented The Hitchhiker Trilogy from ending on a more positive manner.
In a sense, the manner of his death, just like the deaths of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and Trillian in Mostly Harmless, became his final message to his fans. Douglas Adams was a prophet, being the second person to own a Macintosh computer in Great Britain. His death, when the new millennium was just a few months old, was a warning that things were not looking good. Consider how he died in 2001, several months before the terrorist attacks on the United States, which subsequently led to the polarization of Western Civilization between pro-war advocates under the leadership of George W. Bush and anti-war activists, with the former winning most of the time. It was like a return to the nightmare of the 1980s with Ronald Reagan and his cowboy diplomacy, the only person Douglas Adams ever personally reviled. In the short story "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe," a prequel to The Hitchhiker Trilogy, he said that Reagan is one of "the most dangerous creatures that ever lived because there is nothing [he] will not do if allowed, and nothing [he] will not be allowed to do…" alluding to how Reagan recklessly still adhered to the idea of Mutually Assured Destruction and rejection of the No First-Use Policy.
In Mostly Harmless, which has the alternate Earth set in the mid-1980s, Reagan is satirized as President Hudson, a man who would consult his astrologer over almost anything, from choosing the flavor of his dessert to whether or not to bomb Damascus.
To Adams, George W. Bush is just a clone of Ronald Reagan, except with less charisma and a smaller brain. Bush’s noncommittal stance on the Kyoto Protocol, the first step in trying to curb greenhouse emissions, attests to this fact. Douglas Adams was a staunch environmental activist and has gone on expeditions to see endangered animal species, writing a book, Last Chance to See, about the last chance to see these fast disappearing fauna.
The green Vogons, who did not make an appearance in the third or fourth books, represent the bureaucrats whose decisions bring about the destruction of rainforests, jungles, lakes, seas, and rivers. The fact that they return in Mostly Harmless draped in a "corporate gray" color scheme signifies the evolution of yesterday’s bureaucrats to today’s corporate executives who will not hesitate to destroy the planet just to increase the contents of their pockets.
Thus, the abrupt ending of The Hithchhiker series, with the main characters’ deaths, is seen not as an un-glorious surrender but more of a challenge. In effect, Douglas Adams is telling his fans that corporations are selfishly destroying the environment. Who will stand up to them?
This is why I have been morbidly harping about death. Douglas Adams’ demise revealed to fans the great effort and resources he gave in protecting the environment. In life, these details remained secret, but now that he is gone, he has led the way for others to follow.
It is Douglas Adams’ talent for satire that saves his writing from becoming the preachy rhetoric that would scare away most readers. The Hitchhiker series manages to be seamless both as a "closed" work or as satire.
As a "closed" work, The Hitchhiker Trilogy can be taken for what it is on the surface: a science fiction story revolving around the lone human male, Arthur Dent, who has survived the destruction of the Earth. While most would count him as extremely lucky, the events that happen to him after prove that the universe can be a very insulting place.
As an allegory, however, it shows Douglas Adams’ great talent. Its potency lies in the fact that while it is warning us of how the environment is being marred, it also entertains us. The subtle message Adams leaves is more powerful than any pamphlet on the evils trans-national corporations have committed against the planet where we live. For him, one can save the environment and still laugh along the way.
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