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If you miss the friendly, exacting voice of Douglas Adams, I recommend this posthumously published last visit to the familiar retreat of his silly metaphors, triple negatives, and delightful humor. This is a compilation of essays, interviews, letters, lectures, and fiction, which covers everything from swimming with manta rays to running with dogs; atheism, religion, and quantum mechanics ("There is one particular model of the universe that has turtles all the way down, but here we have gods all the way up"); the lyrics to "Do-Re-Mi"; the Beatles; to what kind of martinis he enjoyed, and how to properly brew a cup of tea. There is an interview with American Atheists magazine in which he seems baffled as to why Americans care who is atheist. (Q: "What message would you like to send to your Atheist fans?" A: "Hello! How are you?") There is an introduction he wrote to a tenth anniversary edition of The Original Hitchhiker Scripts that begins, "I do enjoy having these little chats at the front of books. This is a complete lie, in fact." ("It is very unfair to be asked to write an introduction to a book which contains an absolutely brilliant introduction written on the very subject of introductions to books," writes Stephen Fry in the foreword.)
It was inside the eerie, orange light of a sandstorm that I read him lecture about the "four ages of sand" to describe how we explore and discover our universe: From sand, we make glass, to make telescopes, and then microscopes, and then the silicon chip, and finally fiber optics in the information age. He wrote a great deal in the nineties about what would happen next in the technology world, including an opinion piece in the UK debut issue of Wired Magazine in 1995 (included within). From a hotel bathtub, ca. 1996, he wrote a relatively lengthy article using a Psion palmtop. "I have never written anything in the bath before," he wrote. "Paper gets damp and steamy, pens won't write upside down, typewriters hurt your tummy, and if you are prepared to use a PowerBook in the bath, then I assume that it isn't your own PowerBook."
Adams recommends a couple of his own favorite books. Reminder to myself to read Man on Earth by John Reader and The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.
The last third of the book is unfinished material he was writing for a third Dirk Gently novel. As you might have guessed, it's entertaining and well crafted, and it will hurt your heart a little, as you realize just how good it would have been if it were finished -- not to mention the letdown of an incomplete mystery novel where nothing is resolved and the author took its secrets with him.
In the epilogue, Richard Dawkins writes, "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender (he once climbed Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit to raise money to fight the cretinous trade in rhino horn), Apple Computers has lost its most eloquent apologist. And I have lost an irreplaceable intellectual companion and one of the kindest and funniest men I ever met."
It was inside the eerie, orange light of a sandstorm that I read him lecture about the "four ages of sand" to describe how we explore and discover our universe: From sand, we make glass, to make telescopes, and then microscopes, and then the silicon chip, and finally fiber optics in the information age. He wrote a great deal in the nineties about what would happen next in the technology world, including an opinion piece in the UK debut issue of Wired Magazine in 1995 (included within). From a hotel bathtub, ca. 1996, he wrote a relatively lengthy article using a Psion palmtop. "I have never written anything in the bath before," he wrote. "Paper gets damp and steamy, pens won't write upside down, typewriters hurt your tummy, and if you are prepared to use a PowerBook in the bath, then I assume that it isn't your own PowerBook."
Adams recommends a couple of his own favorite books. Reminder to myself to read Man on Earth by John Reader and The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.
The last third of the book is unfinished material he was writing for a third Dirk Gently novel. As you might have guessed, it's entertaining and well crafted, and it will hurt your heart a little, as you realize just how good it would have been if it were finished -- not to mention the letdown of an incomplete mystery novel where nothing is resolved and the author took its secrets with him.
In the epilogue, Richard Dawkins writes, "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender (he once climbed Kilimanjaro in a rhino suit to raise money to fight the cretinous trade in rhino horn), Apple Computers has lost its most eloquent apologist. And I have lost an irreplaceable intellectual companion and one of the kindest and funniest men I ever met."
