The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy

I grew up in the 80s and I identify with that period the most (and even the late 70s). Great movies, great music, the perpetual fear of Nuclear War, the rise of computing (Commodore, Apple, Tandy COCO, x86, Zork), and of course a clash of societal values that was reflected in almost every medium (books, movies, music, newspapers, jokes).

My favorite book from that period is actually a series of books based on "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" by Douglas Adams, which in my opinion, is the funniest Sci-Fi book ever made to date. Almost everything in daily life can be matched to this series, including administrative Vogons (and their poetry), Marvin (the manically-depressed robot), Zaphod (the wild and crazy side), Arthur (the neat and tidy side), Ford (who points out that a towel is the most important item in the universe), and Trillian (who mimics all the women I don't understand).

And, of course, the answer to life, the universe and everything is 42! I even played the text computer game back in the 80s!

I also enjoyed reading Douglas Adams' biography (Hitchhiker - by M.J. Simpson) - he is definitely a fascinating character - unstable at times, writes like I do (last minute), adored computers like I do, and was an avid environmentalist (and friend of Richard Dawkins).

The "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" movie is set to come out in May 2005, and although Adams was the major road block for its production before his death in 2001, I think Disney/Touchstone will do a fantastic job of the story and all the characters.

Here are a few of my favorite quotes from Adams:

"I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."

"I just lost my brilliant dot.com company, which, like everybody else's brilliant dot.com company, was based on the idea that if you multiply zero by a sufficiently large number, it will suddently turn into something."

"The difference between us and a computer is that, the computer is blindingly stupid, but it is capable of being stupid many, many million times a second."