The Hitchhiker's Kindle

Adams got it mostly right

[jimbeetle]

Not sure why, but yesterday decided to revisit The Hitchhker's Guide to the Galaxy. I found my 15-year-old, brown-edged compendium and headed off to the park to find a cool breeze.

Chapter 3, Page 1:

[Ford Prefect] also had a device that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million "pages" could be summoned at a moment's notice.

Being a bit of a sci-fi fan for many years I always enjoy finding those nuggets that presaged "modern" technology.

[weeks]

Really funny read. But the original radio show was even funnier, laughing until I cried.

And the bit in the later book--The Restaurant at the End of the Universe-- where the time machine/transporter/robot was annoyed. Why? Because it is is asked to move everyone to the closest restaurant and the closest place was... Find it. Read it. It might be the most I ever laughed in my life.

[Lapizuli]

I loved that series! Agreed about the radio show. The TV version was not nearly as well-done. I thought the casting of Ford Prefect was horrible - David Dixon overplayed his weirdness, whereas Geoffrey McGivern's performance was all subtlety on the BBC radio production.

Other stuff he fictionally "invented" that came to pass, in some way or other:

the Babel fish (became the online translator)

the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's products (became inanely pleasant talking mechanicals like garbage cans that thank you)

celebrity presidents like Zaphod Beeblebrox (a former President who shall be nameless)

and (this one's a stretch, I guess)

the Total Perspective Vortex (kind of like a search engine - putting chaos in perspective and driving you mad at the same time)

He had such a way with words.

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

"The first ten million years were the worst," said Marvin, "and the second ten million years, they were the worst too. The third ten million years I didn't enjoy at all. After that I went into a bit of a decline."

[tangor]

He died too young. Adams, that is.

[jimbeetle]

"The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't."

Yeah, so the other evening when I was sitting on my park bench catching a cool breeze I had my usual flummoxed look as I tried to visualize that. It gets me every time; it's the most irritating -- and brilliant -- sentence I've ever come across.

A buddy, a retired literary editor, happened by. "You have a flummoxed look on your face." I pointed to the sentence, "Visualize."

He pondered. He wrinkeld his forehead. He looked at his watch.

"C'mon, I think it's cocktail time."