Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Garrison Breckenridge

Dr. Oliver

Intro to Philosophy 1010-17

3 December

Douglas Adams and The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams was a British author whose science fiction/comedy series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, tells an existential journey through time and space. The series is chock full of ridiculous situations and witty dialogue that keeps the reader interested from beginning to end. Aside from the ridiculous and one-of-kind plotlines, many would consider Adam’s narrative to be the highlight of the series. He light-heartedly satirizes about the meaning of life and humanity’s struggle to make sense of a universe of an arbitrary nature. What can you expect from a guy who once claimed that he came up with the title while lying drunk in a field in Austria, gazing up at the stars?

I. A Few Things About the Author

Douglas Noël Adams was born in Cambridge, England on March 11, 1952. While attending the Brentwood Preparatory School, he was the only student in his writing class who got a perfect score on a writing assignment from his teacher; this would motivate him throughout his entire career. After Brentwood he attended St. John’s College, where he obtained a bachelor’s and master’s degree in English literature. After college he was discovered by Monty Python’s Graham Chapman. After this he received writing credits for several sketches on Monty Python’s Flying Circus and the Monty Python and the Holy Grail album (”Humanist” 1).

The way he has claimed how he came up with the title, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is interesting. When he was a young out-of-work writer, he found himself hitchhiking around Europe. He had a copy of a Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europe with him. While in Innsbruck, Austria, he had a very difficult time trying to communicate with the townspeople because he couldn’t speak their language. After becoming extremely frustrated with this situation, he then became staggeringly drunk. Eventually, he found it rather difficult to walk, so he just lied down in a field. While gazing up at the starry, night sky, he had the thought that it would be interesting if someone wrote a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. He then passed out and forgot about it for a few years (“Introduction” VI-VII).

His first major success was The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy weekly BBC radio series (“Introduction” I). It would later become a television series, a computer game, a series of books, and a major motion-picture (“Introduction” ix). After the positive feedback from the radio series, Adams developed The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy into a series of books- The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything; So Long and Thanks For All the Fish; and Mostly Harmless. In 1984, he won the Golden Pan award, becoming the youngest author to receive it. He was later awarded two more Golden Pans and was a nominee for a Best of Young British Novelists award. The series would go on to sell more than fifteen million copies world-wide (“Humanist” 1).

Many would question whether or not Adams was affiliated with any religion after reading his Hitchhiker books because of his lighthearted satire of religion and the existence or non-existence of God. Adams was a self-proclaimed “radical atheist”; the radical part was meant to make it clear that he was not agnostic but a complete atheist. He came to question his Christian beliefs when he was a teenager studying science. The works of Richard Dawkins also had an impact on this choice. Despite being an atheist, Adams was always fascinated with the concept of religion. He once said “Religion has had such an incalculably huge impact on human affairs. What is it? What does it represent? Why have we invented it? How does it keep going? What will become of it? I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years, that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing.” After a fun and successful career, Douglas Adams died of a heart attack on May 11, 2001 at the age of 49 (“Humanist” 1).

II. A Few Things About the Hitchhiker Books

Adams begins the series with a humorous introduction that is an example of Adams’ witty narrative:

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea. (Adams, Hitchhiker 5)

Douglas Adams’ sci-fi/comedy series is a ridiculous and satirical journey through the Universe and beyond. The first book starts off with an introduction to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It is an electronic guidebook to the Universe that has information on everything from parallel universes, cultures, and how to make the most effective alcoholic beverages. It’s popular throughout the Universe because it’s cheap and it has the comforting words “Don’t Panic” written on the cover (Hitchhiker 6).

The series centers around the life of a British man named Arthur Dent. His friend, Ford Prefect, tells him that the world is about to end really soon (Hitchhiker 23). Ford, a researcher for the Guide, gets Arthur off the planet by hitchhiking. As it turns out, Earth was destroyed to make way for a hyperspace express route. Ironically, Arthur’s home was set to be demolished to make way for a bypass that very same day. It is revealed to Arthur that Ford is actually an alien from a different planet “somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse” (Hitchhiker 11) and is also galactic hitchhiker. Then, Arthur, reluctantly, gets caught up in a succession of ridiculous situations and conflicts all over the Universe. Some of the recurring characters are Tricia McMillan, who is also from Earth, Zaphod Beeblebrox, the three-armed, ex-hippie, short-time President of the Galaxy, and Marvin, a brilliant but depressed robot. The main transport in the first few novels is the Heart of Gold, a ship that uses the improbability of randomly getting to a certain destination to actually get there (Hitchhiker 60). The plot of the first and second book involves finding the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything after the Answer is simply “42” (Hitchhiker 120). That’s a good glimpse into the ridiculous plotlines that are present throughout the Hitchhiker series.

III. A Few Things About Existentialism

Existentialism is present heavily throughout the Hitchhiker series. The existentialist view of human nature is defined by Jean Paul Sartre’s slogan “Existence precedes Essence”. This means that “we have no predetermined nature or essence that controls what we are…we create our own human nature through these free choices, and that we also create our values through these choices” (Banach 1). The human situation in an Existentialists eyes means 3 things: Facticity, the idea that we are thrown into this world with no control over it, Anxiety, we are faced with the burden and responsibility of creating our own nature and views, and Despair, give up and hope of external value and focus on what is actually within our control (Banach 2).

Adams begins the second book of the series with a funny introduction that is a perfect example of his satire towards the nature of an unpredictable universe:

There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another which states that this has already happened. (Adams, Restaurant 1)

The base of Existentialism is the idea that existence is random and therefore has no meaning other than what we give it. The Universe of Adams’ Hitchhiker series reflects the random and arbitrary nature of existence (van de Colff 1). Therefore, Adams’s characters exist in a universe devoid of any meaning. This reflects Barrett’s point that “Man’s existence is absurd in the midst of a cosmos that knows him not; the only meaning he can give himself is through the free project that he launches out of his own nothingness”(qtd. in van de Colff 2). Albert Camus was a French-Algerian writer that gave one of the most significant contributions to existentialist thought. In his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus analyzes the parable of Sisyphus, who was condemned by the Gods to spend all of eternity pushing a rock up a mountain, only to have it inevitably roll back down. Camus uses this as a model for the human existence and the Absurd (Solomon 124). Throughout the series, Adams satirizes the absurdist aspect of humanity and humanity’s attempts to derive meaning from a universe beyond understanding. Arthur Dent is the perfect example of someone trying to find meaning and essence in the universe. Throughout the series, Arthur is faced with the arbitrary nature of the universe and learns to defy this and construct some kind of meaning to it all (van de Colff 3). Another example of one of Adams’s characters trying to make sense of the universe is the discovered ruler of the universe, who is a simple madman that lives in a shack with his cat. He does not know of anything beyond his little shack or even the universe. He entertains himself with the simplest of things to find meaning in the universe (van de Colff 5).

Adams tells of another example of the struggle to make sense of the universe in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe:

…In the corner of the eastern Galactic arm lies the large forest planet Oglaroon, the entire “intelligent” population of which lives permanently in a fairly small and crowded nut tree. In which they are born, live, rail in love, carve tiny speculative articles in the bark on the meaning of life, the futility of death and the importance of birth control, fight a few extremely minor wars, and eventually die strapped to the underside of some of the less accessible branches. (Adams, Restaurant 5)

Douglas Adams was a witty Englishman who had a knack for writing smart, funny, and ridiculous stories frequented with deep philosophical and metaphysical concepts. His greatest work is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series, which has been in the forms of a radio and television series, comic series, computer game, and a widely popular book series. In his greatest work, he told of an existentialist journey through the universe where literally anything highly improbable could happen.

Works Cited

Adams, Douglas. “Introduction: A Guide to the Guide”. The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide. New York: Portland House, 1997.Print.

Adams, Douglas, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. New York: Portland, 1979, Print.

Adams, Douglas. The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. New York: Portland, 1980. Print

Banach, David. “Summary of Some Main Points from Sartre’s Existentialism and Human Emotions”. Anselm.edu. 2006. 3 Dec. 2011.Web.

-------“Humanist profile: Douglas Adams (1952-2001).” The Humanist. Mar.-Apr. 2007. GeneralOneFile. 3 Dec. 2011. Web.

Solomon, Robert C. and Kathleen Higgins. A Passion for Wisdom: A Very Brief History of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Print.

Van de Colff, M.A. “Aliens and existential elevators: absurdity and its shadows in Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker series”. Literator: Journal of Literary Criticism, comparative liguistics and literary studies, 29.3 (2008): 123+ GeneralOneFile. 3 Dec, 2011. Web.