Rediscovering Douglas Adams' DNA

In 1952, Cambridge, England, (a town in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the galaxy) saw two DNAs brought into the world. The more famous of the two was the deoxyribonucleic acid whose structure was uncovered by Watson and Crick, a discovery that changed science and the way we understand the world forever. The second DNA was an ape-descended life form named Douglas Noel Adams. And in time he would change science fiction and the way we look at our place in the universe.

This year sees the countless-times delayed release of the film adaptation of Adams's most enduring legacy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While the film is merely another step in the nearly 30-year evolution of this story, its release is both bittersweet and instructive. When Adams suddenly and shockingly died on May 11, 2001, he left behind a wealth of unfinished business, among it the screenplay for this film, which he was in the process of revising for the umpteenth time. He was also working on a manuscript which might have become the sixth installment of the at-that-point ludicrously inaccurately titled Hitchhiker's "trilogy". But the body of work that Adams left behind gives much insight into Adams the Man, and allows us to really take stock of what the world gained from his life (and prematurely lost in his death).

Using Hitchhiker's as a guide to Adams, it should come as no surprise that he spent much of his final years in a pursuit of knowledge and ideas in the service of science. Just as Hitchhiker's was a story constantly changing and evolving -- beginning as a radio show on the BBC and rapidly mutating in a series of books, theatrical productions, television shows, albums, video games, comic books (and even a towel) -- Adams spent much time in his last years advocating principles of ecology and evolution in his work with and support of good friend and eminent evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins. He also invested his time and money in his nearly reverent love of computers and the promise of information technology, helping to create an Earthbound version of the Hitchhiker's Guide online at h2g2.com. And where Hitchhiker's began life as a humorous concept about a show where the Earth blows up for different reasons each week, Arthur Dent's trials as the last human male in existence in a displaced universe grew increasingly sobering and sympathetic. So it's hardly uncharacteristic that Adams spent a year traveling the world with zoologist Mark Carwardine, tracking down and recording the tenuous existence of some of the planet's endangered species, resulting in the non-fiction book (and radio series) Last Chance to See. Once he even joined a team that climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro in a rhinoceros suit to drum up media attention for Save the Rhino. That's the kind of guy he was.

The happy ending is that there's always a second chance for Adams's audiences -- a way to rediscover his work. For most, the initial exposure to Adams is either the want of a light sci-fi diversion or a quest for humor. But within the confines of the Hitchhiker's books lies so much more: there is a treasure trove of insights into the human experience itself waiting to be uncovered. Of course, much of the time these insights are couched in wry wit and disguised as the work of aliens. Sometimes mice.

Like many Americans, my first exposure to Hitchhiker's came as a reader. The BBC television adaptation was an on-again off-again affair on PBS, but it was the books that were my first love. Like many in the States, I wasn't even aware of their radio origins. I plowed through the first four novels as a young teen (admittedly, probably only understanding a minor percentage of the jokes), as well as spending time at a friend's house struggling through the Infocom text adventure game, laughing at Zaphod's horribly fake second head when I finally did watch the television version, and then eagerly devouring the two Dirk Gently books when they arrived. I counted myself a fan, but even after the release of Mostly Harmless I mainly thought of Douglas Adams as clever and funny. When his death was announced, I was stunned and saddened, but I erroneously thought of it as the end of the story.