There's a lovely clear blue sky here in Beckenham this afternoon. No clouds, or gigantic yellow slab-like spaceships hanging in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't. Thankfully. Plus it's not a Thursday - I never could get the hang of Thursdays...
It would have been Douglas Adams' 60th birthday today. In Hammersmith, and traipsing round Islington, it's Douglas Adams' virtual 60th birthday bash! It's a measure of the impact of the man that he's getting the kind of treatment you'd only expect for Shakespeare, Dickens or Jane Austen.
I just wanted to share a few words on how I discovered the world and works of Douglas Adams, since I can't imagine my life without him.
I first encountered Douglas Adams' work at a stupidly young age. I have vivid memories of his 1978 Doctor Who story The Pirate Planet and all of the following season which he script edited and partly wrote. That season was airing when I started school. Doctor Who was still cool at my school then, we all loved its thrills, chills and monsters. And K9. The following year many kids apart from me started to go off it, although I do recall signing a petition to bring back K9. When Peter Davison came along in 1982 I started keeping liking Doctor Who to myself, as it was an invitation for all the other kids to laugh at you, or beat you up. Cool kids were watching anything else. No one started a petition to bring back Adric.
Of course, when all this was on TV the first time I didn't know or care who Douglas Adams was. His time on Doctor Who was relegated to an eye-catching line in the author's biog in the Hitchhiker books. It wasn't until many years later, when I started reading those books almost by accident, that I discovered the low esteem in which most fans held both season 17 and Douglas himself. I'll admit to having a bit of a shock myself when I first saw City of Death again as an inquisitive, intelligent teen, having been enthralled and scared by it as a five year-old. But that quickly passed and I saw instead the wit, the intelligence, the charm and the joy behind it. I'd remembered Tom Baker as a brooding Doctor, who's gaze and voice were almost as scary as the monsters. This isn't the Doctor of season 17 - but that's not Douglas's fault, that's Tom Baker not wanting to be repetitive.
Views on season 17 have changed considerably over the past ten years or so. Knowing that City of Death was a rough template for RTD's 'New Who' has given it an added kudos, but also people have looked beyond the apparent surface silliness, light banter and witty quips and realised that some pretty hefty sci-fi ideas were being played with. City of Death and Creature From The Pit are two of my favourite stories these days, and I'm really looking forward to seeing Nightmare of Eden on DVD later this year (the pied piper sequence excepted, of course).
When I was doing GCSE English one of the coursework choices was to read Life, the Universe and Everything and write a story in the style of Douglas Adams. I'd heard of Hitchhiker, seen the restaurant clip on TV50 in 1986 and tried to watch the whole thing on video at my mate Graham's house without really 'getting' it. Anyway this coursework option seemed the most interesting one out of a terrible bunch so I chose it. I wrote 'The Amazing and Incredibly Concise Adventure of Keith'. It was about 13 sides of A4 - I could hardly contain my enthusiastic pen. My uninspired and uninspiring drone of a teacher, Mr Perry, gave it a 'B'. I recall he made some wry comment about the title not being very accurate. I think it might have been my best coursework grade in the end. It was certainly the piece I enjoyed writing the most. And Life, the Universe and Everything was the GCSE book I enjoyed reading the most. I remember feeling a similar comedy epiphany to that which had overtaken me on first seeing the Spanish Inquisition episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus a few years previously. You think 'wow, life will never be the same again'.
That summer, on holiday in Teignmouth, I sought out, found and purchased all four Hitchhiker books in paperback in WHSmith's, with special covers that allowed you to create pictures of a babel fish, a towel, a spaceship shaped like a trainer and the author's distorted face when you put them all together like a jigsaw. I've read them countless times. I still have them now and they're not in bad nick, considering.
Naturally I then read them all in the correct order - probably during that two weeks in Devon. I was used to experiencing cultural phenomena out of sequence - I'd watched Star Wars and Return of The Jedi many times before I finally got to see The Empire Strikes Back, for example.
I remember noting a decline in the amount of energy and playfulness in the books as the sequence progressed. But then the first book in particular is so random at times and has so many ideas almost thrown away as asides that I guessed no one could maintain such intense creativity for too long. I also saw the progression as a kind of maturing, with Douglas experimenting with his modes of storytelling. Despite this I've always struggled with So Long, and Thanks For All The Fish and it was no surprise to me to learn that he said no more Hitchhiker at that point.
I didn't pick up the Dirk Gently novels for some years, but I do recall being very excited about Mostly Harmless when it was published - an excitement that was well rewarded with an excellent return to form book (even if it didn't fit in with my set of matching novels). I was in agonies laughing at Arthur throwing up in the vicinity of the photocopier woman - I don't remember ever laughing that hard at any other book.
At that point I was a firm devotee. I quickly absorbed the radio series and TV series - including Kevin Davies' excellent 'Making Of' video, then the Starship Titanic and eventually Dirk Gently. At college doing A-Level English Literature we were tasked with a piece of creative writing for a change at one point, so I duly re-wrote Frankenstein as a zany Adams homage. Then for my extended essay coursework (5000 words I believe) I chose to look at Douglas Adams development through Hitchhiker books I, III & V. It was a day late (an unwitting nod to my mentor!), and I wrote it all in one sitting (longhand), drinking lots of black coffee and revising it later as I wrote it out in 'best'. I got an 'A' this time. It's probably around somewhere at my Dad's. It's almost certain to be awful!
At university I bonded with a guy who went on to become one of my best friends, and for whom I was Best Man, because he told me in the pub he bet I thought my digital watch was a neat idea. Ice broken, common ground found. It started a habit of quoting Hitchhiker in general conversation that has continued since, and has reached a kind of apotheosis in social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.
Since Douglas died we've had the Hitchhiker film at last, for which he worked so hard for so long (alas - I didn't like it, sorry). We've also had DVDs of his Doctor Who stories with features about him and archive interviews, we've had the series return to our screens knowing he'd have been asked to write for it for sure (no one else from the Classic Series has so far) and we've had Dirk Maggs' wonderful radio adaptations of the final three Hitchhiker 'Phases' and the two Dirk Gently novels. I still get so much joy and inspiration from his work, it's amazing to me. His use of language, his wit and playfulness continue to surprise and entertain me on each listen, read or view.
I've never wanted to be him, just to be as good as him. I realised years ago that the best way was to allow his work to influence me but not guide me. We all need to find our own voices and they're usually made up of bits of other people's that we pick up along the way. I think I'm still finding mine - at least from a perspective of commercial viability, if not artistic integrity.
I think that's why Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing... failed so badly. We'll find out very soon if Gareth Roberts has managed any better with his novelisation of Shada.
As long as Douglas Adams' work continues to be re-appraised and re-packaged for a new audience, and the new audiences continue to love him so his work will live on.
Happy Birthday Douglas - thank you for what you gave the world; the world still misses you.
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