h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

To you all

Having spent a large part of the last 2 days sat staring at our computer screens this is a brief note to let you know that Douglas' family are getting huge comfort in reading your messages on this site, Jane, Polly and Mum in California, and Sue, Jane and James here in the UK.
Not only are they providing an instant comfort now, not to mention quite a few laughs, but they will no doubt be read and re-read over the coming days, weeks, months etc, reminding us that we are not the only ones who have lost, and none of us are alone.

Thankyou.

I lost my father a few years ago. It was one of the biggest things that has ever happened to me, and yet it was meaningless - totally out of my control, when I'd just driven home after seeing him. If I'd only stayed another couple of hours... What?

Whatever you believe of gods and afterlives, our loved ones live on in our thoughts and memories and histories, and somewhere deeper inside ourselves. Reading the upwelling of love and sympathy for DNA has brought Dad to mind again and again. We're together in this - you lean on me this time because I might need your support one day.

How very kind of you to let us know that you are aware of our attempts to come to terms with your / our loss.
I am overwhelmed by your spirit of generosity.
Thank you.
It is inadequate, but thank you.

Well that's it for now, but we will meet at the restaurant at the end of the universe were I will thank you for all the fish and everything else, and were you hopefully will explain the secret of 42. I'm mostly devestated. My deepest regards to the family.

-space caligula

I would just like to say this.

Ever since my Dad told me about the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I've been engrossed. I borrowed a copy of his trilogy in 5 parts ("now including 'Mostly Harmless'") and read it about 10 times - no kidding.

It was, and still is - and hopefully will be for a long time to come - an outstanding book. The sheer quality of the writing, the imagination, creativity and humour Mr. Adams poured into his writing brought pleasure to hundreds of thousands, probably millions, of people, including myself.

As soon as I found out about the web site, I signed up, and visited it several times every day. It's a shame to see that the design's been mucked up by the BBC when they ported the content over. However, I was greatly relieved to find that the original skin is still available for the site.

But anyway, I digress...

My Dad met Mr. Adams a while back, and he says he was a great person. I just wish that I had emailed Mr. Adams - but then again, you don't really recognise what you've lost until it's gone, and the late Mr. Adams was a truly unique, talented, and funny person.

I loved his series "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Future" broadcast on Radio 4, and I'm eagerly awaiting the screenplay with great anticipation.



The entire Adams family (very sorry, no pun intended) has my sincerest condolences, as I, like many other people I think, feel that we have lost a great friend along with your good selves. Please keep up the work that the late Mr. Adams wasn't able to continue.

Also, I would like to offer my condolences to Mund as well, as losing one's Dad can't be nice - I don't think I can imagine what I'd do if I lost my Dad. It was bad enough when my Grandpa died from a stroke at the age of 79. He turned 80 in the hospital, and died a couple of days after the year 2000 began. Funny to think that the day before his stroke, he was sitting with us in my Grandparents' sitting room with my Mum's sister and her children and my family. Nothing every seemed wrong with him... Then he just suddenly... well, went wrong. So sad.

Every H2G2 fan's best wishes and support are sent out to you, the Adams family, and everyone/anyone who has lost a relative/parent/friend in their life. I can't say that I know how you feel, because I have never lost an immediate relative, but I can at least get an idea of how it must feel.


Just remember, don't be sad about it - just think all about the good parts of Douglas' life, and simply celebrate the fact that you could be around him, and get to know him. I feel like I got to know him through reading his books, and I don't think I'll ever read books with quite the same unique quality as his.


Once again, my condolences to you all,
Chris Woods
[email protected]

He made me laugh and think.

To know we are a comfort to you is a comfort to us.

Even my Babel fish can not translate the grief we all feel.
DNA brought us all something exclusively his, yet exclusively our own.
As hitchikers everywhere turn our thoughts to our loss, we stand unable to fathom the loss his closest must feel.

It's strange - to think of DNA as a real person, with a real family. To you, he was a husband, a dad, a whatever. You probably got annoyed with him for leaving the lid off the margarine or other completely mundane things which we simply wouldn't countenance him doing, always visualising him sitting in front of a Mac and changing the world, slowly but surely, into a place that maybe wasn't much better from a poverty/hunger/war/famine/melrose place point of view, but was certainly more interesting and a great deal more bearable. To us, he is a 30 foot high statue in an underground catherdral - with one hand writing a book, with another creating a computer game, with another tuning a radio, on which is playing HHGTTG. His many feet are standing still, because I can't think of anything he did which especially involved his feet. I mean, he must have used them, but not to write or call new worlds into existence. Although he might have done. You never know.

And I think that this was the point of my message. We will never really know him the way that you, his family, did. This means that for all our "he was funny and will be missed" jabberings, it is yours that is the greatest loss. We lost Douglas Adams; you lost "dad," or possibly "Douglas Adams, if you leave the lid off the margarine once more I'm going to slap you with this unfinished manuscript, and I don't care if it's the greatest thing you've ever done, I'm having none of it!" I dunno what happened in his house, I'm just guessing here, and obsessing over margarine. So, in a roundabout way, I've just told you how utterly hopeless and useless we are going to be at truly sympathising with you, and now I'm going to sympathise with you.

....


There. Words can't say it. You are too far away to hug (and you'd only get really freaked out if a long haired metalhead turned up in your house, hugged you, and then took the lid off the margarine tub in a sombre quasi-religious ceremony), and I don't drink so I can't share a beer with you in a bar and reminisce about the good times. Besides, the sprog is underage. Those dots were me sitting and thinking positive thoughts. Catch them in a little sack when they reach you (about.......NOW) and sprinkle them all about yourself.

Be nice.

Like all Douglas's fans I am deeply shocked to hear the news.

Like most people who read and re-read his books, listened to the shows and watched the programmes I felt as though he was a personal friend. He had an enormous impact in my life, helped me through those teenage years and ever since. DNA single handedly shaped my sense of humour and without that life would be pretty unbearable.

I know that I am one of millions with this view.

My deepest sympathy to Jane, Polly and all his family and hope that you find strength. Douglas helped many people enjoy life. Through his writing he will continue to do that for many more years.

Meet you in Milliways Douglas. Thanks for the many laughs and the
perspective you gave on Life, the universe and everything.

Rob.

I lost my dad just 3 weeks ago now. It's so hard. My dad was young too.

One incredible thing is it was my dad who told me to read The Guide. It was a common bond we had. Back when new books were coming out, we'd go together and buy 2 copies (neither of us wanted to wait for the other to finish . Together we read...and together we laughed out loud.

Your loss is huge...the hurt is huge...I know...but it will get better. You will never stop missing him...but you have such a wonderful collection of memories...stories...and friends...both real and virtual, who feel as though Douglas Adams was their mentor/voice/inspiration. I'm one of them...he was a huge influence on me. And that common bond he gave me with my father is something that can't even be quantified.

Well...I guess it probably can... 42

Bless you Adams family.....

Grant, Ohio
AKA Pepperguy

I've been a fan of HHGG since I was about 10 years old. I remember I was sick one day and had to take the day off of work. Dreading daytime TV I turned it on and there was Douglas Adams talking to the Australian press about HHGG and about conservation of wildlife. It brightened my day.

Thanks for all the laughter.

Nicholas Boyle

I would love to be able to come up with something witty and apposite; at the moment though I can only feel shocked and deeply saddened. Douglas Adams was to me, I assumed, just an author whose books I found amusing and ideas I always found joy in hearing. Forgive the cliche, but perhaps we only truly appreciate something when it is taken from us. I have certainly found this to be true this weekend. I first discovered Douglas's unique perspective when I was about eleven years old, when there were only two books and a couple of Doctor Who's; since then I have learned to respect the merging of science and art, with one eye on the comedic that was his trade. We on this site are already converted, but the world at large is bereft. People of vision, evangilists for technology that can enhance and enrich the human condition must be cherished. Too often the future is portayed in fiction as an unwelcoming, anti-humanistic place. Douglas always saw it as an an extention of where we are now, real and alive with spirit.

I'll miss him.

My heart goes out to his family and friends. If there is any consolation then I hope it can be drawn from how well loved and respected he was by the millions who have been effected by his death.

Pete.

Any afterlife (if there is one) became a funnier place. Of course, DNA will need to appease its new ruler, my late (9 May 2001) cat Busstop.

I attended one of DNA's readings once, in fall 1993. It was at a Saint Paul, Minnesota (large suburb of Minneapolis) bookstore called the Hungry Mind -- it has since changed its name. Unfortunately, I could not reach DNA to have him sign my copy of HH2G (or did I have Dirk Gently with me?), since there was a throng of people who had similar ideas. He was very tall, which does nothing for me seeing him since I am very short.

It's amazing where DNA would turn up. I'd see him in Mac discussions, he was onstage with Pink Floyd, he cowrote two of the funniest computer games ever (HH2G and Bureaucracy). Heck, not even Roger Waters himself goes onstage with Pink Floyd nowadays ...

I first encountered Douglas Adams' work about 17 years ago when I was in the sixth grade. My friend had obtained a copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Infocom game for his Apple II+. I played around on it a bit and found it rather interesting, and difficult. A year later, I was reading a computer magazine with an article on the game and its creator, and I found out that the game was based on a book. Seeing as I was in conveniently in a library at the time, I checked out a copy of the book, and the world has never been the same since.

Over the years I've read and re-read all of his books and every time I get a little something out of them that I didn't get the last 20 or 30 times. Even if it wasn't intentional, I always felt that the books were philisophical. Not in the terms that he was laying out some kind of position through the guise of a novel, but just that one had to have a particular vision of the Universe as a rather daft place just to be able to write something like that. As nonsensical as the Universe of DNA's novels often is, the physics of that Universe so often seem to apply to this one. It's as if he somehow was able to see the actual way the world works and put it down on paper; something philosophers and theologians have been trying to do for millenia but have always failed.

The world is now a sadder and duller place. When any creative artist leaves this place, those of us who enjoyed his or her creations feel cheated. We don't get this anymore, because the person who created this is gone. While our sorrow can not equal those who knew and loved him, nevertheless we have all lost something precious this weekend.

Farewell, Douglas. Wherever you go, may the tea always be hot, your American Express valid, and your towel close at hand.

It's hard to say goodbye to a man you've never met. I do not have the gift of being profound or of making speeches. I would have liked to have met him. The world is less without him. Goodbye.

Honestly, I thought Perry Como was dead. But I can't believe Douglas Adams is gone - it's too bloody soon! My condolences to his family.

You are - aren't you? - going to bury him with his towel.

Right?

He lives in so many peoples hearts, dreams, thoughts and ideas. All of us will keep the memory alive, not just of the Man, but of the insipiration, the philosophy, the humor and the down-to-earth nature of his influence. The universe isn't a sadder place today, only Earth. In our infinite universe a new star has been born with the spirit of Douglas Adams within. The journey begins...

Nathan Collinson
Sydney, Australia, Earth.

I am devastated. I am sitting in front of my work PC this Monday morning, unable to contain my tears upon reading the headlines. The morning seems too bright: has the sun not heard the news?

He was the only author who has ever made me laugh at loud. How many Adams fans have attracted strange looks as they nearly wet themselves laughing in public whilst reading his work? I have had to replace my well thumbed collection of his novels several times over - I keep wearing them out. His humour and vision have profoundly affected my perception of the universe.

My words are not equal to the task of giving his genius credit.

To his family and friends - the world is mourning with you. We will never forget him.

Kelly
Darwin, Australia