202505210 Tuesday

Book log: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

This is a pleasant revisit of a book that I first read in 1989, after
having played the text adventure computer game on my grandfather's PC
the year before. The humor and absurdities still work well, 45+ years
after the novel was first conceived as several radio plays and the
subsequent book, and the lighthearted story telling is as engaging
and fun as ever. 50 years is usually enough to gauge how well a 
science fiction author was able to "predict the future", and I must
say that Douglas Adams hits the "visionary" target with a few
descriptions. The Hitchhiker's Guide book has the form of a handheld
smart device with a 4x4 inches screen, the president of the galaxy is
a moron whose sole job is to distract the public, and advanced 
technology is controlled by annoying touch sensors. All these 
observations are on point in 2025. Douglas' influence on pop culture
is also striking - I realize now that Ian M. Banks' Culture series
owes a lot to the style of this series, and Radiohead seem to have
copped three song/album titles from these 140 pages; "Paranoid 
Android", "OK Computer" and "Myxomatosis", as well as the lyric line
"First against the wall" from the song "Paranoid Android". 

I'm liking this so much I'm jumping straight into the next book in the
series; The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.