Do you know where your towel is?

No?  Don’t panic. Have you tried consulting the guide or checking the lost and found at the restaurant at the end of the universe?

If you have chuckled after reading this opening then you must be a fan of the author Douglas Adams and his very popular Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series.  You also know that May 25 (possibly the day you are reading this) is Towel Day - celebrated by fans of Adams and his work by carrying a towel throughout the day.   “Why a towel?” you ask, well:
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has a few things to say on the subject of towels.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. … What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with.” – Chapter 3 of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (full quote).

So let’s go find your towel and explore the universe of Douglas Adams.

Adams started writing in school and was published in the school magazine and a boy’s comic publication. In college he was part of a group called Footlights, a student comedy club. This involvement helped launch his career as a writer for TV and radio. He was working on a comedy review when he was discovered by Monty Python’s Graham Chapman.  This lead to him co-writing skits for Monty Python and the Holy Grail and writing and appearing in skits on Monty Python’s Flying Circus. His first appearance was on Season 4, episode 42.

While he was working on these and other shows in the late 1970s, Adams got the idea for a science-fiction comedy radio series.  He had been traveling and was gazing at the stars one night in Austria when an idea occurred to him. He had a copy of the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Europe with him on this trip and he thought about a guide to the galaxy for hitchhikers.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy started as a six-part radio series which aired in the spring of 1978.  It was a hit and, not entirely unlike other series produced by the BBC, a Christmas episode followed.  The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, the first book in the trilogy, was published in 1979.   A five-episode second season was broadcast in January of 1980 and, by October, the second book was published, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Did you find your towel?  No? Well it’s got to be here someone…let’s keep looking.

The original idea of the trilogy was expanded to include:

These books were just the beginning of a whole world of HHGG. There has been a three-part comic book series, an interactive text-adventure computer game, a six-part BBC TV mini-series and the 2005 movie.

Adams loved to travel and, after a trip to Madagascar, he wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul.  He was in the process of writing The Salmon of Doubt when he passed away in 2001. His friends and editors decided to publish the unfinished novel along with magazine articles, short stories and Adams’s musings on life, the universe, and everything.

Back when Adams was still writing for radio, he pitched HHGG to the producers of Doctor Who and then asked him to write “The Pirate Planet” story arc of the series. He followed this up with the episodes “City of Death” and “Shada”.

Hmm, while we are with The Doctor, maybe we should look for your towel in the TARDIS. Wow it looks like there is a full room of Douglas Adams, it’s filled with computer games from the 1980s that he created, all the scripts to radio and TV shows he worked on and…what’s this?

A video of Adams playing guitar with Pink Floyd! This was a birthday gift from his friend and Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour. Adams was a big fan of the band - he even chose the name of their 1994 album The Division Bell.  Adams’s official biography uses the name of the band’s song Wish You Were Here.

Still looking for your towel and I found a copy of Last Chance to See.  Adams was an environmentalist whose focus was on endangered species. This book started off as a radio series with naturalist Mark Carwardine. From this came the book, The Great Ape Project.

Hey look! I found your towel!

Share and enjoy.

- Amelia R., Information Technology

Comments