Anything you still can’t cope with is therefore your own problem.

 Today is Douglas Adams' birthday. He would've been 62. He died in 2001 at 49 which isn't near as old as it was to me back then. He died that May and that September the whole world went to hell. I doubt the two are really all that connected, but given this universe one never knows.

 He's one of my favorite authors and, depending on the day and my mood, The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is my favorite book. It's not just because it's funny, which it is, most definitely the funniest science fiction book ever written and arguably in the race for the funniest of all time.

 In my dotage, I can look back and see just how much that book affected me and how I approach the world beyond its humor. Let's tell a story. It's 1988 and I was in eighth grade. The school's library was having one of its semi-regular book fairs. Basically, it was an opportunity to buy paperback books that were considered acceptable reading for junior high students at a slight discount.

 I couldn't tell you just what I would've been looking for back then. At the time, I was in my "read the classics" phase, which covered everything from Herman Melville to Issac Asimov. Plus humor books, particularly Lewis Grizzard or Dave Barry. Yes, children, at one time Dave Barry was extremely funny on a regular basis.

 Anyhow, all four of the Hitchhiker's books were for sale. This was before Mostly Harmless was written. I was familiar with the name Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy but that was mainly because of the legendarily hard Infocom computer game, and all I knew was the name. Though I didn't know it, I was already a "fan" of Douglas Adams thinks to his work on "Doctor Who." In particular, he wrote City Of Death, one of my favorite stories, and was the script editor for the seventeenth season starring Tom Baker, the only Doctor that matters.

 So, for whatever reason, I decided to buy Hitchhiker's and So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, the fourth book in the "trilogy." So I read the alpha and what was at the time the omega of the series. I will admit that SLATFATF fell flat on the first read and it wasn't for a couple years that I appreciated what it brought to the table.

 But HHGTTG hooked me from the get-go. It was just so funny and that meant something when science fiction, particularly science fiction literature, was so in love with the smell of its own farts. It didn't take long before I bought copies of The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe and Life, The Universe, And Everything, and managed to read holes in all of them. My brother eventually bought me an omnibus, noting that I had rendered the original copies akin to the Dead Sea Scrolls due to multiple readings.

 Remember, this was way before the internet was in everyone's pockets much less their homes. All I had to go on about DNA and his career came from the rather self-defacing introductions he wrote for his books. So, before too long, I knew HHGTTG started out as a radio play - though I had no idea how this would work, Northeast Mississippi remember - and that he'd worked on my beloved "Doctor Who." This lead to probably the most effort I've put into learning about anyone who wasn't Hank Williams, as I spent the next few years buying up all the DNA media I could.

 I first got the comic book produced by DC which... wasn't good. Then I saw the BBC television version of the radio play which was much, much better. I found a script book of the original plays and LP releases my first year in college. Then, finally, some ten years later, I heard the radio play. That was how the story was meant to be told and it's the best version by far.

 The Dirk Gently books - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and Long, Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul - didn't really land at first, but the first book eventually because a close second to HHGTTG. LDTTOTS still ends with a poof, I think, but it's fun up until then. My brother bought Mostly Harmless, the last Hitchhiker's book, and the non-fiction Last Chance To See, at once the funniest, most heartbreaking book you'll come across.

 As the years rolled on and I read more of it - and learned more about Douglas Adams' life outside of writing the books - I got a deeper meaning out of it. For one, how much the books reflected Adams' line. There's a throwaway line in the first book where Ford Perfect angrily wonders why he tied himself to Arthur Dent, the big whiner he is, and then you think he spent most of his career refining Hitchhiker's rather than writing new stuff. Makes you wonder. Mostly Harmless was written as his daughter was hitting her teens and his marriage was strained for this, that, and the other. Makes you wonder.

 Beyond that, I wonder if people got the wrong thing from the books. Like the towels. A throwaway gag which I took to mean how one never can tell what one might really, really need. It still isn't that important or earth-shattering. The other, for me, is the Answer. Forty-two is absurdism and shows just how little chance we have to understand about Life, The Universe, & Everything. Even more telling, though, is the ambiguity of The Question. We don't even know what we're asking, and there you have the last 2,000 years of philosophy.

 More importantly, the galaxy he portrayed gave a glimpse into how absurd existence is. Even advance, galaxy-spanning civilizations have to deal with red tape and bureaucracy. Very British. Other books gave more, like the holistic nature of reality and the Whole Sort of General Mish-Mash. I don't know how much he knew about the Many-Worlds Theory of quantum mechanics, but it's funny to me how much it locks in.

 Mostly Harmless ends with the Vogons destroying the Earth with Arthur and Ford on it, and the last thing Arthur sees is Ford laughing his ass off. Adams said later he wanted to revisit the trilogy because he didn't like that dark ending, but to me, that was the perfect way to end it. Life is absurd and messy, and far too often if there's a joke, you're the butt of it. So you might as well laugh.

 DNA's passing still makes me sad. It's still too young. The 2005 movie was okay. The revelation that all the Hollywoodization of it - the love story between Arthur and Trillian, the addition of John Malkovich's character, etc. - was his doing makes sense. I would say he had more stories to tell but, hell, I don't know. My brother notes he spent so much time trying to get the movie made he didn't tell more stories.

 Maybe so, but The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy is a great book and a great story. I'm glad it was written and I'm glad it's part of my life. Like Fear & Loathing In Las Vegas or Go Down, Moses, it's a book I'll read again and again for the rest of my life, and get something different from each time. And it's always worth a giggle, and that's not bad a'tall.

 For what it's worth, I don't count And Something Else... because it sucks. It's bad Hitchhiker's fan fiction. I don't like that guy's other books, the Artemis Fowl ones, either, and I hope I'm not holding the turd that is ASE... against him. Because it sucks. I mean, really sucks. Don't bother.