The lovable silliness of Douglas Adams has an enduring appeal that will keep people looking for their towels for years to come
Do you know where your towel is? If so, you're a hoopy frood, my friend. If not, don't panic. You had better find it quickly, because today is the 10th Towel Day, on which fans carry around towels in honour of the late science fiction great Douglas Adams.
If that sounds strange to you, well, you clearly don't spend very much time around science fiction fans. Towel Day is a reference to Adams's much-loved The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series and books, in which we learn that a towel is the single most helpful item an interstellar traveller can possess, useful as a weapon, blindfold or sail, for a start. There's a curious but unassailable logic in the thinking that "any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with".
This is the kind of lovable silliness that disappeared with Adams when he was just 49. He died of a heart attack on 11 May 2001. The first Towel Day was set up two weeks later by fans still reeling from Adams's unexpected death, and the 25 May tradition has stuck. The Towel Day website lists events and fan gatherings all around the world. That this celebration is still going strong 10 years on says a lot about Adams's enduring appeal on this "mostly harmless" planet.
He was many things besides a writer: a husband and father, an atheist, a lover of science and new technologies, and an advocate for endangered species, such as the black rhino and the mountain gorilla. Writing two days after Adams's death, Stephen Fry called his friend "a giant of a man with a kindness to match". I don't doubt that for a minute, and I wish I could have known him myself.
I'm afraid that I'm a young one, and consequently only discovered Adams's work after he bid us all "so long, and thanks for all the fish". I was never one of those lucky fans who had the frustrating joy of waiting for each new book to come out, but I must say that I'm enjoying living in a world in which Adamsisms have become common parlance. I can tell a kindred frood ? someone "really amazingly together" ? by whether they're aware that the Ultimate Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe, and Everything is 42. We've all learned from Adams that life is about trying to suss out the Ultimate Question ? which is, as far as I'm concerned, a simultaneously absurd and entirely sensible approach.
As much as the same familiar Hitchhiker's Guide references keep popping up in my life, the legacy of Douglas Adams is far from over. His Doctor Who serial Shada, which famously never finished production, will be published as a novel next year by present Who scriptwriter Gareth Roberts (yes, Adams was script editor for the 1979 series of Doctor Who and wrote two other stories for Tom Baker's Doctor, in case you needed another reason to be a fan). In 2009, Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer penned And Another Thing ?, a sixth Hitchhiker's Guide book. Adams's fans will doubtless keep engaging with his work and producing fun and creativity of their own.
Adams was one for reminding us that there is unforeseen whimsy around every corner. You'd best be prepared with towel in hand, just in case you're whisked off across the stars to the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.
Source: http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/~r/theguardian/commentisfree/rss/~3/2WPzZHFXXHI/towel-day-douglas-adams
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