Don't Panic
A response to "The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy"
Dave Crofts, 12th July 2005
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. And a wholly remarkable radio programme. And a television series. And a computer game. And, now, a Hollywood movie starring the cream of British and American acting talent. h2g2 (as we'll henceforth abbreviate it) sprawls over the comedy landscape of the last thirty years like a well-fed grandfather with a slight identity crisis. It propelled its author, Douglas Adams, to international acclaim and cult hero status. Not bad for an idea that germinated in a state of mild inebriation in a field near Innsbruck...
Blending the surrealist humour of Monty Python with the thrill of science, and adding a pinch of the joy of language for good measure, h2g2 defies definition. Part science fiction, part comedy, part pop philosophy, part travelogue, it is a unique and - I'll say it again - wholly remarkable achievement. And many of its jokes and ideas have permeated the public consciousness - none more so than the famous conclusion that the ultimate meaning to Life, the Universe and Everything is...42.
Ask just about anyone what they think of when they think of h2g2 and they'll probably say "42". The Ultimate Answer, derived after seven and a half million years of calculation by Deep Thought, a supercomputer built by a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings, is at once a stroke of genius and a cop-out. The whole point is that it's humorously dissatisfactory - and therefore suggests that any other attempts to arrive at ultimate meaning are similarly (if more subtly) flawed.
Let's not pretend that Adams actually thought that the Ultimate Answer was 42 - or indeed that anyone seriously agrees with the conclusion. But for many, it's as good as any other answer. Take the elderly planet-manufacturer Slartibartfast, for example [1]:
"Perhaps I'm old and tired, but I always think that the chances of finding out what is really going on are so absurdly remote that the only thing to do is say hang the sense of it and just keep yourself occupied. Look at me. I design coastlines. I got an award for Norway."
And in the film, when Arthur Dent, h2g2's everyman hero, asks Slartibartfast about the meaning of life, Slartibartfast doesn't seem all that bothered:
"I would rather be happy than right."
"Are you happy?"
"No, not really."
h2g2 plays on the uniquely human search for meaning in the universe - Arthur's testimony is that "All through my life I've had this strange unaccountable feeling that something was going on in the world, something big, even sinister, and no one would tell me what it was." And yet this feeling is dismissed by Slartibartfast as "perfectly normal paranoia" [2]. So, does h2g2 really offer any possible solutions as to ultimate meaning?
Well, for a start it isn't really trying to - Adams' main goal in h2g2 is to entertain, not to enlighten. But his own philosophy of scientific materialism permeates the narrative, and has been well documented in accounts of his life. His position was essentially an atheistic one, and held that what can be seen, touched and studied is all that there is and all that matters - a position that was strengthened having read one of Richard Dawkins' books on evolution. Adams describes his moment of realisation thus [3]:
"It all fell into place. It was a concept of stunning simplicity, but it gave rise, naturally, to all of the infinite and baffling complexity of life. The awe inspired in me made the awe that people talk about in respect of religious experience seem, frankly, silly beside it. I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day."
h2g2 certainly isn't afraid to poke fun at religion - it is full of naïve and faintly comic believers such as the Jatravardtid people of Viltvodle VI, who "believe that the entire universe was in fact sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure" [4]. The book's prologue introduces us to best-selling novelist Oolon Colluphid and his "trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?" [5] And the film features a decidedly Anglican-looking group of fervent but crazy worshippers led by John Malkovich's sinister Hama Kavula.
But these examples are more or less designed just to generate a laugh - and they do, alongside the countless other instances of galactic stupidity that Adams' fertile mind has produced. If Adams' worldview does get a serious chance to speak, it's through the cynical eyes of Ford Prefect, who muses [6]:
"Isn't it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"
h2g2 (and in particular its latest film incarnation) certainly views the universe with genuine awe and wonder. Arthur Dent, as the character the audience side most closely with, sees his intergalactic odyssey as far more enlightening and thrilling in the film than he does in the book/radio versions, where it is a bemusing and even frightening inconvenience for which he'd really rather close his eyes and put his fingers in his ears. The film features plentiful slow motion footage of raindrops and animals - all it lacks is Louis Armstrong crooning What A Wonderful World. And all of this only serves to reinforce Adams' opinion that [7]:
"The world is a thing of utter inordinate complexity and richness and strangeness that is absolutely awesome. I mean, the idea that such complexity can arise not only out of such simplicity, but probably absolutely out of nothing, is the most fabulous extraordinary idea. And once you get some kind of inkling of how that might have happened - it's just wonderful. And...the opportunity to spend 70 or 80 years of your life in such a universe is time well spent as far as I am concerned."
Sadly, Douglas Adams only got to spend 51 years of his life in this universe. He died of a heart attack in 2001. Richard Dawkins remembered him with these words [8]:
"If ever a man understood what a magnificent place the world is, it was Douglas."
In a universe of mind-boggling vastness, the Earth is a very small place - "an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet" [9] summed up as "Mostly harmless" - and mankind only a tiny component in the planet's existence. Yet Adams found wonder in that. We're not much - but we're all we've got. And, Adams and h2g2 would suggest, we need to make the most of that while we can. Enjoy yourself. See the world. See the universe, even. I guess you could call it humanistic hedonism.
The Christian would agree that there's value in that - creation is wonderful and has been made to be enjoyed. And it's right and good that we take pleasure in it and in each other. But there's more to life than just what we can see and hear and feel.
As well as being "nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change" [10] Jesus claims to not only know but be the answer to Life, the Universe and Everything. Making the most of life is something he has the key to - "I came that they may have life and have it abundantly" [11]. And the point of life is this: "...that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent" [12].
There's all kinds of fun to be had playing around with comic alternatives - 42 and the like. But let's not overlook some of the more serious and credible answers to what life is really all about.
Douglas Adams was right about one thing. The Earth won't be around for ever. Its demise will not be at the hands of a Vogon constructor fleet to make way for a hyperspace bypass, but at the hands of the God who made it. As Paul tells the people of Athens, God "has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead" [13]. This isn't a case of plans hidden in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying Beware of the Leopard. It isn't a case of fairies at the bottom of the garden. It's real, historical fact.
And thankfully we have a guide to tell us what we need to know. It may have fewer gags than The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, electronic travel compendium and all-round lifestyle manual. It may not have the words DON'T PANIC emblazoned on the cover in friendly pink writing. But it's a far more important survival guide than any dreamt up by the imagination of men, however fertile and ingenious.
References
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, ch. 30, p.134 (Heinemann, London, 1992)
- Ibid, p.134
- Quoted in Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain (Phoenix, London, 2003)
- Douglas Adams, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, ch.1 (Heinemann, London, 1992)
- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, prologue, p.16 (Heinemann, London, 1992)
- Ibid, p.89
- Quoted in Richard Dawkins, A Devil's Chaplain (Phoenix, London, 2003)