This is off-topic, but I've always wanted to bring this up with fellow geeks... Integer code of the asterisk ('*') ASCII character is 42, which, is the answer to life, the universe and everything. The asterisk character is used as a wildcard character to indicate anything and everything.<p>Adams never revealed the origin of 42. [0] So, just because we really don't know, I'd like to think it originates with ASCII table and the asterisk.<p>0 - <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/03/douglas-adams-42-hitchhiker" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/books/2011/feb/03/douglas-adams-...</a>
I used to hang with Douglas back in the day and we worked together a bit.<p>Douglas once told me he got sent a very detailed PhD thesis that described how The Hitchhikers Guide was an elaborate parody of John Bunyan's "Pilgrim's Progress" (1678).
The main evidence was that "Pilgrim's Progress" is known to be partly inspired by a pamphlet called, "The Plain Man's Path to Heaven", written by, get this, a puritan named Arthur Dent.<p>Douglas was embarrassed to reply that he'd never read "Pilgrim's Progress", or heard of that puritan, and the Arthur Dent name was a complete coincidence.<p>Things like that happened to him all the time.
Also off-topic: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.<p>I read both the books and they were good. There was a short lived British TV series starting Stephen Mangan that was great and seemed at least partially based on some events and descriptions in the books, and two seasons of a US TV series on Netflix that was off-the-fucking-wall crazy in a not-quite-Douglas-Adams way, and unique to the point that I was pleasantly surprised that it got a second series. Thoroughly recommend for anyone that considers themselves bored with television. Unique doesn't feel like a strong enough word.
Not long ago I got this urge to go back and replay the Hitchhiker's Guide game.<p>>Then there were the puzzles, and it’s impossible to talk about Hitchhiker’s without talking about the Babel Fish puzzle.<p>Going through that part again and trying to remember it and figure it all out was a bit of a challenge.<p>But I don't think the puzzle itself is really all that hard, it's the whole beginning on the vogon ship, all of it, that makes it so hard. You've got a hidden time limit, then the poetry section, then you're thrown back in the room with an active time limit and you're supposed to remember to do the other puzzle quickly that you hopefully noticed while figuring out the Babel fish stuff, or you get a delayed game over that'll leave you wandering aimlessly around the heart of gold scratching your head.<p>On a related note, if you like Douglas Adams and quirky adventure games, I highly recommend his later game Starship Titanic. I played the hell out of that game when I was young, I don't know if I ever beat it. It's not the classic that hitchhiker's guide is, but if you enjoy Adams and frustrating obtuse adventure games with a strange sense of humour and somehow missed this game, I recommend checking it out.
<i>"Hitchhiker’s is hard to summarize, but one of its overarching themes is that technology, in the hands of big business and bloated bureaucracies, does not make life better: in fact it makes it far, far worse."</i><p>Seems Adams was ahead of his time, I wonder what he would have thought if he were alive today given the antics of Google, Facebook et al.<p>Incidentally, my printer is called Marvin for obvious reasons (Adams almost mandated that name for these cantankerous devices, especially networked ones).
>overarching themes is that technology, in the hands of big business and bloated bureaucracies, does not make life better: in fact it makes it far, far worse.<p>That is not what I got out of the radio series and book.
In my opinion, it is rigidity, legalism, or by the letter vs spirit of the law what <i>The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy</i> warns against. This fits with the author's initial dislike of computers. The Vogon's are a perfect example.
I don't think the article explicitly mentions it, but Adams was a rabid Mac fan, and arguably the first in the UK to buy one in 1984. This page (<a href="https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/d/Douglas_Adams.htm" rel="nofollow">https://www.cs.mcgill.ca/~rwest/wikispeedia/wpcd/wp/d/Dougla...</a> has some nice detail about it:<p><i>"Adams was a Macintosh user from the time they first came out in 1984 until his death in 2001. He was the second person to buy a Mac in the UK (the first being Stephen Fry - though some accounts differ on this, saying Adams bought the first two, and Fry bought the third). Adams was also an "Apple Master," one of several celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products (other Apple Masters included John Cleese and Gregory Hines). Adams's contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version of iMovie with footage featuring his daughter Polly. The video can still be seen on Adams's .Mac homepage. Adams even installed and started using the first release of Mac OS X in the weeks leading up to his death. His very last post to his own forum was in praise of Mac OS X and the possibilities of its Cocoa programming framework. Adams can also be seen in the Omnibus tribute included with the Region One/NTSC DVD release of the TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide using Mac OS X (version 10.0.x) on his PowerBook G3."</i><p>For Mac heads, this too:
<a href="https://lowendmac.com/2016/douglas-adams-author-and-mac-user/" rel="nofollow">https://lowendmac.com/2016/douglas-adams-author-and-mac-user...</a>
There's a certain sense of loss I feel at playing a game that cannot be cheated. In the mid-80's playing interactive fiction there was no way to get help unless you could convince your parents to buy you invisiclues. You had to solve these games the hard way: on your own. Sure, there are games like that today but they require hand-eye coordination or grinding, not involved word-puzzle solving and thinking in many different ways.<p>I still play interactive fiction every November when the IFComp publishes its games[1].<p>[1] <a href="https://ifcomp.org/" rel="nofollow">https://ifcomp.org/</a>
You can play the game here: <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN2PLZG/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-the-galaxy-game-30th-anniversary-edition" rel="nofollow">https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/1g84m0sXpnNCv84GpN...</a>
> “Imagine if everything ever written on a typewriter had been written by the guys who invented the typewriter,”<p>I had not heard this quote before, and while I enjoyed the article, I would deem it worth reading just for this.<p>Thanks for sharing!
"It was the ultimate procrastination device, of course, but also a tinkerer’s dream."<p>Reminds me of one of my favorites of Douglas' quotes: "I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by."<p>I was also able to get Starship Titanic working a couple years ago... Had an old Compaq computer with Windows 95 as the starting basis. Much fun to revisit.
The Digital Antiquarian has a two-part series on HHGG and the events leading up to the Infocom game:<p><a href="https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/" rel="nofollow">https://www.filfre.net/2013/11/the-computerized-hitchhikers/</a>
The Z-Machine (which is the VM that powered the linked game) is also interesting in it's own right: <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Z-machine</a>
Great article. I would definitely recommend checking out <i>42: the wildly improbable ideas of Douglas Adams</i>[0] edited by Kevin Jon Davies if want more Douglas Adams in your life<p>[0] <a href="https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unbounders/42-the-wildly-improbable-ideas-of-douglas-adams" rel="nofollow">https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/unbounders/42-the-wildl...</a>
I tried the unnoficial Spanish translation and it's really bad.<p>I may try the original English version, but I think it will be very difficult to grasp some words without WordNet.
The source code for the game is here: <a href="https://github.com/historicalsource/hitchhikersguide" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/historicalsource/hitchhikersguide</a>
Choose your own adventure... I was sure that meant:<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fighting_Fantasy</a><p>but apparently it's another book series.