Douglas Adams

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet where seventy years ago today, Douglas Adams was born.

When the Towel Day Facebook page posted about this anniversary this week, I thought about doing a big tribute post today. But I really didn’t have the time to do a decent job of it.

Instead, I’m going to do something uncharacteristic of me—I’m going to keep it brief. Douglas Adams was a formative writer for me. It’d take very little time at all to see how formative, he’s probably in the Top 5 authors I’ve mentioned on this site. His humor, his imagination, his point of view, his style was a gift that has been influencing writers and readers for decades, and likely will continue to.

In honor of this anniversary, tonight I’m going to have a gin and tonic* in his honor, read a few sections from his books (likely a little more than that), and be grateful we got his creative output.

* see The Restaurant at the End of the Universe‘s discussion about the beverage.