From exile, Grow man

For this I bless you as the ruin falls. The pains you give me are more precious than all other gains.
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Additional Weekly Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, 1974. Much like the story as a whole, Adams writing and plot development hinges on one certainty (at least in his mind): all is chaos.  Considered a cult classic by many, this book does one of the best jobs of describing a nihilistic, atheistic philosophy through the story and through the style of writing.  Adams gives no background or information for characters, they just appear, he gives very little background on the story, it just happens, and he gives very little background for the settings, they just are there.  If all things are chaos, or mere chance, and their is no divinity behind it all, then this is as close as you can get to a story that projects that sentiment.  Even with these characteristics, the story is lighthearted, humorous and, at times, even though-provoking.  I found myself laughing out loud especially when Marvin, the manically-depressed robot, links into a police spacecraft and explains its theories about the Universe thereby causing the spacecraft to, itself, commit suicide.  Various other parts of the book very funny and Adams has a knack for the absurd.  The one line that explains the author’s, and the book’s, position goes as such in response to the discovery of a legendary planet that no one believed in anymore: “All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile.  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?”  Though I find comparing God to fairies is significantly understating the question as a whole, it is still the overwhelming feeling of many atheists I have met.  I am not here to debate that point right now (I may get into that when I read Hitchens), just to recognize that a significant part of the book, underneath all of the comedy and insanity, is Adams’ view that God does not have to be part of the equation.  The world can be, in fact, a huge Improbability Drive.  The other thing I found slightly interesting was his use of “Earth” as the smartest computer ever made (smarter even than Deep Thought, which is the second smartest computer ever to exist and works toward the unenviable task of figuring out the meaning of life, which happens to be 42).  The first thought that popped into my head was back in the day when a good portion of the human race thought everything revolved around the earth.  This kind of planetary egotism still, apparently, shows up from time to time, though I doubt that Adams’, necessarily, was going for that, but it did come out seeming that way. In the end, this was a fun and engaging read and I look forward to reading the other books in the series to continue the adventures and travails of our hero, Arthur Dent. 

Additional Weekly Book: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Douglas Adams, 1974.

Much like the story as a whole, Adams writing and plot development hinges on one certainty (at least in his mind): all is chaos.  Considered a cult classic by many, this book does one of the best jobs of describing a nihilistic, atheistic philosophy through the story and through the style of writing.  Adams gives no background or information for characters, they just appear, he gives very little background on the story, it just happens, and he gives very little background for the settings, they just are there.  If all things are chaos, or mere chance, and their is no divinity behind it all, then this is as close as you can get to a story that projects that sentiment.  Even with these characteristics, the story is lighthearted, humorous and, at times, even though-provoking.  I found myself laughing out loud especially when Marvin, the manically-depressed robot, links into a police spacecraft and explains its theories about the Universe thereby causing the spacecraft to, itself, commit suicide.  Various other parts of the book very funny and Adams has a knack for the absurd. 

The one line that explains the author’s, and the book’s, position goes as such in response to the discovery of a legendary planet that no one believed in anymore: “All this Magrathea nonsense seemed juvenile.  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?”  Though I find comparing God to fairies is significantly understating the question as a whole, it is still the overwhelming feeling of many atheists I have met.  I am not here to debate that point right now (I may get into that when I read Hitchens), just to recognize that a significant part of the book, underneath all of the comedy and insanity, is Adams’ view that God does not have to be part of the equation.  The world can be, in fact, a huge Improbability Drive. 

The other thing I found slightly interesting was his use of “Earth” as the smartest computer ever made (smarter even than Deep Thought, which is the second smartest computer ever to exist and works toward the unenviable task of figuring out the meaning of life, which happens to be 42).  The first thought that popped into my head was back in the day when a good portion of the human race thought everything revolved around the earth.  This kind of planetary egotism still, apparently, shows up from time to time, though I doubt that Adams’, necessarily, was going for that, but it did come out seeming that way. In the end, this was a fun and engaging read and I look forward to reading the other books in the series to continue the adventures and travails of our hero, Arthur Dent. 

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