Life, the universe and the awe of understanding

On one of my recent London research stints, a good friend took me to one of his local pubs, where - strangely, I thought - there were an awful lot of books ranged around on different shelves. Apparently, they were for sale (for a mere 50p dropped in an honesty box) and went to benefit the local green party. My pal found a rather decrepit but still endearing edition of a comic collection he fondly recalled from his youth, and after we'd sat down, I noticed on the shelf next to us a copy of Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide series.

I had read and re-read the series countless times as a teenager, it being one of the key common cultural interests in my circle of friends, who had committed long passages to memory; however, I hadn't looked at the books for years, and somehow my copies got lost or sold in one of my many changes of address.

So I bought it (there seemed something so cosmically right about buying a Hitchhiker book in a pub...) and, of course, I enjoyed it very much.

Nonetheless, I couldn't help feeling somehow sad every time I laughed. That morning in 2001 when my radio alarm told me Adams had died far too suddenly and far too young is for some reason deeply embedded in my mind.

In any case, re-reading that long-lost favourite has had me tracking down bits of Adams-related material online (there is, happily, quite a lot of it), and I've discovered things I never knew about him, such as that he climbed mount Kilimanjaro dressed as a rhino to benefit a wildlife charity and once played guitar onstage with Pink Floyd. (Which is doubly impressive to me, as Pink Floyd was one of the other key cultural touchstones of my youth...)

I'd also never realised that he was, as he put it, a 'radical atheist'. There's quite a good interview with him from American Atheist available online.

One very nice line: 'I'd take the awe of understanding over the awe of ignorance any day.'

Me too, Douglas, me too.

Also of note: his memorial service at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church was the first online broadcast by the BBC from a place of worship.

Even in death, he got the last laugh.

(On science and awe, see also this post - with video - at onegoodmove. Thanks to Geoff Coupe for bringing it to my attention).