Tag: last chance to see

Review: Mostly Harmless

Mostly Harmless
Mostly Harmless by Douglas Adams

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Imagine you’re Douglas Adams in 1992. You’ve relatively recently done Last Chance to See and have added “interest in wildlife and evolution” to your already unusually large toolbox of inspiration and influences. This new way of looking at the world has alarmed you about the state of things and has filled you with a reserved pessimism; not that your previous work can be said to have been optimistic — unless aloof nihilism can double for optimism, which is of course, by itself, a matter of some discussion. Perfectly not primed, you return to that same greatest achievement that made you famous 8 years after last leaving readers at an already sad cliffhanger (that’s all I can say for the end of “Thanks For All the Fish” — no, it doesn’t get better than that). What do you do then? Being a jerk at this point is an understandable, if not very bold, move. That is exactly what you go on to do.

Douglas Adams has said that the period in which he wrote Mostly Harmless was a bleak one for his personal life; one can certainly tell. Oh yes. In the world of H2G2 everything somehow worked out for our heroes, improbability always on their side no matter how fantastic, dangerous or humorously absurd (usually all three) the scenario. Let’s just say that, this time around, not even improbability itself is spared from all this bleakness.

Even if in subsequent itterations of the series the ending of H2G2 has been altered to be more cheerful or even expanded in the form of a sixth book by Eoin Colfer, the fact is that this was Douglas Adams last word on the matter before his death in 2001. I think it is shocking, of course I do. But it somehow still fits with Adams’ vision of his Universe. Aloof nihilism is still the ultimate universal force this part of the Whole Sort Of General Mish Mash; only this time, this same universal force works against everything the reader has come to expect or wish. Oh well. Same shit, different space-time continuum. At the same time, this bleakness serves to colour the humour black — and there’s no shortage of humour in this one either: in typical Adams fashion, the humour is funny because it rings true. To me, that’s what H2G2 is all about. Therefore I don’t think it’s any worse than book 4; to tell the truth I would place them together just a notch below the first three.

To put it all together in a nice little summary that may be able to say, in its brevity, more than all of the above: Mostly Harmless is just the opposite side of the coin that is H2G2, the first four books being the first side; still absurd, still funny, still clever, still making social critique, still eloquent. Only this time, it doesn’t give a Belgium.

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Review: Last Chance to See

Last Chance to See
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Douglas Adams proved with this book that he wasn’t just a brilliant science fiction writer with a virtually unrivalled wit and sense of humour; it went to show that he had an admirable, enviable even, sense of social and ecological responsibility, taking him, as far as I am concerned, from the “brilliant writer” tier, to the “paradigm of humanity” club, reserved only for those people (and there’s not a lot of them around) that can work as sources of true inspiration for me. Last Chance To See is a manifesto on almost everything that’s wrong or imbalanced in the world today — and it was written more than 20 years ago. The Douglas Adams impish vibe that is so cherished by many serves as little more than a tasty side dish for this book. It is that good.

My edition has a foreword by Richard Dawkins who has a similar opinion of the late man as I do. While I do not really agree with his flagship Atheist views (even if I would much sooner classify myself as an Atheist than a “Creationist”), he does do a magnificent job of summing up the point of this book in just a few words:

Of the endangered animals that Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine set out to see, one seems to have gone for good during the intervening two decades. We have noew lost our last chance to see the Yangtze river dolhpin. Or hear it, which is more to the point, for the river dolphin lived ina world where seeing was pretty much out of the question anyway: a murky, muddy river in which sonar came splendidly into its own — until the arrival of massive noise pollution by boat engines.
The loss of the river dolphin is a tragedy, and some of the other wonderful characters in this book cannot be far behind. In his Last Word, Mark Carwardine reflects on why we should care when species, or shole major groups of animals and plants go extinct. He deals with the usual arguments:

Every animal and plant is an integral part of its environment: even Komodo dragons have a major role to play in maintaining the ecological stability of their delicate island homes. If they disappear, so could many other species. And consercation is very much in time with our own survival. Animals and plants provide us with life-saving drugs and food, they pollinate crops and provide important ingredients for many industrial processes.

Yes, yes, he would say that kind of thing, it’s expected of him. But the pity that we need to justify conservation on such human-centered, utilitarian grounds. To borrow an analogy I once used in a different context, it’s a bit like justifying music on the grounds that it’s good exercise for the violinist’s right arm. Surely the real justification for saving these magnificent creatures is the one with which Mark rounds off the book, and which he obviously prefers:

There is one last reason for caring, and I believe that no other is necessary. It is certainly the reason why so many people have devoted their lives to protecting the likes of rhinos, parakeets, kakapos and dolphins. And it is simply this: the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them.

[…]

He [Douglas Adams] saw with his own eyes how quickly such painstaking edifices of evolutionary artifice can be torn down and tossed to oblivion. He tried to do something about it. So should we, if only to honour the memory of this unrepeatable specimen of Homo Sapiens. For once, the specific name is well deserved.

My respect also goes to Mark Carwardine, who has continued to bring the word out all these years, as well as to all the people all over the world, described in the book or not, that have devoted their lives to noble and moving ideals.

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