Curious Loth-cat
Chris PetrilliDouglas Adams died 25 years ago today. This has made a lot of people very sad. And has been widely regarded as a very bad thing.
Perrin42Time for another reread.
In Search of a Better World@petrillic He didn't die, he just grabbed his towel and left.
ZenHeathen 🇨🇦@CrypticMirror @petrillic Stuck out his Thumb
Third spruce tree on the left@ZenHeathen @CrypticMirror @petrillic he'll be waiting for us at the Restaurant at The End of The Universe.
Possibly in the carpark.
Washing cars.
Casanova McBoner@CrypticMirror @petrillic I like the way you think.
Bard 
@CrypticMirror @petrillic Went to the same diner that Elvis ended up in.
Bytebro 🇬🇧 🇺🇦 🇬🇱Good grief. I adored the books of course, and then in an early computer job, my buddy and I had the Infocom game of #THHGTTG, and we spent *hours* on it when we were supposed to be working 🙂
One of my abiding memories of it was:
“Arthur Dent: What happens if I press this button?
Ford Prefect: I wouldn't-
Arthur Dent: Oh.
Ford Prefect: What happened?
Arthur Dent: A sign lit up, saying 'Please do not press this button again.”
In the game, if you then hit the button a second time, you died immediately.
Wait for permission!
_The shoe event horizon! The whole economy overbalances! Shoe shops outnumber ever other kind of shop, it becomes economically impossible to build anything other than shoe shops and bingo, I get to press the button again!_
Shoes...
Fish Id Wardrobe ⁂@tezoatlipoca @bytebro @petrillic he wasn't wrong, was he? just not specifically shoes.
i do wonder if we're reaching the Datacenter Event Horizon…
I'm sat almost daily these days waiting for the inevitable Kessler Collapse of the whole satellite thing, essentially rendering LEO and outward largely unavailable for a 'Long Time'.
staringatclouds
Monte Freeman@bytebro @petrillic As someone who has a penchant for pressing buttons (on things and on people); I have always particularly liked this bit of dialogue. 🤓
Oh, pushing people's buttons is something of a pastime for me. And the better you know someone, the easier it is 😂
Geoff 🏴@petrillic Too right. And I've owned digital watches.
Joe W@_thegeoff @petrillic ... and thought them to be a really neat invention...
Roy -- the dull oneBut sometimes he seems to speak to us from Beyond, "Chris Petrilli", whoever and whatever you may be.
Franchesca@petrillic so long, and thanks for all the fish! 🥲
Lars Fosdal@petrillic It was a loss for us all. He was brilliant and his writings still are!
mce@LarsFosdal @petrillic if you haven’t already do find a copy of The Salmon of Doubt. Stephen Fry’s forward is a remarkable tribute.
cstephens2@petrillic Over the years, I've thought about his daughter Polly (who he called Rocket before she was born but I can't remember why) from time to time, and I wonder what she's doing and hope that she's well. I was reading a lot of what he wrote about her at the time before she was born.
Markus G 🇪🇺@petrillic @bigzaphod More and more I am wondering if I am among the telephone sanitizers.
Brad Macpherson@Elephant @petrillic @bigzaphod There's definitely an A fleet out there somewhere on our home planet, wherever that is.
ghostdancer@petrillic He just wanted a decent cup of tea. #SoLongAndThankForAllTheBooks
dasgrueneblatt@petrillic 25 years?!
Still such a huge loss.
The Febrile MuseI was able to visit his grave at Highgate a few years ago. Much loved.
Ben Pfaff@petrillic We lost him far too early. Just imagine all we could have enjoyed if he were still with us.
I met Douglas Adams once at a book signing in East Lansing, Michigan, at a now-defunct bookstore. The highlight was when he read from Mostly Harmless, the book that he had just released. He was a good reader and I remember the event fondly.
RustyRingAnd yet the Government has not done anything.
Robin Green@petrillic I suspect he may have reached the human limit of baths-per-lifetime.
GanondalfDouglas Adams helped make towels what they are today.
@petrillic Hadn't enough time to thank him for all the fun, the fish, and the long and tortuous paths with Dirk Gently.
Simon newslttrs.com@petrillic a seriously hoopy frood who really knew where his towel was
Flipper 🐬🏳️🌈@petrillic i actually do think it's a long way down the street to the chemist's.
Alun Jones@petrillic I can still remember the thrill of waiting to hear each episode on the radio. Fantastically advanced use of audio effects and music in a radio drama! Now I love in the USA, and find myself explaining to incredulous fans of Douglas Adams that radio is where this started.
@ftp_alun I still love the radio version best of all. I think because the voice actors are so amazing. I have them all on CD.
yunchtimeAlun, yes! I was in NYC at the time (1978) and a fen from UK returned with the first half dozen shows that he'd recorded live on audio cassettes while listening to BBC. He basically hijacked me and demanded to know if I had a cassette player. when I said "yes" he insisted (wildly, like a demon possessed) that we get the deck and listen to the episodes. "This is probably the first experience of this in the USA!" he claimed. Maybe. But it was worth it! Magic!
Paul Martin@[email protected] @[email protected] My first encounter was of the BBC 2 TV series. Then when I was at University it was conveniently repeated on Radio 4. I even sat with a boombox on Castle Hill a few Saturday afternoons to record some of the episodes of series 2. And shortly after that the CD box set came out.
@petrillic Makes me sad I remember that event well. 25 years ago…
Evan Beaver@petrillic It made me genuinely sad at the time. And again today 😞
sentientsponge@petrillic Yea, I was thinking about him a bit lately too. He's one of the few whose passing has lingered with me. Not long ago, I posted this passage from one of the Hitchhikers books that felt particularly spot on about insurance company CEOs.
schuelermine@petrillic perhaps he was killed to prevent the universe from becoming even more inexplicable
Global thought leader@anselmschueler @petrillic If so, I don't think it worked.
muddle@petrillic So it's already been 25 years? I guess we can rule out him just being temporarily dead for tax reasons.
WL@petrillic Belgium everything.
Elias Mårtenson@petrillic every time I think about this I'm reminded by this story posted by this guy who bought a used Mac computer.
It was full of old writing and he immediately deleted everything on it because he didn't want to risk reading someone's private data tgar apparently the original owner forgot to delete.
Later he learned the computer was Adams old computer that was supposedly used to write his books.
I believe that he was much more than just a novelist. His fiction seems to have started a cosmic mudflow in human society. How else to explain the irresistible muckslide taking us down to...
"data centers", aka Marvin, the neurotic robot with "the most powerful brain in the Galaxy"?
Mike Torr@petrillic That loss hit me so hard. I heard about it from a friend who casually slipped it into conversation with the same tone of voice he would have used for "my neighbour's cat is ill". Then he continued talking to others in the room about trivial stuff while I sat there speechless, my world collapsing around me.
Towel Day will be particularly important this year. I might break out the bath sheet.
That Dud Bloke@macronencer I felt like that when I heard about it. It's strange how someone you've never met, and only know by their writing, can have such an impact on you. The same thing happened to me when Terry Pratchett died. Great minds taken, leaving the world a slightly colder and darker place... @petrillic
@BackFromTheDud @petrillic Pratchett was a bit different for me because I'd only read a handful of his books at the time. I've now read almost all of them, and I feel a much deeper loss now, retrospectively. He was a genius, for sure.
@macronencer @petrillic there are 3 Pratchett books I've not read, the last 3. I don't think I can. 😢
@petrillic
I am one of them
I am one of them
Offbeatmammal@petrillic lucky enough to sit next to him on a flight. Amazing story teller. It wasn't until we were at the Heathrow luggage carousel I realized exactly who "Doug" was (thank God, otherwise I would have been totally tongue tied and awkward)
Gavin Logan@petrillic Time is long. Really long. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly long it is. I mean, you may think it's been a long time since Douglas Adams died, but that's just peanuts to time.
@petrillic Towel Day is the 25th of May, and it's a Bank Holiday in the UK. Not because it's Towel Day (which is a good enough reason), but because it's the late May bank holiday.
wiredfool@BackFromTheDud @petrillic
How did I not realize that Towel Day and the Glorious 25th of May (#GnuTerryPratchett) were the same day.
How did I not realize that Towel Day and the Glorious 25th of May (#GnuTerryPratchett) were the same day.
Pedro Quixote ‽ aka MultiVax@BackFromTheDud @wiredfool @petrillic
On May 25th, certain members of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and a few others around the city, wore a sprig of lilac. The 25th of May was the day that they remembered those who fought and fell for hardboiled eggs, truth, justice and reasonably priced love, who died - and in Reg Shoe's case rose and kept fighting - in the Glorious Revolution of Treacle Mine Road
On May 25th, certain members of the Ankh-Morpork City Watch, and a few others around the city, wore a sprig of lilac. The 25th of May was the day that they remembered those who fought and fell for hardboiled eggs, truth, justice and reasonably priced love, who died - and in Reg Shoe's case rose and kept fighting - in the Glorious Revolution of Treacle Mine Road
@PeterMLittle @BackFromTheDud @petrillic
The discworld revolution is not supposed to have any relation to the round world, but I’m going to just assume that there’s really a relation to certain interstellar bypasses.
The discworld revolution is not supposed to have any relation to the round world, but I’m going to just assume that there’s really a relation to certain interstellar bypasses.
@PeterMLittle I know that bit, I mean is it the kind of thing a Florist will have? @wiredfool @petrillic