How utterly shocking. Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has died at the tender age of 49. And this so soon on the tail of Harry Secombe. The Hitchhiker's Guide was probably the second greatest influence on my much-warped teenage brain, the greatest influence being The Goon Show. I was able to quote substantial portions of both verbatim, and still can to this day, though I suspect that substantial is not as substantial as it used to be.

The Hitchhiker's Guide was a masterful work: an Alice in Wonderland for the modern day, Douglas Adams was the Lewis Carroll of our time. One of my favourite excerpts from The Hitchhiker's Guide is where the existence of the babel fish (a curious creature that acts as a universal translator if you stick it in your ear) is used to construct a proof of the non-existence of God. The argument goes something like this.

"I refuse to prove that I exist," says God, "for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing." "But," says man, "the bable fish is a dead giveaway, isn't it? It proves you exist and so therefore you don't. QED." "Oh dear," says God, "I hadn't thought of it like that," and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

Priceless stuff: paradox, twisted logic, and several levels of satire, all wrapped into one terse little bundle. And he did it frequently.

So long, Douglas; you left your mark.