OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM (7)
By:
April 25, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… Seventies (1974–83) sci-fi novels and comics! Series edited by Josh Glenn.
THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY | DOUGLAS ADAMS | 1979
Sometimes I feel like I was part of a gigantic social experiment out of the UK to investigate what happens when you introduce impressionable young minds to science fiction. My parents mostly only let us watch educational programming, which in practice meant whatever was showing on our local public television stations. The local PBS affiliate carried BBC shows so Doctor Who was fair game and then, a few years after it came out, I stumbled on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
In my imperfect memory — it’s hard to pinpoint the exact start of something that would become a huge part of my developing psyche — it was the novel and its two sequels, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980) and Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), that I stumbled upon first, but my public library soon yielded recordings of the BBC radio series that the books were based on. Then came the 1981 BBC television series (thanks, PBS!), a bootlegged copy of the text-based interactive game, and more books in the ‘increasingly inaccurately named’ Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy.
All of this meant that words like ‘apocryphal’ became part of my everyday working vocabulary while I was still a child, and I became familiar with concepts like a Somebody Else’s Problem field (it’s the easiest way to make something invisible), superintelligent shades of the color blue, that it’s possible to be in possession of ‘tea’ and ‘no tea’ at the same time, that knowing the answer (it’s 42) isn’t meaningful unless you truly understand the question, and also that it might be impossible to truly understand the question.
I doubt a day goes by where I don’t see echoes of Hitchhiker’s in my life and thinking. Doctor Who taught children like me that they had moral agency and the capacity to act in a knowable world. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy taught me that the universe is an absurd and bewildering place, that the effects of my actions might be unpredictable or unknowable, and that I could make my peace with this. Even if all I could do was muddle along and try to be a good person, that was okay. We’re exposed to many versions of the first worldview, and far fewer of the second, especially as children. But as an adult, I’ve come to understand that both views of our role in the universe are simultaneously real and true. Like having tea and also no tea in your pockets.
OMAC YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Josh Glenn | Mark Kingwell on RIDDLEY WALKER | Carlo Rotella on THE FACE | Sara Ryan on DREAMSNAKE | Matthew Battles on THE WORD FOR WORLD IS FOREST | Ramona Lyons on HIGH-RISE | Adam McGovern on SHADRACH IN THE FURNACE | Deb Chachra on HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY | Tom Nealon on DHALGREN | Michael Grasso on FLOW MY TEARS, THE POLICEMAN SAID | Stephanie Burt on BRIGHTNESS FALLS FROM THE AIR | Nikhil Singh on SABRE | Gordon Dahlquist on VALIS | Miranda Mellis on THE DISPOSSESSED | Marc Weidenbaum on SOFTWARE | Peggy Nelson on THE TRANSMIGRATION OF TIMOTHY ARCHER | Josh Glenn on ENGINE SUMMER | Mimi Lipson on A SCANNER DARKLY | Douglas Wolk on THRILLER | David Hirmes on ARZACH | Anthony Miller on SHOCKWAVE RIDER | Annie Nocenti on JIMBO | Seth on MR. MACHINE | Alex Brook Lynn on JUDGE DREDD | Joe Alterio on THE INCAL | Jason Grote on JOSIE AND THE ELEVATOR.
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