Date: 2001-06-21
Time: 12:30 p.m.

Don't take the bait, people.

Tuning into douglasadams.com to see what wreckage remained after the death of our late, beloved author, I found a reference to a Sunday Times article about Douglas Adams. Rather than join the fray on the message board, I'll post a few choice thoughts here.

The Sunday Times article is sheer muckracking, and typical of third-rate journalism. Richard Harris probably needn't have dignified it with a response, but it's an interesting read.

Basically my impression is that there are a few sour grapes from the journalism world for this writer who simply wouldn't behave. This is what writers, thinkers, and sci-fi dreamers ought to be working on: engagement with the future via exploration of new media.

From Richard Harris:

"In recent years, [Douglas Adams has] been at least as much respected for his ability to articulate a shared vision of the future of society, technology and the environment as for his original fiction."

Our favourite authors ought indeed to surprise us by refusing to be kept as pets.

Links:
Another message board avoidance post
about atheism, spawned from the douglasadams.com community
Short quote
from Douglas Adams regarding Hitchhiker's and crossmedia