As far as advice for life goes it doesn't get much better than 'Don't Panic'. These two words are famously inscribed on the cover of the fictitious Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and are intended to reassure the more nervous intergalactic explorer. They have, however, proven remarkably adaptable to most nearly any situation one might inadvertently stumble into. They've certainly done me right over the years.
Which is why I've been repeating them like a calming mantra this week. Plans, you see, are afoot. Plans which are enough to send even the most hardened pop culture explorer into a state of mild hysteria. These plans involve having another crack at adapting the real, but wholly fictional, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into a television series. Don't panic? I'm trying.
Douglas Adams' comedic sci-fi trilogy of six books rate amongst my favourites. I've read them all endlessly. Even the one written by someone else after Adams passed. They're logically nonsensical and paradoxically coherent. Full of dry wit, dark humour and fantastical word play that's only bettered by the absurdly ridiculous situations his characters find themselves in; a Cathedral of Hate, a restaurant at the end of the universe and, eventually, stranded on a prehistoric planet that's mostly harmless.
In a larger sense Adams' books are about the human struggle. The pains humanity endures in our futile quest to understand and make sense of things that simply don't. Things like life, the universe and everything - coincidentally the title of the third book in the series.