Andy Inhatko’s latest podcast is a retrospective on the career of Douglas Adams. I was surprised to hear that his favorite Adams book is also my favorite — Last Chance to See, a nonfiction travelogue where he took a year off from science fiction to travel the world in search of the rarest and possibly most-fucked of the world’s endangered species.
Back in 1992 I emailed Douglas Adams to ask if Last Chance to See would ever be available in paperback. He responded over two years later, saying “Yes, it’s available from [some imprint], behind the worst cover in all of history.”
personal notes:
- The Hitchhiker books were probably the first “adult” books I ever read.
- I heard Dire Straits on the radio the other day and remembered that scene from So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. Such a romantic book.
- My downstairs neighbor was the director of Starship Titanic. He described Adams as “an interesting guy to work with” and left it at that.
- Douglas Adams would have taken to Twitter like a fish to an ear.
- Damnit Inhatko, the bird was a kakapo, not an aye-aye. That’s a goddamned lemur.
