I have always liked reading science fiction and fantasy.But so far for some unknown reasons had never read Douglas Adam’s “The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy“.This is a book I have seen almost in all the bookstores of Kolkata.Last Sunday, I went to Crossword bookstore to buy a copy of this book.But they only had the third volume of the series.I felt first volume will be good to start with and decided to order the same from Flipkart.But bought another Douglas Adam’s book instead, “The Dirk Gently Omnibus”.I had never heard about this book before.

The first novel in this book is “Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency”.I was amazed and it was surely one of my best readings in the recent past.It covers various interesting concepts like Origin of Life, Chaos Theory,Coleridge’s Dream and Time Travel stitched together into fast paced thriller with bits of humor and a gradually unfolding mystery.

The first interesting thing was the Origin of Life.About 4 billion years ago, 9 dozen people, from the distant world of Salaxala set out on a journey to find a new world for themselves.They landed on earth to replenish some minerals but their landing vehicle was damaged.But due to mistake of the engineer the vehicle exploded leaving his ghost haunting over this planet for years to come.This ghost is one of the important characters of the story.

The spark of this explosion also led to the initiation of life on earth.As stated by the author the next day after the explosion was

“warmer,clearer,brighter – an altogether livelier day than any yet known”

This actually points to the concept of “Abiogenesis” which states that essential components of life(living organisms) was formed by chemical reactions between inorganic matter available on earth back then.

There are several other stories which indicates the hand of aliens in creation of mankind, where the aliens have actually created life, they are monitoring everything on earth and if required they might destroy us as well.Here aliens are basically God and it is Creation by Design.

Here in spite of the alien involvement it’s very much different.Here the Salaxalans had no intention to create life on earth.The landing craft exploded accidentally and it created life by Chance.

Creation by chance….where I read about this first..???..The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins.

The most interesting finding after that both Richard Dawkins and Douglas Adams, the two radical atheists were very good friends.

Richard Dawkins’s eulogy for Adams goes here…

http://www.edge.org/documents/adams_index.html

Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion was dedicated to Douglas Adams

This is an interesting video featuring the two…

The interconnectedness between ideas,personalities across various disciplines always surprises me and keeps me going… reading and learning.