A Look Back at 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy'

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move."

                                                          -Douglas Adams

October 12th marks the 32nd anniversary of the publication of Douglas Adams' science fiction classic, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In addition to providing us with a quirky, bestselling tale of space adventure, the novel introduced readers to several wondrous things, including the Babel Fish, the Infinite Improbability Drive, and the actual Hitchhiker's Guide, itself (which is, in the novel's universe, the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom).

Though Douglas Adams passed away in 2001, his mark on science fiction and technology lives on. In advance commemoration of "Guide's" October 12th anniversary, let's take a glance at the three aforementioned things that played significant roles in Adams' visionary five-part "Hitchhiker's Trilogy."

The Babel Fish
Described in the novel as, "small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe," the Babel Fish "feeds on brainwave energy." This parasitic creature has an marvelous benefit, however. If you stick one in your ear and allow it to ingest some of your brain's energy, the babel fish will grant you the power to understand any spoken language.

Such a creature or technology would be highly prized, which is why Google is currently developing a seamless universal translator for your smartphone that will replicate the babel fish's ability without forcing the user to host a brain-inhabiting fish.

The Infinite Improbability Drive
In Adams' books, the Infinite Improbability Drive allows for faster than light travel through the control of probability.

Despite the fact that this drive is pure fiction, modern quantum theory seems to allow for the notion of probability-fueled travel. According the physicist Michael Lockwood:

A subatomic particle is most likely to be in a particular place, such as

near the nucleus of an atom, but there is also a small probability of

it being found very far from its point of origin. Thus, a body could travel from place to place without

passing through the intervening space if you had sufficient control of probability.

The Guide, Itself
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (also the title of Adams' novel) is the most "wholly remarkable book in the whole of the known universe." It is described as a small, simple, electronic book with the words "Don't Panic," written in "large friendly letters on the cover." The 'Guide' contains just about everything you ever wanted to know.

Modern similarities to the 'Guide' are numerous, but there is none more fitting than the iPad. The iPad, coupled with a connection to the internet, allows you to access pretty much any piece of information. Adams' reputation as an "Apple Master" also lends credence to the comparison.

The iPad actually surpasses the Guide in some respects - in storage space for instance. While

the 'Guide' has to shorten certain descriptions in order to conserve memory space (For example, its entry for planet Earth was a mere two words: "mostly

harmless"), an iPad can provide a much more detailed description through Wikipedia.

Science Inspired by Science Fiction
The Babel Fish, the Infinite Improbability Drive, and the Hitchhiker's Guide represent only a sampling of the ingenious ideas that Douglas Adams was gracious enough to bestow upon his readers. It is truly remarkable how science - inspired by Adams' science fiction - has turned the author's dreams into reality.