Douglas Adams loved much about life and the universe – unlike today’s billionaire space explorers

I tried hitchhiking once. I stood in a lay-by near Bristol with a sign saying ‘London’ for an hour – and then gave up and took the bus, thus exhausting my paltry fee for the gig the night before. I am rich enough now to take the train.  

Having failed that hitchhiking test to get across the M4, I think it highly unlikely that I would manage to travel across M106, otherwise known as Messier 106, a spiral galaxy in the constellation of Canes Venatici.  

My first knowledge of the notion of hitchhiking came, as so many things did, from science fiction. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is undoubtedly one of the most influential books in my life, a natural progress from the joy of Doctor Who. The author, and I know I don’t need to write this but I will, Douglas Adams, was also script editor for Doctor Who. Hitchhiker’s was my bridge between The Goodies and The Young Ones comedically, and between Arthur C Clarke’s Mysterious World and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos scientifically.

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Though I was no great shakes at science in secondary school, the intrigue of the universe and the fascination with the strangeness of it all was embedded deeply enough for cosmology to become a great deal of my working life via the work I have done with professor Brian Cox. I am the silly man with jokes to ease the pain of contemplating infinity.  

When I first read of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox – let us take a moment to enjoy each one of those wonderful character names – I presumed many of the ideas of physics mentioned were just the madness of a febrile comedy mind. It was only later that I discovered many of these fanciful concepts about probability and the end of the universe grew from genuine scientific contemplations.  

Elon Musk believes that Douglas Adams was a great philosopher, which makes me wonder if Hitchhiker’s has now reached that dangerous point where the adoration for it allows people to interpret it the way they wish, just like Orwell, Nietzsche and The Bible.

Adams had a great concern for this living planet. He considered his final project, Last Chance to See, a factual book on species extinction, his most important work. It is an earthbound reality rather than a space fantasy and a powerful reminder that there is no Planet B. Something I have discovered from conversations with astronauts, is how much more they appreciate the intricacies of life having viewed Earth from space.  

I fear that Musk loves the idea of a space-exploring race and has dreamt of Vogon poetry, but I also fear that he can understand why living planets need to be demolished for the sake of progress, if progress is defined as technological advancement rather than an increase in love and happiness.  

I imagine he sees the journey to Mars and the process of terraforming it more vital than maintaining the already naturally terraformed planet we are on. He sees humanity’s possibility, but is oblivious to individual human beings’ lives, much as 19th-century engineers could achieve remarkable engineering feats, but ones that required many fatalities among workers. The poor must pay the cost of progress but may well not experience the benefits.  

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Just as Adams’s work inspired my fascination with space, Musk’s work has almost eviscerated my interest in human space flight and reaching out further. We have too much work to do here.  

My favourite book in the Hitchhiker’s series is So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. More than any other it is about love, the romance between Arthur and Fenchurch. I think here is the most important idea of the strangeness of a living planet.

It is here that we can find that rarest of things in the universe: Love. Is there life out there? Is there love out there? How rare are we?  

Robin Ince appears in a new documentary, Douglas Adams: The Man Who Imagined Our Future, on Sky Arts, Freeview and NOW on 27 March at 8pm

Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince is out on 1 May (Macmillan, £20). You can buy it from the Big Issue shop on bookshop.org, which helps to support Big Issue and independent bookshops.

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