Tuesday 20 March 2012

Douglas Adams predicted the Kindle

in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Ford Prefect (!) carries

a device that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator. This had about a hundred tiny flat press buttons and a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million ‘pages’ could be summoned at a moment’s notice. It looked insanely complicated…

The reason why it was published in the form of a micro sub-meson electronic component is that if it were printed in normal book form, an interstellar hitchhiker would require several inconveniently large buildings to carry it around in.
Clever and funny - my kind of author. I recently bought the 'trilogy in five parts' for Kindle at the special 'birthday giveaway' price for Adams' virtual 60th birthday celebrations. It's as fresh as it was when I first heard it on the radio. The voices I 'hear' are those of the cast of the BBC TV series. The voice of the Hitchhiker's Guide will, for me, always be that of Peter Jones.