I know that today being ‘International Towel Day‘, that there’s going to be a lot of focus on The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
I read his books back when I was very young and a highlight of my uni years was an email response from Douglas Adams himself upon asking for permission to use a quote from ‘The Meaning of Liff’ for a club promotion (apparently I ‘made him laugh’). His love for the Mac led me to learn to use one - now very popular in many schools for its features.
I can certainly say that some of my skepticism about superstitions stems from Dirk Gently’s Holistic I-Ching calculator.
Yet when I taught English, I would recommend his novels to students - but always teach Last Chance To See. I’ve always considered it a valuable non-fiction resource (great link there to the ‘original wiki’, the H2G2 on the BBC website), that led so naturally into discussions and other texts on the environment, our place in the world and the values we have. For a while it was out of print, but thankfully the school I taught at had a class set for use.
I admit, the radio play for THGTTG is fantastic for getting students into the idea of writing a radio play. The
notion of sound effects, silly noises and suddenly turning what usually is a ’schoolyard tale’ into a massive audio opera (usually with gunshots, sirens, punching and gargles, all done with their own vocal creativity and smacking a pencil case on a desk).
Yet even when a major Hollywood picture comes out (I cannot tell you how much of a blessing Baz Luhrmann’s Romeo + Juliet is), it sometimes misses the mark like the recent Hitchhikers one - and doesn’t make the book easier to teach.
There is, however, a short documentary on Douglas Adams which features Richard Dawkins, talking about Last Chance to See which I have used in class. The TV show was ‘The South Bank Show’ and here is the first of six parts of what I used:
The relevant section with Richard Dawkins talking to Adams about the white rhino - this was in fact my first introduction to Richard Dawkins, back in the 80s!
There is also a TV series in production now, with Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine 
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From Madagascar to Mauritius, and from China to the Congo, the pair will be guided by the ethereal presence of Douglas Adams whose voice lives on, loud and clear in scene-setting audio. As they track down these extraordinary creatures, Mark and Stephen will explain the ecological pickle they are now in and encounter the often eccentric characters whose determination, 15 years later, is still all that stands between them and extinction.
One of the activities I used to do with my students was to request that they select one of the animals mentioned in the book and do a short report on ‘where are they now’.
These included:
Aye-aye Lemur (Daubentonia Madagascariensis) - Natural Habitat: Madagascar, island of Nosy Mangabe.
Sadly, continuing superstitions about the Aye Aye prevail, with its cry considered a bad omen, which doesn’t help. Its current status is still endangered - one species, Daubentonia robusta, appears to have become extinct at some point within the last 1000 years.
Komodo Dragon (Varanus komodensis) - Natural Habitat: Lesser Sunda Islands in Indonesia, including the islands of Komodo, Rinca, Gili Motang and Flores.
Its status continues to be listed as vulnerable; approximately 4,000-5,000 living Komodo dragons in the wild, restricted to the listed islands. You might recall the unfortunate death of a young boy in Indonesia by one of these dragons.
One of the most tragic tales from the book - is reported to be no longer with us: the Chinese
River Dolphin or Baiji Dolphin (Lipotes vexillifer).
Its natural habitat was listed as the Yangtze River, in China, with a listed 7 in 1998, one reported in 2004 and in 2007, listed in Biology Letters as likely to be extinct:
“The Yangtze river dolphin was a remarkable mammal that separated from all other species over 20 million years ago,” Dr Turvey explained.
“This extinction represents the disappearance of a complete branch of the evolutionary tree of life and emphasises that we have yet to take full responsibility in our role as guardians of the planet.”
Douglas Adams’ fondness for animals continued beyond the book, shown in the essay ‘Riding the Rays’ that can also be found in the final collection of his work, The Salmon of Doubt:
I would write an article about taking a Sub Bug all the way to Hayman Island, finding a friendly manta ray and doing, effectively, a comparative test drive… As it moved, shimmering and undulating its giant wings, folding itself through the water, I felt that I was looking at the single most beautiful and unearthly thing I had ever seen in my life. Some people have described them as looking like living stealth bombers, but it is an evil image to apply to a creature so majestic, fluid and benign… I was very quiet that evening as we packed the Sub Bug back into its big silver box. I thanked Ian for finding the manta rays. I said I understood about not riding them.
So, it’s International Towel day. If you’re not going wild like the people in this YouTube vid, at least you can always support the wildlife, such as the Save The Rhino fund, another animal reported in the book.
As Adams was always a friend of international understanding, we combined the Towel Day with the japanese Algorithm March and danced it with Towels (and myself in a bathrobe).
