In this talk at UCSB recorded shortly before his death, Adams shares hilarious accounts of some of the apparently absurd lifestyles of the world’s creatures, and gleans from them extraordinary perceptions about the future of humanity.
My favorit part can be seen at 00:59:20 also containing the following quote:
And it’s rather like a puddle waking up one morning—I know they don’t normally do this, but allow me, I’m a science fiction writer. A puddle wakes up one morning and thinks, “This is a very interesting world I find myself in. It fits me very neatly. In fact, it fits me so neatly, I mean, really precise, isn’t it? It must have been made to have me in it!” And the sun rises, and he’s continuing to narrate the story about this hole being made to have him in it. And the sun rises, and gradually the puddle is shrinking and shrinking and shrinking, and by the time the puddle ceases to exist, it’s still thinking, it’s still trapped in this idea, that the hole was there for it.
Lecture released in Mai 2001 from UCTV – Voices
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter. He was the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy, before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 14 million copies in his lifetime. He also adapted it into a 1981 television series, a 1984 video game and a posthumously-released 2005 feature film.
Adams was born in Cambridge and raised in Essex. In 1971, he entered St John's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the student comedy club Footlights. Despite initial hopes to become a comedian in the mould of John Cleese, Adams began his career as a television and radio writer. Although a brief writing partnership with Graham Chapman gave Adams a credit on a 1974 episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, he entered a period of career difficulty, with many pitched projects going unproduced, but gained work as a writer on Doctor Who and served as script editor for its 17th season (1979–1980).
The success of the first radio series and 1979 book adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy led to sudden fame for Adams. He subsequently wrote the novels...
Definition from Wikipedia – Douglas Adams