Presentasjon av fantasiens mester
lørdag, januar 19th, 2008
Apropos bøker, litteratur, underholdning eller kunst. Jeg vil gjerne gi dere en smakebit av forfatteren som virkelig viste meg hva god fantasi var. Den godeste Douglas Adams!
Hva?
Selv om det opprinnelig var ment for radio, er Douglas Adams forfatter av blant annet følgende verker:
- The Hitchhiker’s guide to the Galaxy
- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
- Life, the universe and everything
- So Long, and Thanks for all the fish
- Mostly Harmless
I tillegg har han lagt 2 romaner om privatdetektiven Dirk Gently + noen andre. Du skjønner bare av boktitlene at dette er bøker utenom det vanlige. Kategorien er Science fiction, på en måte som du aldri har opplevd før. Bøkene er absolutt å anbefale, og er du noenlunde stø i engelsk, les dem på engelsk!
Hvem?
Douglas var en engelskmann (ja, han døde i 2001) som også er kjent for å ha medvirket til materialet som ble til TV-serien Doktor Who som ifjor rullet på skjermene på Nrk2.
Bare for å få en litt bedre forståelse av denne mannen, ønsker jeg å gjengi ett sitat fra han:
. . . imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in, an interesting hole I find myself in, fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, it’s still frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.
Hvorfor?
Og bare for å sette kronen på verket, får du her (sikkert ulovlig) gjengitt utdrag fra hans bøker:
- The door was the way to… to… The Door was The Way. Good. Capital letters were always the best way of dealing with things you didn’t have a good answer to.
- “Or maybe she decided that an evening with your old tutor would be blisteringly dull and opted for the more exhilarating course of washing her hair instead. Dear me, I know what I would have done. It’s only lack of hair that forces me to pursue such a hectic social round these days.”
- Yes, it was an act of God. But which God?
- The seat received him in a loose and distant kind of way, like an aunt who disapproves of the last fifteen years of your life and will therefore furnish you with a basic sherry, but refuses to catch your eye.
- “(..) Sir Isaac Newton, renowned inventor of the milled-edge coin and the catflap!”
“The what?” said Richard.
“That catflap! A device of the utmost cunning, perspicuity and invention. It is a door within a door, you see, a …”
“Yes,” said Richard, “there was also the small matter of gravity.”
“Gravity,” said Dirk with a slightly dismissed shrug, “yes, there was that as well, I suppose. Though that, of course, was merely a discovery. It was there to be discovered.” …
“You see?” he said dropping his cigarette butt, “They even keep it on at weekends. Someone was bound to notice sooner or later. But the catflap … ah, there is a very different matter. Invention, pure creative invention. It is a door within a door, you see.”
“Jeg er ikke så veldig glad i barn. Jeg vet ikke helt hva jeg skal gjøre med dem, og ender som regel med å skremme de litt”. Mirakel i 
