Replies

Life immitating art out of Douglas Adams's "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".

...

"I was the engineer on board and it fell to me to supervise the task of repairing the ship and preparing it to return to our main ship. Now, in order to understand what happened next you must know something of the nature of a highly-automated society. There is no task that cannot be done more easily with the aid of advanced computerisation. And there were some very specific problems associated with a trip with an aim such as ours -"

"Which was?" said Dirk sharply.

The ghost in Michael blinked as if the answer was obvious.

"Well, to find a new and better world on which we could aIl live in freedom, peace and harmony forever, of course," he said.

Dirk raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, that," he said. "You'd thought this all out carefully, I assume."

"We'd had it thought out for us. We had with us some very specialised devices for helping us to continue to believe in the purpose of the trip even when things got difficult. They generally worked very well, but I think we probably came to rely on them too much."

"What on earth were they?" said Dirk.

"It's probably hard for you to understand how reassuring they were. And that was why I made my fatal mistake. When I wanted to know whether or not it was safe to take off, I didn't want to know that it might not be safe. I just wanted to be reassured that it was. So instead of checking it myself, you see, I sent out one of the Electric Monks."

Life immitating art out of Douglas Adams's "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency".

Ahhhh. Another Douglas Adams fan. This NASA debacle reminds me of another Douglas Adams monologue - the one where the spaceship computer fails disastrously in interpreting sensor data (Sensors are gone with the severed end of the ship) which the computer interprets as "Everything's fine." I think from book four or five of the "Hitchhiker's Guide" "trilogy".

Hard to believe Adams is dead at age 49. I always looked forward to a new book of his.