Douglas Adams On "Getting The Book Invented Properly"

By Maggie Hellwig in Arts & Entertainment on Jul 3, 2012 3:10PM

Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author, Douglas Adams predicted that someone will have a "bright idea of what to do with silicon."

Several months ago, The Literary Platform launched a well-received video contest. The goal was to animate an audio piece orated by everyone's favorite SciFi funny man: Douglas Adams.

Back in the early 90s, the author of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy recorded a tidbit of his prophetic genius for his publisher Bob Stein at Voyager Expanded Books. The topic: evolution of the book. In the recording, Adams provided us with a silly recap of how the book was created. Furthermore, he perceived that one day all literature will be stuffed "into a powerbook or something," and all of the nostalgic "pictures, texts, scrolling, page-turning could be modeled in software." Sound familiar?

And so, animators from all over the world submitted their entries to illustrate Adams's eerily accurate Kindle-Prophecy. The winner was a self-taught animator, Miss Eleanor Stokes. There were many other entries that were far more polished. Maria Popova's favorite one from runner-up Gavin Edward's, for example, is the work of a professional designer and is much more eye-catching than Stokes's stop motion work with action figures. However, we're going to have to agree with The Literary Platform. Stokes's cragged and jovial video synchronizes well with Adams's vibe "or something," and the over-all clumsiness of the video is pretty adorable "or something." You be the judge. And, have some fun looking at the other entries here.