Google celebrates Douglas Adams' birthday with a special doodle

Google has paid a rich tribute to critically acclaimed comedy and science fiction writer Douglas Adams, on what would have been his 61st birthday today. Google has put up a doodle that’s clearly set in a space ship and features a few things fans will recognise from Adams’ writings. The setting features a cup of tea, referring to one of Adams’ much loved Dirk Gently novel called The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul.

It also features a towel, which, according to The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, is the most important item for inter-galactic travels. There is also a tablet of sorts with the words ‘Don’t Panic’ flashing on it. When you click on the keyboard, the tablet plays out animated scenes from The Hitchhiker’s Guide. There are animations of how the Babel Fish enables people to understand any language if inserted into their ears, and the supercomputer Deep Thought taking 7.5 million years to calculate the answer to “Life, the Universe and Everything”, and coming up with the answer “42”.

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Don’t Panic!

Clicking on the door of a lift hidden in the left corner of the doodle will open it to reveal one of Adams’ most loved creations, Marvin the Paranoid Android. 

Adams was born on March 11,1952 in Cambridge and died of a heart attack at the fairly young age of 49 in 2001. He is best known for writing The Hitchhikers’ Guide to the Galaxy, a “trilogy in five parts”. The series went on to become a BBC radio comedy in 1978 and was later adapted into a full-fledged feature film in 2005. Adams also wrote the Dirk Gently series, besides three episodes of Doctor Who and some sketches for Monty Python.

Last month, Google unveiled an interactive doodle to commemorate both the birth of the creator of the Ferris Wheel, George Ferris and Valentine’s Day.  The doodle acknowledged the season of love with a day-at-a-fair kind of setting; two Ferris Wheels are at the centre, and form the letters ‘OO’ in the Doodle. Two shiny arrows point to a heart button too, which makes the Ferris Wheels move when clicked. Roller coasters then move around in a symbolic infinity-shaped track—making the ‘G’ in Google—symbolising that ‘love is forever’.

The moving Ferris Wheels finally stop and two animals show up in the middle of the wheels. Now, you’d think that the combination of these animals—a hare, a tortoise, a monkey and an elephant—have nothing in common. But then they look at each other and sparks fly! The next scenes show Polaroid-style snapshots from the animals’ dates.

The hare is shown waiting in a restaurant as the tortoise is late (what else were you expecting?); and the monkey and the elephant get their funk on in a disco. There are nearly ten odd love stories that originated at the Ferris Wheel and the odd combinations of animals in love.