Today is the anniversary of the day when Douglas Adams suffered a spontaneous existence failure. We miss you, you silly brilliant man. (Towel Day will be on May 25)

Adams was author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy.

Adams also wrote Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who; he also served as script editor for the show’s seventeenth season in 1979.

I first started reading Adam’s wonderfully quirky books when I was inpatient at NIH waiting for pituitary surgery…and ended up reading them all.  Then, I got my son hooked on them.