Look To The Stars.org has a feature on the upcoming Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, to be presented by "Rock star physicist" Professor Brian Cox.

Although Adams died unexpectedly in 2001 at the age of 49, the Memorial Lectures – held every year since 2003 – continue to explore the themes in which he was so interested, and help support both Save the Rhino International and the Environmental Investigation Agency, two charities championed by the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author.

Douglas was moved to take action for wildlife conservation during a 1985 visit to Madagascar. His dedication to the cause resulted in the book “Last Chance to See” highlighting the plight of species facing extinction.

The Ninth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place at The Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday 10 March 2011, 7.30pm.
Photo Credit: Vincent Connare

Check out the latest edition of The Pod Delusion podcast which is a Douglas Adams special.

In association with Save The Rhino, a look back at Adams' life, work and legacy featuring Stephen Mangan, Mark Cowardine, Simon Jones, Marcus du Sautoy, Dirk Maggs and more.

Look To The Stars.org has a feature on the upcoming Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, to be presented by "Rock star physicist" Professor Brian Cox.

Although Adams died unexpectedly in 2001 at the age of 49, the Memorial Lectures – held every year since 2003 – continue to explore the themes in which he was so interested, and help support both Save the Rhino International and the Environmental Investigation Agency, two charities championed by the “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” author.

Douglas was moved to take action for wildlife conservation during a 1985 visit to Madagascar. His dedication to the cause resulted in the book “Last Chance to See” highlighting the plight of species facing extinction.

The Ninth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place at The Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday 10 March 2011, 7.30pm.
Photo Credit: Vincent Connare

News from the Save the Rhino website. The Ninth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place at The Royal Geographical Society in London on Thursday 10 March 2011, 7.30pm.

The lecture will be given by Professor Brian Cox.

For tickets (which cost £15) please contact jo@savetherhino.org, online, or call +44 020 735 7474

Professor Brian Cox began his career not as a physicist but as a rock star, most notably as part of the band D’Ream, whose song ‘Things Can Only Get Better’ was famously used by Tony Blair as the Labour Party election song in 1997. During the D’Ream years, Brian obtained a first class honours degree in physics from the University of Manchester and a PhD in High Energy Particle Physics at the DESY laboratory in Hamburg.

In 2010, Brian received an OBE for his services to Science. Brian was granted a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2005 and in 2009 became Professor of Particle Physics at the University of Manchester. He works at the CERN laboratory in Geneva, Switzerland on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider.

Brian also writes for various publications including New Statesman, The Telegraph, Sun and Times. His book ‘Why Does E=mc2?’ (Da Capo USA and Perseus UK) was published in 2009. Brian’s ability to present science in an engaging manner makes him a popular television presenter & radio broadcaster. His credits include the recent series, Wonders of the Solar System (BBC2, 2010).

Photo Credit: Vincent Connare

The story of Last Chance to See begins with Douglas Adams being telephoned by the World Wildlife Fund and asked to go to Madagascar and look for the rarest form of lemur then known - the Aye-Aye. He was to do this in the company of zoologist Mark Carwardine who would act as the expert foil to Douglas who would be writing about the trip. The trip took place in the Spring of 1985, and the photographer Alain le Garsmeur went along to provide the pictures, and Jane Belson who was later to be Douglas’s wife also joined the group.

The article duly appeared in the Observer Sunday Magazine (9th June 1985) with plenty of pictures of other lemurs, nice photogenic ones that were active during the day, like the Ring-tailed lemur shown on the cover, and the Sifaka lemur in the body of the article. However, much to everyone's surprise they did manage to capture the nocturnal Aye-Aye on film as well, and so a grainy picture of it was also published in the article. The aim of the project was to promote conservation in Madagascar, and to that end it was sponsored by Fiat, which donated a pound to the WWF for every person that called an advertised phone number.



Incidentally, Douglas used the expedition as the basis of a chatty ten-minute radio programme of him speaking over a background of wildlife sounds that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 1st November 1985 under the title Natural Selection: In Search of the Aye-Aye. Douglas returned to the subject of the Aye-Aye, specifically the evolution of its distinctive middle finger, in a one-minute programme for a 1998 BBC2 series called Natural Selections, with his contribution broadcast on March 28th.

An account of the Madagascar trip, and how it led to the others, is given in the introductory chapter of Last Chance to See entitled Twig Technology. After successfully finding the Aye-Aye, Mark was telling Douglas about some of the many other endangered species and Douglas goes and gets his Filofax and says, “I've just got a couple of novels to write, but, er, what are you doing in 1988?” The preparation for these later trips is discussed in Neil Gaiman's book, Don't Panic: The Official Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, published in 1988, and mentions three particular species that they planned to look for: the Kouprey, the Quetzal and the Kakapo. The last of these did make it into the final selection, but the Kouprey, an ox-like creature found in Vietnam and the Quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, did not. Choosing where to go and what to see was somewhat haphazard with Mark and Douglas horse-trading over a map of the world about where they wanted to go and what they wanted to see. “The Congo? The Seychelles? Split the difference – Mauritius”, reported Gaiman's book, which also said that initial thoughts were to produce a television series, but the first place they asked about filming was in China and as the permit was going to cost £200,000 they quickly shelved that idea, and turned it into a radio series. The radio series was eventually funded by the advance on the book, with the authors paying the expenses of the BBC sound engineers that individually accompanied them: Gaynor Shutte and Chris Muir.

The various trips to search for the animals eventually took place in 1988 and 1989 after Douglas wrote the two Dirk Gently novels and Mark had to change all the arrangements because the books took a little longer than expected. The book of Last Chance to See is still in print, but the full radio series seems only been to have been broadcast in the UK in October / November 1989, with a repeat of four of the six episodes the next year. A clip from the show made the prestigious Pick of the Year BBC radio selection. The full set of episodes did receive an airing in Australia in 2001, and the Fruit Bat episode was included in the three-hour tribute to Adams broadcast on BBC7 in 2003. There are clips from each episode on the triple CD package, Douglas Adams at the BBC.

Last Chance to See – Radio Episode Guide
Prelude: Natural Selection: In Search of the Aye-Aye [Aye-Aye Lemurs - 01/11/1985]

1. Ralph, The Fragrant Parrot Of Codfish Island [Kakapo Parrot - 04/10/1989]
2. Gone Fishing! [Yangtze River Dolphin - 11/10/1989]
3. Animal, Vegetable Or Mineral? [Amazonian Manatee - 18/10/1989]
4. The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind [Rodrigues Fruit Bat - 25/10/1989]
5. A Man-Eating, Evil-Smelling Dragon [Komodo Dragon - 01/11/1989]
6. The Sultan Of Juan Fernandez [Fur Seal - 08/11/1989]

The episodes went out at 12.25pm on Wednesdays with a repeat at 8.00pm on the following Sunday. In the absence of a commercial release, all the episodes should be available to listen to at the National Sound Archive. In May 1997 Radio 4 broadcast another set of five fifteen-minute programmes under the title Last Chance to See. These were Douglas reading from the Komodo Dragon chapter of the book, and a companion website was created at the time is still available at http://tdv.com/lastchance/

The radio series was made with each episode having three or four Hitchhikers Guide style vignettes read by Peter Jones, but with the majority of the content coming from the on the spot recordings made on their travels. These provide their instant reaction to what they are seeing allowing Mark to describe the creatures and Douglas to give his commentary. There are also some more considered comments that were recorded by Douglas after their return that has a background of typewriter noises. The radio programmes featured in a two-page article in the Radio Times (30/09/1989) that quoted Douglas as saying, “The intention of the series is to be serious, but because I'm a comedy writer the tone will be light. The aim is to bring these issues to a broader audience: greens tend to preach to the converted on green issues.”

Writing the book to accompany the series was somewhat of a struggle. Mark and Douglas planned to do this over the course of four months at a villa in Juan-les-Pins in the South of France. With Mark commuting weekly and Douglas there full time, they managed to produce a solitary page, although they did do a great deal of planning and lunching. Returning to London the pair were apparently locked into Douglas's house in Islington in order to produce the book, which, so the story goes, the publishers took as soon as they thought it was long enough. The page written in France didn't make the final edit. This is one of the reasons that two of the species they searched for did not make the book at all: the Juan Fernandez Fur Seal and the Amazonian Manatee. The audio version of the book, the English version of which is read by Douglas Adams, further excludes a couple of the book chapters in order to fit the double cassette format.

Last Chance to See – Book Chapter Guide

1. Twig Technology [Aye-Aye]
2. Here Be Chickens [Komodo Dragon]
3. Leopardskin Pillbox Hat [Northern White Rhino / Gorilla]
4. Heartbeats in the Night [Kakapo]
5. Blind Panic [River Dolphin]
6. Rare, or Medium Rare? [Rodrigues Fruit Bat]
7. Sifting Through the Embers [Sibylline Books]
8. Mark's Last Word ... [Summary / News]

A CD-ROM followed in 1992, produced by The Voyager Company. This has audio recordings of Douglas reading the whole of the book as well as some contributions from Mark about the individual animals and extracts from their on the spot recordings. There are also over 800 photographs from the trip included in the multimedia package. In 2001 a German company re-released the CD-ROM, the book having been successful in translation into German, and a German audio-book also being available. Other translations of the book include Dutch, Polish, Czech and Hebrew editions.



The trips that he and Mark undertook awoke within Douglas a sense of wonderment at the natural world that can be seen in his subsequent writings. Both Mostly Harmless (1992), with the section about Perfectly Normal Beast, and the Salmon of Doubt (2002) with the Rhino's point of view of a rampage, reflect the development of his ecological awareness. In a March 1998 interview with Matt Newsome, partly reproduced in The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas mentions the impact of his trip to Madagascar on the first Dirk Gently book, although the author admitted that “I recast it for various reasons as Mauritius”. The interview also touched on the possibility of a Last Chance to See TV series, although Douglas presaged that part of the interview with “I probably shouldn't say this” as the discussions were only just beginning, and at the time came to naught. After publishing the first Dirk Gently book, Douglas became friends with Richard Dawkins who had written Douglas a fan letter after reading the novel, and this again reinforced and developed his interest in evolution and natural history. Douglas eventually became a patron of both Save The Rhino and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, charities for which the annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lectures have raised money.

A set of follow-up trips were touted and an article appeared in The Times (19th February 1991) which indicated that the pair were to be even more intrepid than on their previous trips and look specifically at species whose predicaments had been caused by their proximity to war zones. Again the Kouprey was mentioned by name, described as living “on the borders of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which has been devastated by minefields”. The article also mentioned the pair having researched the plight of animals in Afghanistan, Uganda and Nicaragua, and the potential of looking at the predicament of fish and birds in the oil spills of the (First) Gulf War zone. This is as far as the second series seemed to get, however, the Last Chance to See story does not end there, as nearly twenty years after the original radio series we now have the prospect of a televisual update with the working title Another Chance to See.

At a lecture in London in November 2006, to raise money for tiger conservation, Mark Carwardine was introduced as “the author of 54 books, and shortly to film a series with Stephen Fry”. Asked about it after the lecture Mark confirmed that he was in the process of arranging the filming dates for going to visit the people and animals that he had seen with Douglas and hoped the series would be broadcast in Spring of 2008. Stephen Fry would be filling the role of enthusiastic amateur now Douglas is no longer with us, and was not only a great friend of Adams, but also has his own environmental pedigree with his TV programme, book on the Spectacled Bear, as well as a charity to help protect it. The TV series has had quite a long gestation. Stephen Fry mentioned on a webchat that he was in discussions about this project with Mark back in June 2006. Another Chance to See seemed to take a major step forward when the TV company Iostar announced it on their website as part of their launch at the TV trade show MIP-TV in Cannes during the second week of April 2007. Part of the text ran: “This time it's Stephen Fry at the helm with Carwardine, as they revisit the six featured endangered species and bring their stories right up to date. From Madagascar to Mauritius, and from China to the Congo, the pair will be guided by the ethereal presence of Douglas Adams whose voice lives on, loud and clear in scene-setting audio.” The company then went spectacularly bust soon afterwards. However, the project was far from being dodo-like...

Added by Gareth, September 2009
In January 2008, Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine set off on the first filming expedition, to try and find the Amazonian Manatee. Unfortunately, Stephen fell off a boat dock and broke his arm badly, but the first of the films was in the can.

Further filming expeditions followed from mid-2008 through the spring of 2009. Stephen Fry "Twitter-ed" their progress regularly, and the BBC provided blogs and video clips on their new Last Chance To See website. The website also gradually released streaming audio of the entire original radio series. As the radio series had never received a commercial release before, this was very well received by fans.

Working titles for the films were "Another Chance To See" and "Last Chance To See - The Return", but ultimately the series would end up being called "Last Chance To See". On Sunday 6th October 2009, the six-part TV series began on BBC2 at 8p.m.

Last Chance to See – TV Episode Guide

1. Last Chance to See: Amazonian Manatee [6/9/2009]
2. Last Chance to See: Northern White Rhino [13/9/2009]
3. Last Chance to See: Aye Aye [20/9/2009]
4. Last Chance to See: Komodo Dragon [27/9/2009]
5. Last Chance to See: Kakapo [4/10/2009]
6. Last Chance to See: Blue Whale [18/10/2009]

To accompany the TV series, Mark Carwardine wrote a new Last Chance To See book, with a foreward by Stephen Fry, which was released in hardback on September 3rd 2009, published by Collins. A DVD and Blu-ray of the TV series was released on October 19th, 2009.



A version of this article, also by David Haddock, first appeared in issue #105 of Mostly Harmless, the magazine of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Appreciation Society. See http://www.zz9.org.

Apologies for the re-post, but with the TV series about to begin, Dave's article deserves another visit to the front page

Tomorrow, May 25, is Towel Day 2009. Towel Day is an annual celebration, and tribute to the late author Douglas Adams (1952-2001), when fans around the universe proudly carry a towel in his honour.

According to their website and the latest issue of Save The Rhino's "The Horn" newsletter, The Eighth Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place on Thursday, March 11th, 2010. (Douglas Adams' birthday)

The lecture will be given by Oxford Professor of Mathematics Marcus du Sautoy on the very Douglas Adams-ie subject of "42". Proceeds will go towards Save the Rhino International and the Environmental Investigation Agency.

For tickets (which cost £15) please contact Fiona Macleod for tickets, phone +44 (0)20 7357 7474.

Marcus du Sautoy is the Charles Simonyi Professor for the Public Understanding of Science and Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College. He has been named by the Independent on Sunday as one of the UK's leading scientists. In 2001 he won the prestigious Berwick Prize of the London Mathematical Society awarded every two years to reward the best mathematical research made by a mathematician under 40. In 2004 Esquire Magazine chose him as one of the 100 most influential people under 40 in Britain and in 2008 he was included in the prestigious directory Who’s Who.

Marcus du Sautoy writes for the Times, Daily Telegraph, Independent and the Guardian and is frequently asked for comment on BBC radio and television. He has a regular column in the Times called Sexy Maths.

Photo Credit: Niall McDiarmid

Sonia Mitchell has written a review of the original Last Chance To See book, over at PopMatters.com, and I thought it was worth a link if you're still on the fence about reading this terrific book. She gives it an 8/10.

Adams treads a delicate line between making it clear how threatened some of these animals are and staying optimistic as to the future. It’s possibly too late for some of them, but others still hang on, and with increased public awareness perhaps comes an increased chance of survival. Adams’ character portraits of the conservationists in the field are witty and skillful, and leave the reader with some hope that with (often charmingly insane) people like these devoting their lives to these animals there might be a future for some of them.

Thanks to Dave who points out that the re-issue edition of Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, with a new introduction by Richard Dawkins, will be released on October 1st, 2009.

This new paperback edition by Arrow Books is now available for pre-order at Amazon.co.uk.

Similarly, the TV tie-in book published by Collins, Last Chance to See by Mark Carwardine and Stephen Fry is set for release on October 5th.

Stephen Fry and Mark Carwardine finished recording the Whales episode of the TV series very recently. Stephen is currently back in New York, playing with his Kindle2. They only have the Komodo Dragon episode left to film in April.

**FINAL REMINDER REPOST**

In aid of Save The Rhino, the Seventh Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place on March 11, 2009. The speaker this year will be explorer and broadcaster Benedict Allen.

I first became aware of Benedict when he presented his inspiring 1997 "video diary" style documentary series "The Skeleton Coast" in which he trekked through the Namib desert with three grouchy camels. He followed that trip with a 3000 mile trek across the Mongolian Gobi desert in "The Edge of Blue Heaven".

Benedict is a sometime guest, and sometime presenter on BBC Radio 4's "Excess Baggage". Here he is in an appearance from 2006: The Adventurer's Spirit in the Face of Adversity.

These days, Benedict is known for his Channel Five TV series Unbreakable...

in which eight athletes are pushed to their mental and physical limits, explorer Benedict Allen takes a look at what helps keep any of us going in the face of disaster.

As to the lecture itself...

It’s an exciting and often humorous talk which draws on his vast experience of survival in jungles and deserts and the Arctic, by himself and others who live at the extremes.

Please e-mail fiona@savetherhino.org for tickets, which cost £15.

**REMINDER REPOST**

In aid of Save The Rhino, the Seventh Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place on March 11, 2009. The speaker this year will be explorer and broadcaster Benedict Allen.

I first became aware of Benedict when he presented his inspiring 1997 "video diary" style documentary series "The Skeleton Coast" in which he trekked through the Namib desert with three grouchy camels. He followed that trip with a 3000 mile trek across the Mongolian Gobi desert in "The Edge of Blue Heaven".

Benedict is a sometime guest, and sometime presenter on BBC Radio 4's "Excess Baggage". Here he is in an appearance from 2006: The Adventurer's Spirit in the Face of Adversity.

These days, Benedict is known for his Channel Five TV series Unbreakable...

in which eight athletes are pushed to their mental and physical limits, explorer Benedict Allen takes a look at what helps keep any of us going in the face of disaster.

As to the lecture itself...

It’s an exciting and often humorous talk which draws on his vast experience of survival in jungles and deserts and the Arctic, by himself and others who live at the extremes.

Please e-mail fiona@savetherhino.org for tickets, which cost £15.

One of the very first posts I made on this blog, back in 2004, was about this wonderful Douglas Adams lecture entitled "Parrots, The Universe and Everything", which is mostly about "Last Chance To See". At the time, it was only available as a fairly low quality stream, direct from the University of California Television website. It is still available at UCTV, but now, through the magic of YouTube (which didn't even EXIST in 2004), I can present it for your enjoyment right here. ENJOY!

This report from the Daily Nexus Online describes the lecture, and how it was enjoyed by an enthusiastic audience of some 800 people.

Very sadly, this is one of the last public appearances by Douglas, as he would tragically die the following month. Still so very sadly missed.

In aid of Save The Rhino, the Seventh Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture will take place on March 11, 2009. The speaker this year will be explorer and broadcaster Benedict Allen.

I first became aware of Benedict when he presented his inspiring 1997 "video diary" style documentary series "The Skeleton Coast" in which he trekked through the Namib desert with three grouchy camels. He followed that trip with a 3000 mile trek across the Mongolian Gobi desert in "The Edge of Blue Heaven".

Benedict is a sometime guest, and sometime presenter on BBC Radio 4's "Excess Baggage". Here he is in an appearance from 2006: The Adventurer's Spirit in the Face of Adversity.

These days, Benedict is known for his Channel Five TV series Unbreakable...

in which eight athletes are pushed to their mental and physical limits, explorer Benedict Allen takes a look at what helps keep any of us going in the face of disaster.

As to the lecture itself...

It’s an exciting and often humorous talk which draws on his vast experience of survival in jungles and deserts and the Arctic, by himself and others who live at the extremes.

Tickets cost £15 and are on sale in January.

Please e-mail fiona@savetherhino.org to be notified when tickets go on sale.

It is with great sadness that I have to report that Geoffrey Perkins has died in a road traffic accident in London. He was only 55. Geoffrey was instrumental in bringing Douglas Adams' The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy to radio back in the 70s, and in his roles as a BBC radio producer, director of Hat Trick Productions, BBC TV Head of Comedy, and latterly with Tiger Aspect Productions, he has been part of an incredible number of shows that I've enjoyed for nearly 30 years.

He was a great talent who will be much missed, and his list of hit shows just goes on and on. How many of these have you enjoyed?

The Catherine Tate Show, The Fast Show, Father Ted, Spitting Image, Saturday Night Live, The Harry Enfield Television Programme, Ben Elton - The Man From Auntie, The Thin Blue Line, Radio Active and KYTV, 2 Pints of Lager, My Family, Coupling, and Big Train. His latest show Harry and Paul, with Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse, starts next week.

Read the full report on his life at BBC News, and here is his Wikipedia and IMDB page.

Geoffrey Perkins, 55, worked for many years for BBC Radio, where he created the game Mornington Crescent in I'm Sorry Haven't a Clue.

He also produced the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of the most successful radio shows ever made.
[...]
BBC director of vision Jana Bennett said she was "shocked and deeply saddened" by the news.

"Geoffrey Perkins was an outstanding creator of countless comedy hits on the BBC and elsewhere, and a very distinguished former BBC head of comedy.

It's hard to believe that it's seven years already, but on this day, May 11th 2001, Douglas Adams passed away. May 25th will see "Towel Day 2008" when you are invited to join your fellow hitch hikers in mourning the loss of the late great one. To show your appreciation for the humor and insight that Douglas Adams brought to all our lives, just carry your towel with you throughout the day to show your participation and mourning. I'll be at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway for the 92nd Indy 500 so a towel could well be the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have at such an event. Knowing my luck, it will rain...



It truly is an international event, as this mad video from last year's celebration in Augsburg, Germany proves.

YouTube contributer basti0007 writes...

As Adams was always a friend of international understanding, we combined the Towel Day with the Japanese Algorithm March and danced it with Towels (and myself in a bathrobe).

MP3 players and IPods at the ready! Stephen Fry has released his first podcast (or "Podgram" as he calls it) and it is entitled "Broken Arm". In it he describes how he broke his arm filming the Last Chance To See TV series in the Amazon. It seems that boats are the problem, and he broke his arm getting INTO a boat, whereas Douglas Adams had trouble getting OUT of a boat on Round Island during recording of the original radio series. Stephen certainly came off worse though, as his x-rays show.

Subscribe and download the episode from here: Stephen Fry's Podgrams

Thanks to ZZ9's DaveH for the tip

The story of Last Chance to See begins with Douglas being telephoned by the World Wildlife Fund and asked to go to Madagascar and look for the rarest form of lemur then known - the Aye-Aye. He was to do this in the company of zoologist Mark Carwardine who would act as the expert foil to Douglas who would be writing about the trip. The trip took place in the Spring of 1985, and the photographer Alain le Garsmeur went along to provide the pictures, and Jane Belson who was later to be Douglas’s wife also joined the group.

The article duly appeared in the Observer Sunday Magazine (9th June 1985) with plenty of pictures of other lemurs, nice photogenic ones that were active during the day, like the Ring-tailed lemur shown on the cover, and the Sifaka lemur in the body of the article. However, much to everyone's surprise they did manage to capture the nocturnal Aye-Aye on film as well, and so a grainy picture of it was also published in the article. The aim of the project was to promote conservation in Madagascar, and to that end it was sponsored by Fiat, which donated a pound to the WWF for every person that called an advertised phone number.



Incidentally, Douglas used the expedition as the basis of a chatty ten-minute radio programme of him speaking over a background of wildlife sounds that was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 1st November 1985 under the title Natural Selection: In Search of the Aye-Aye. Douglas returned to the subject of the Aye-Aye, specifically the evolution of its distinctive middle finger, in a one-minute programme for a 1998 BBC2 series called Natural Selections, with his contribution broadcast on March 28th.

An account of the Madagascar trip, and how it led to the others, is given in the introductory chapter of Last Chance to See entitled Twig Technology. After successfully finding the Aye-Aye, Mark was telling Douglas about some of the many other endangered species and Douglas goes and gets his Filofax and says, “I've just got a couple of novels to write, but, er, what are you doing in 1988?” The preparation for these later trips is discussed in Neil Gaiman's book, Don't Panic: The Official Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion, published in 1988, and mentions three particular species that they planned to look for: the Kouprey, the Quetzal and the Kakapo. The last of these did make it into the final selection, but the Kouprey, an ox-like creature found in Vietnam and the Quetzal, the national bird of Guatemala, did not. Choosing where to go and what to see was somewhat haphazard with Mark and Douglas horse-trading over a map of the world about where they wanted to go and what they wanted to see. “The Congo? The Seychelles? Split the difference – Mauritius”, reported Gaiman's book, which also said that initial thoughts were to produce a television series, but the first place they asked about filming was in China and as the permit was going to cost £200,000 they quickly shelved that idea, and turned it into a radio series. The radio series was eventually funded by the advance on the book, with the authors paying the expenses of the BBC sound engineers that individually accompanied them: Gaynor Shutte and Chris Muir.

The various trips to search for the animals eventually took place in 1988 and 1989 after Douglas wrote the two Dirk Gently novels and Mark had to change all the arrangements because the books took a little longer than expected. The book of Last Chance to See is still in print, but the full radio series seems only been to have been broadcast in the UK in October / November 1989, with a repeat of four of the six episodes the next year. A clip from the show made the prestigious Pick of the Year BBC radio selection. The full set of episodes did receive an airing in Australia in 2001, and the Fruit Bat episode was included in the three-hour tribute to Adams broadcast on BBC7 in 2003. There are clips from each episode on the triple CD package, Douglas Adams at the BBC.

Last Chance to See – Radio Episode Guide
Prelude: Natural Selection: In Search of the Aye-Aye [Aye-Aye Lemurs - 01/11/1985]

1. Ralph, The Fragrant Parrot Of Codfish Island [Kakapo Parrot - 04/10/1989]
2. Gone Fishing! [Yangtze River Dolphin - 11/10/1989]
3. Animal, Vegetable Or Mineral? [Amazonian Manatee - 18/10/1989]
4. The Answer Is Blowing In The Wind [Rodrigues Fruit Bat - 25/10/1989]
5. A Man-Eating, Evil-Smelling Dragon [Komodo Dragon - 01/11/1989]
6. The Sultan Of Juan Fernandez [Fur Seal - 08/11/1989]

The episodes went out at 12.25pm on Wednesdays with a repeat at 8.00pm on the following Sunday. In the absence of a commercial release, all the episodes should be available to listen to at the National Sound Archive. In May 1997 Radio 4 broadcast another set of five fifteen-minute programmes under the title Last Chance to See. These were Douglas reading from the Komodo Dragon chapter of the book, and a companion website was created at the time is still available at http://tdv.com/lastchance/

The radio series was made with each episode having three or four Hitchhikers Guide style vignettes read by Peter Jones, but with the majority of the content coming from the on the spot recordings made on their travels. These provide their instant reaction to what they are seeing allowing Mark to describe the creatures and Douglas to give his commentary. There are also some more considered comments that were recorded by Douglas after their return that has a background of typewriter noises. The radio programmes featured in a two-page article in the Radio Times (30/09/1989) that quoted Douglas as saying, “The intention of the series is to be serious, but because I'm a comedy writer the tone will be light. The aim is to bring these issues to a broader audience: greens tend to preach to the converted on green issues.”

Writing the book to accompany the series was somewhat of a struggle. Mark and Douglas planned to do this over the course of four months at a villa in Juan-les-Pins in the South of France. With Mark commuting weekly and Douglas there full time, they managed to produce a solitary page, although they did do a great deal of planning and lunching. Returning to London the pair were apparently locked into Douglas's house in Islington in order to produce the book, which, so the story goes, the publishers took as soon as they thought it was long enough. The page written in France didn't make the final edit. This is one of the reasons that two of the species they searched for did not make the book at all: the Juan Fernandez Fur Seal and the Amazonian Manatee. The audio version of the book, the English version of which is read by Douglas Adams, further excludes a couple of the book chapters in order to fit the double cassette format.

Last Chance to See – Book Chapter Guide

1. Twig Technology [Aye-Aye]
2. Here Be Chickens [Komodo Dragon]
3. Leopardskin Pillbox Hat [Northern White Rhino / Gorilla]
4. Heartbeats in the Night [Kakapo]
5. Blind Panic [River Dolphin]
6. Rare, or Medium Rare? [Rodrigues Fruit Bat]
7. Sifting Through the Embers [Sibylline Books]
8. Mark's Last Word ... [Summary / News]

A CD-ROM followed in 1992, produced by The Voyager Company. This has audio recordings of Douglas reading the whole of the book as well as some contributions from Mark about the individual animals and extracts from their on the spot recordings. There are also over 800 photographs from the trip included in the multimedia package. In 2001 a German company re-released the CD-ROM, the book having been successful in translation into German, and a German audio-book also being available. Other translations of the book include Dutch, Polish, Czech and Hebrew editions.



The trips that he and Mark undertook awoke within Douglas a sense of wonderment at the natural world that can be seen in his subsequent writings. Both Mostly Harmless (1992), with the section about Perfectly Normal Beast, and the Salmon of Doubt (2002) with the Rhino's point of view of a rampage, reflect the development of his ecological awareness. In a March 1998 interview with Matt Newsome, partly reproduced in The Salmon of Doubt, Douglas mentions the impact of his trip to Madagascar on the first Dirk Gently book, although the author admitted that “I recast it for various reasons as Mauritius”. The interview also touched on the possibility of a Last Chance to See TV series, although Douglas presaged that part of the interview with “I probably shouldn't say this” as the discussions were only just beginning, and at the time came to naught. After publishing the first Dirk Gently book, Douglas became friends with Richard Dawkins who had written Douglas a fan letter after reading the novel, and this again reinforced and developed his interest in evolution and natural history. Douglas eventually became a patron of both Save The Rhino and the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, charities for which the annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lectures have raised money.

A set of follow-up trips were touted and an article appeared in The Times (19th February 1991) which indicated that the pair were to be even more intrepid than on their previous trips and look specifically at species whose predicaments had been caused by their proximity to war zones. Again the Kouprey was mentioned by name, described as living “on the borders of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia, which has been devastated by minefields”. The article also mentioned the pair having researched the plight of animals in Afghanistan, Uganda and Nicaragua, and the potential of looking at the predicament of fish and birds in the oil spills of the (First) Gulf War zone. This is as far as the second series seemed to get, however, the Last Chance to See story does not end there, as nearly twenty years after the original radio series we now have the prospect of a televisual update with the working title Another Chance to See.

At a lecture in London in November 2006, to raise money for tiger conservation, Mark Carwardine was introduced as “the author of 54 books, and shortly to film a series with Stephen Fry”. Asked about it after the lecture Mark confirmed that he was in the process of arranging the filming dates for going to visit the people and animals that he had seen with Douglas and hoped the series would be broadcast in Spring of 2008. Stephen Fry would be filling the role of enthusiastic amateur now Douglas is no longer with us, and was not only a great friend of Adams, but also has his own environmental pedigree with his TV programme, book on the Spectacled Bear, as well as a charity to help protect it. The TV series has had quite a long gestation. Stephen Fry mentioned on a webchat that he was in discussions about this project with Mark back in June 2006. Another Chance to See seemed to take a major step forward when the TV company Iostar announced it on their website as part of their launch at the TV trade show MIP-TV in Cannes during the second week of April 2007. Part of the text ran: “This time it's Stephen Fry at the helm with Carwardine, as they revisit the six featured endangered species and bring their stories right up to date. From Madagascar to Mauritius, and from China to the Congo, the pair will be guided by the ethereal presence of Douglas Adams whose voice lives on, loud and clear in scene-setting audio.” The company then went spectacularly bust soon afterwards. However, the project is far from being dodo-like, with both Mark and Stephen publicly talking about it, the expeditions are still planned, but now for 2008, and with broadcast in mind for Spring 2009.

A version of this article, also by David Haddock, first appeared in issue #105 of Mostly Harmless, the magazine of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Appreciation Society. See http://www.zz9.org.

I'm very proud to be able to share this heartfelt "Letter to Douglas Adams" which was written by Carolyn Garcia of Fairmont, West Virginia. Not surprisingly, it won Carolyn the Top Honors prize (grades 9-12) in the 'Library of Congress - Letters about Literature 2007' competition. This event sees readers write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre, fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic, explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking about the world or themselves.

All the winner's letters can be found on the 2007 Letters about Literature PDF and Carolyn's letter is re-printed on Another Chance To See by kind permission of The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, the West Virginia Center for the Book, and Carolyn herself. Thanks to everyone.

Very many congratulations to you Carolyn. You write very well, and I wish you every success on your chosen career path in journalism.

This letter is the property of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the West Virginia Center for the Book. All rights reserved.

Level 3 - Top Honors
Carolyn Garcia
Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams

Dear Douglas Adams,

Sometimes our most precious possessions are taken away from us even before we knew we had them.

I’ll never forget the time I first read your work. It was an excerpt from your book Last Chance to See in a magazine I subscribe to. When I read an article, I usually only afford the author’s name a passing glance before I move on, if that. However, while reading about your venture with Mark Carwardine to see the kakapo, I became curious. I not only felt myself warming up to the adorable and pathetically maladaptive parrot that you and Mark had trekked all the way to New Zealand to see before it became extinct, I also felt myself warming up to you. Hmm, I thought. This man is funny. Hilarious, actually. Brilliant, too. I flipped back to the title page of the article and made a mental note to check out the rest of the book you wrote, and maybe see if you had written anything else. I read the rest of the article, still wanting more, and then turned to the miniature author bio at the end. It read, “Renowned for his Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams died in 2002...” I was shocked. Reading that excerpt, I had gotten a brief glimpse into the mind of a darkly witty, intelligent, and utterly fascinating person—I had been captivated. Now I had just been introduced to you and already you had been taken away from me.

I devoured your work, beginning with the Guide and continuing through the entire series, not stopping until I had read almost everything you had ever written. You blew my mind as you dragged me through all different aspects of space-time; from Africa to Alpha Centauri, from the 1800’s to the 60’s to centuries into the future. The more I read, the more I laughed, the more I wondered, and the more I missed you, although I never knew you.

Even with your wonderful British humor, drier than Melba toast, so icy it could freeze a blowtorch, your books often leave me with a lingering sad feeling. Perhaps, Mr. Adams, it is because of your bleak outlook. Although much of your work places emphasis on the amazing complexity of our wondrous universe, there is an undertone of melancholy. You seem to see the universe as a cruel, harsh place, whose hapless inhabitants are constantly battered about by malevolent forces. You don’t believe in God. You believe that the cosmos and the fates and most of all, humans and other life forms, are all pitted against the innocent, the good, the unsuspecting.

In Last Chance to See, you wrote that the kakapo, bumbling and incompetent at the game of evolution, the victim of a quickly changing environment, danger rushing at it from all sides, is impossible not to love. “If you look one in its large, round, greenybrown face,” you wrote, “it has a look if serenely innocent incomprehension that makes you want to hug it and tell it everything will be all right, even though you know that it will probably not be.” Reading this sentence now, I am filled with a sudden urge to embrace both you and the bird, to hold on to you and keep you here with us, to reassure you both that although the world seems unutterably cruel sometimes, this isn’t all there is, and it will get better in the end, I am sure of it.

The kakapo, the Bajii River Dolphin, the Rodrigues fruit bat, all disappearing before our very eyes, and you yourself taken from us so prematurely, before my generation even had a chance to know you, remind me of a poem by Carl Sandburg:

Buffalo Dusk
The buffaloes are gone.
And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed
the prairie
sod into the dust with their hoofs, their great heads down, pawing
on the great
pageant of dusk,
Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.
And the buffaloes are gone.

Mr. Adams, all of your writing has amazed me, but Last Chance to See has truly inspired me. The world is full of fantastic, wonderful things, many of which are departing before most people are aware they ever existed. Life is a breathless race to discover more and more of these divine gifts, intricate and stunning, strange and fascinating, before all-consuming time or our own indifference wipes them off the face of the earth forever. This is why I want to be a reporter. To do what you did, to travel the globe in search of places, cultures, and species so awesome and so beautiful, to gather all possible knowledge about these amazing things, and fling it far and wide to every corner of every country, so that people can know what I know and become amazed along with me, treasuring the marvels our world possesses and protecting those in danger—it seems to me that there could hardly be a more satisfying job.

My overall opinion about life, the universe, and everything differs from yours only in that I believe in a loving and benevolent force, watching over us and making sure that everything turns our right ultimately. Perhaps last chances don’t have to be last chances after all. It is my strong hope that someday many eons in the future, long past our own time and the time of our planet, you and I and all the many wonders of our crazy spinning galaxies will finally be united, somewhere at the end of the universe.

Sincerely,
Carolyn Garcia

Thanks (as always) to Dave Haddock for the tip-off on Carolyn's winning letter. You'll be able to see Dave's mention of it in the next edition of Mostly Harmless, the newsletter of ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha, the Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Appreciation Society.