Douglas Adams: Mostly About Family

Grantchester, a village outside Cambridge, England

In Douglas Adams' novel Mostly Harmless, the fifth installment in his Hitchhiker's Guide series, the spaceship Arthur Dent is traveling aboard crash-lands on an alien world. Inhabitants of a nearby village accept Arthur, and he discovers that they've never heard of sandwiches. So Arthur assumes the role of Sandwich Maker for his village. This gives him an important role in the community, and he hires an apprentice to keep up with customer demand. 

After Trillian and Zaphod dropped out of the series in book three, we never learned what happened to them in book four. In Mostly Harmless we learn that Trillian has traded in her vagabond status for a career as an interstellar reporter. On her way to covering the next big news story, Trillian stops off on Arthur's adoptive homeworld, and introduces him to their daughter Random. 

As Arthur never had a close relationship with Trillian, you can imagine his surprise at Trillian's bombshell.

King's College, Cambridge, England

It seems that sometime after both Zaphod and Thor left her, Trillian decided she wanted a daughter. She reached out to the interstellar gene banks for a compatible match. As Arthur had sold his genetic material to travel aboard spaceships in First Class, she was able to get the requisite genetic material from a fellow Earthling. Now she has a daughter she's never has time for, as her interstellar reporting duties prevent her from having a stable homelife. 

During his travels, Arthur had thought he was getting something for nothing. Now, he realizes that, well, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Whether it includes sandwiches or not. 

She may have just arrived, but Trillian doesn't have time to stop and catch up with Arthur. Nor can she be bothered to bring Arthur with her, so they can function as a family while she's covering stories across time and space. Instead, she announces that she's leaving Random with Arthur because, well, she's his daughter too, and he should share in the responsibility of raising Random. One moment Arthur is content, if not completely happy, in his new life as chief sandwich maker for his village. The next, he's a father who must work to connect with a daughter who is a complete stranger to him.

Grantchester Common, Grantchester, England

 

Random has never had much of a relationship with her mother, as Trillian was always on the go for her job. So she's never really known where she fits in, and doesn't get along with others. How can she be expected to feel love for this man, and honor him as her father? After all, from her perspective, she's never even had much of a mother. 

There's no such thing as a perfect family, and even in the best of times, maintaining healthy family relationships can be difficult. Douglas Adams' parents divorced when he was young, so he knew how difficult it can be to build a happy and nurturing family. He had a complicated relationship with English barrister Jane Belson, whom he married in 1991 after several breakups and a broken engagement. As Mostly Harmless was published the following year, I imagine Adams drew upon his own childhood, as well as his on-again/off-again relationship with Jane Belson, in crafting the complicated dynamics between Arthur, Trillian, and Random in Mostly Harmless.

Dragon Dave 

P.S. Two years after Douglas Adams published Mostly Harmless, his wife Jane gave birth to a daughter.