The AFU and Urban Legend Archive
Celebrities
 douglas adams internet access




Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban
From: sirowe@minerva.cis.yale.edu (Si Rowe)
Subject: Re: Douglas Adams again avers
Date: Thu, 02 Dec 1993 03:33:37 -0500

In article <1993Dec1.010720.19356@nezsdc.icl.co.nz>, derek@nezsdc.icl.co.nz (Derek Tearne) wrote:
> Yes that's interesting, exactly what machine does Douglas Adams use to
> post to the net from?
>
> Derek "If it's an HP machine he's an imposter fer sure" Tearne

He uses a Macintosh, and the Eudora program for email (which is, coincidentally, the same setup I use). Is VersaTerm Link a Mac news reader?

How do I know what DNA uses? Well, the following was recently sent to alt.fan.douglas-adams:

----begin quoted message----
Path:
news.yale.edu!yale.edu!spool.mu.edu!olivea!pagesat!news.cerf.net!news!adamsd From: adamsd@cerf.net (Douglas Adams)
Newsgroups: alt.fan.douglas-adams
Subject: Not the Turing Test
Date: Thu, 2 Dec 93 00:56:14 GMT
Organization: CERFnet
Lines: 88
Message-ID: <adamsd.1105181414A@news.cerf.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: adamsd.cerfnet.com
X-Newsreader: VersaTerm Link v1.1.1

There's been quite a lot of stuff coming my way along the lines of 'How do we know you are who you say you are?' and I am getting very bored with it.

I have always made my various email addresses freely available. My internet addresses are in my signature, my AppleLink address is UK0050 and my Compuserve address is 76206,2507. I used to use CIX, but have hardly done so
since I joined the Internet, so that's not a good place to reach me. I'm happy to be available by email because it's much easier and quicker to answer than regular snailmail - which tends to pile up in huge backlogs which I then have to get a secretary to deal with. I guard my home address and phone number because I have my privacy, my family, my friends and security to think about. But cyberspace is - or can be - a good, friendly and egalitarian place to meet.

However, I can't reply to everything, and I'm sure you'll all understand that. In the a.f.d-a newsgroup I tend just to pick a few at random and reply
to those. I may get to miss some good ones, but that's how it is. For instance, I never pick on anything that says '42' anywhere in the title. I've said my say on that.

I enjoy getting feedback. One of the oddities about being a writer (as opposed to, say, an actor or a musician) is the long time lag between doing something and getting a reaction to it. A writer is constantly out of step with his/her aurdience, and the effects are often quite peculiar. Someone asks you to explain something you wrote a year or two ago, and sometimes you
can hardly remember writing it. There's not much anyone can do about that (yet) but still the kind of regular contact I get with readers on the Internet helps to bridge some of the gap. It was great getting instant electronic feedback when I was on my booksigning tour. I guess I have to be careful, though. Kurt Vonnegut apparently said that he had to give up public
speaking because he got addicted to the sound of an audience responding, and
started to find it hard to write without it.

I also enjoy corresponding with people in completely different areas of the net that have nothing to do with who I am, but are just about things I'm interested in. I get the occasional 'Excuse me for asking, but are you the DA who wrote...?' etc, which is fine, but I really like to leave it behind if I can.

What I don't enjoy is being picked on by smartasses. I guess it comes with the territory, but I still don't like it, and this is me saying so. If you have some involved reason for thinking that I am not me, then please sort it
out for yourself and don't bother me with it. There are plenty of other people I would rather hear from. There are also some people who scream blue murder if they think that I deviate in any way from the person they have constructed in their minds as the author of the books. They think they know more about me than I do, and they are wrong. I wrote somewhere - I think in REU - something about the Guide being 'definitively inaccurate' - in cases of major discrepancy it's reality itself that's got it wrong. It was meant as a joke.

So the purpose of this note is to say that I will not get involved in any pointless debates about who I am. I know who I am, and if you have a problem
with that, then it stays your problem. Any mail I get which goes along the lines of (to quote a recent, extremely condescending note I received): 'You will excuse me if I am rather dubious about whether you really are DNA.' will just get a straight Command-D. (For non-Eudora users, that's Delete).

Thank you very much to everyone who has responded to my request for information about HHGG broadcasts, plays, fan groups etc. Some people have been puzzled about the need for this, so let me try and explain a little more clearly - though you will understand if I am a little guarded. Basically it has to do with keeping as much independence (for which read 'creative control') as possible. The more control you want to keep, the more
convincing the money-men will need that they are investing in a viable project. Book sales are the most solid statistic we have - but what context do you read them in? Two different books might have exactly the same sales figures - let's say a million for the sake of argument. But the million people who buy book 'A' read it once, enjoy it, throw it away and think no more about it, while the million people who buy book 'B' read it, enjoy it, read it again, watch the TV show, tape it, watch it again, mount their own productions ... etc, etc. You see what I'm driving at. Which Movie-of-the-Book would you invest in? The problem of course is that all of the 'context' stuff tends to be wishy-washy and anecdotal, and any interested investor is going to want solid, stone cold assurances.

So the need for this information is simple - to help maintain creative control.

So keep it coming!

Best, 

--                     |                                     --
--    Douglas Adams    |   adamsd@cerf.net (current)         --
--                     |   dna@dadams.demon.co.uk (dormant)  --

----end quoted material----
Of course, the folks here on alt.folklore.urban are professional skeptics and scoffers, so even this may not convince you...

Yours, Si Rowe


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