Douglas Adams has been my favorite author since childhood. I celebrate the man’s entire library and I am always in the mood to revisit the fantastical worlds of Arthur Dent and Dirk Gently. I even dedicated my own sci-fi comedy novel Max and the Multiverse to his memory. In fact, my dream as an author is to hoist the humor mantle that he left behind.

Those are big shoes to fill. Literally. The dude was 6′ 5″.

But anyway, this is less about my affinity for Douglas Adams and more about an obscure connection that makes me very happy as a fan. My wife and I moved to New Mexico many years ago and we love living in the Land of Enchantment. Apparently, so did Douglas Adams. He was a world-traveling Brit who had some wild experiences. (I highly recommend his hilarious odyssey book Last Chance to See.) And yet, Santa Fe was his favorite place on the planet. He loved the area and did a large chunk of his writing there.

Amazingly, I didn’t know any of this before moving to New Mexico. I had resisted reading The Salmon of Doubt, a posthumous publication of various essays and the unfinished manuscript of the third Dirk Gently novel. It was the only Adams book I hadn’t read and doing so meant that I had no more Adams to read, which would make me very sad. And so, I saved it for a rainy day. After publishing my own sci-fi comedy novel, the time felt right to complete the canon. As it turned out, much of it took place in my own backyard.

I first learned of Adams’s love for New Mexico through his essay Maggie and Trudie. It’s all about writing and living in Santa Fe while dealing with a few excitable dogs. One particular passage made me gasp with nerdy glee:

To give you an idea of the sort of place that Santa Fe is, I could bang on about the desert and the altitude and the light and the silver and turquoise jewelry, but the best thing is just to mention a traffic sign on the freeway from Albuquerque. It says, in large letters ‘GUSTY WINDS’ and in smaller letters ‘may exist.’

I chuckled like an idiot because I know that sign! I have passed it countless times on the road to Santa Fe. I also remember thinking that it made no sense. What am I supposed to take from a bold-letter warning and a tiny-letter brush-off? Of course Adams thought it was hilarious. It’s one of the most British signs I have ever seen.

And then it came time to read the unfinished Dirk Gently manuscript. I knew it was going to make me sad, but dammit, it was the last piece of Adams that I needed to assimilate. And without giving too much away, Dirk Gently travels to New Mexico, is on his way to Santa Fe, sees the Gusty Winds sign, and is convinced that it will help him find the missing half of a Schrödinger cat. Once again, I chuckled like an idiot.

I couldn’t help but feel a connection to my favorite wordsmith after reading The Salmon of Doubt. And with the canon officially complete, there was only one thing left to do …