Douglas Adams (1952 - 2001)

His Life:

Douglas parents got divorced when he was five and he moved to Brentwood with his mother and two years younger sister, Sue. In 1962 his father married again and had another child in 1965, a half-sister to Douglas, who now teaches English in the Canaries. His mother married Ron Thrift in 1964 and that resulted in Douglas' half-sister Jane in 1966 and half-brother James in 1968. Jane went on to become a zoologist, and James works here. James' wife gave birth to their first born, a girl named Ella, in May 2004. Ron Thrift died of cancer in 1991.

From 1959 until 1970 Douglas attended Brentwood School in Essex, at which time he was still more interested in the field of science than in the arts. The moment he thought seriously about writing for the first time was at the age of ten, when he got "ten out of ten" for a composition in Frank Halfords class - reportedly the first and only time Mr. Halford has ever given "ten out of ten".

By his essay on the revival of religious poetry he won himself an exhibition to study English at Cambridge. Douglas was eager to go to Cambridge as he wanted to join Footlights, a comedy revue group there. He spent nearly every free moment at school writing sketches for Footlights. "I wanted to go to Cambridge because I wanted to do Footlights--mainly because I knew I had a reasonable opportunity to meet people of like mind. . . . It's just sort of a rallying flag." Some of those like-minded people included core members of what would later become the Monty Python group: John Cleese, Eric Idle, and Graham Chapman.

After graduation, while trying to start a writing career, Adams toiled at a series of menial jobs, including hospital reporter, barn builder, chicken shed cleaner, and bodyguard for the royal family of Qatar, work for which his 6'5", 210-pound frame--if not his disposition--suited him well.

During this same period, he also worked with Chapman, later of Python fame, on numerous unsuccessful projects. Finally Adams began writing scripts for BBC radio and TV, among them for the long-running Dr Who sci fi series. Then he recalled his idea for a guide to the galaxy.

Adams presented his idea for a radio show to BBC Radio 4 and received pocket change as up-front money to develop a pilot script. Adams sketched out the basic premises of his story: clueless Englishman Arthur Dent and his alien friend Ford Prefect hitch rides across the galaxy after Earth is destroyed in order to make room for an intergalactic highway. What started out as an experiment--almost a write-off--on radio soon garnered loyal fans who loved the send-up humor.

By 1978, the BBC radio series was so popular that Pan Books in England asked Adams to novelize the story. The published book was an instant success, reaching the top of British bestseller lists.

Adams found it difficult to write, in spite of his success, and often missed deadlines. As he said in the Times of London, "Some of the excuses are better than the novels. I would never sit down and write for pleasure because it's too much like hard work. Ninety percent of the work gets done in the last 10 percent of the time." According to the Times, at least two publishers went to extreme lengths to get Adams to complete books--once a publisher had him confined to a hotel room until he finished a manuscript. One editor even moved into his house on another occasion to watch over him to be sure he was working.

Adams, true to his calling as a science fiction writer, was an avid adopter of new technology, and was quick to embrace the information age. In particular, he helped to create a company called Digital Village, based in England, which produced electronic, comedic science fiction adventure games, including the popular Starship Titanic. He also allowed many of his printed works to be distributed electronically as well as in printed form.

Adams spent the last two years of his life in Santa Barbara, California. At the time of his death, he was adapting the Hitch Hiker series for the big screen for Disney, and he was also at work on a new novel. He died suddenly of a heart attack on May 11, 2001, while exercising at a gym near his Santa Barbara home. He was 49 years old. Adams is survived by his mother; wife, Jane Belson, and daughter, Polly.

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."
From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
From Mostly Harmless

"Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job."
From The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

"Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so."
From Last Chance to See

His Writings: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Series

MEDIA ADAPTATIONS
Hitchhiker's Guide has been produced as a stage play, Liverpool (1979); producer Ivan Reitman holds the movie rights to the Hitchhiker trilogy; a film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is to be written by Karey Kirkpatrick and directed by Jay Roach. The screenplay will be based on a draft by Douglas, who was working on it at the time of his death and will be credited as an executive producer. A BBC radio broadcast of The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, Life, the Universe, and Everything, and So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish is planned for 2004.

The film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opened on April 29, 2005. The film was written by Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick, directed by Garth Jenning, and released by Touchstone Pictures and Spyglass Entertainment.

Join Douglas Adams's hapless hero Arthur Dent as he travels the galaxy with his intrepid pal Ford Prefect, getting into horrible messes and generally wreaking hilarious havoc. Dent is grabbed from Earth moments before a cosmic construction team obliterates the planet to build a freeway. You'll never read funnier science fiction; Adams is a master of intelligent satire, barbed wit, and comedic dialogue. The Hitchhiker's Guide is rich in comedic detail and thought-provoking situations and stands up to multiple reads. Required reading for science fiction fans, this book (and its follow-ups) is also sure to please fans of Monty Python, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, and British sitcoms.

Warning! This second volume in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series is definitely not a standalone book. Enjoying, or even understanding, the continuing adventures of Earthling Arthur Dent, his strange pal Ford Prefect, and the very, very odd Zaphod Beeblebrox requires having read the first book. Arthur and Ford, having survived the destruction of Earth by surreptitiously hitching a ride on a Vogon constructor ship, have been kicked off that ship by its commander. Now they find themselves aboard a stolen Improbability Drive ship commanded by Beeblebrox, ex-president of the Imperial Galactic Government and full-time thief.

The unhappy inhabitants of planet Krikkit are sick of looking at the night sky above their heads--so they plan to destroy it. The universe, that is. Now only five individuals stand between the white killer robots of Krikkit and their goal of total annihilation. They are Arthur Dent, a mild-mannered space and time traveler, who tries to learn how to fly by throwing himself at the ground and missing; Ford Prefect, his best friend, who decides to go insane to see if he likes it; Slartibartfast, the indomitable vicepresident of the Campaign for Real Time, who travels in a ship powered by irrational behavior; Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-head honcho of the Universe; and Trillian, the sexy space cadet who is torn between a persistent Thunder God and a very depressed Beeblebrox. How will it all end? Will it end? Only this stalwart crew knows as they try to avert "universal" Armageddon and save life as we know it--and don't know it!

The story opens with Arthur's return to Earth. I know Earth has already been destroyed, but that's just a minor detail. Why and how Arthur returned is something of a mystery, but he is amazed to find that his home planet not only exists, but that no more than six or eight months have passed since he left suddenly eight years earlier. His readjustment to life back home makes for good reading, but what is really important is that hapless Arthur Dent soon falls in love; it happens at first sight, even though the enchanting Fenchurch is quite unconscious at the time. Lucky enough to accidentally meet her in a more lucid state, Arthur's rather feeble attempts to tell her how and why he is powerfully drawn to her surprisingly meet with some success. Then the type of thing that can only happen to Arthur Dent separates the two soon-to-be lovebirds for some time. Their entwined fates take them on a journey of discovery which culminates in their discovery of God's final message to Creation.

It's easy to become disheartened when your planet has been demolished for an unnecessary hyperspacial express route, the woman you love has vanished in a misunderstanding about the nature of space/time, the spaceship in which you are travelling crashed in flames on a remote and Bob-fearing planet, and all you have to fall back on are a few sandwich-making skills. However, instead of becoming disheartened, Arthur Dent makes the terrible mistake of starting to enjoy life a bit and immediately all hell breaks loose.

The Salmon of Doubt is a loving tribute to the author by his friends, who decided that the best way to salute his life and work was to collect some of the more unusual bits of it and let the world share the mind of a wonderfully talented man, with a unique viewpoint on almost everything. The book comprises selections from a huge amount of material, a fascinating collection of bits and pieces of a busy writer's life. Articles on a variety of subjects written for various magazines and newspapers, introductions to books, speeches, personal interviews, and glimpses of a well-enjoyed life are included. Adams describes the traumas of his school days, his love for the Beatles and Bach, an illicit liaison with someone else's dogs, and his fascination with evolutionary theory. Among the fiction entries is a tale from the private life of Genghis Khan and a Zaphod Beeblebrox short story.

This is a brilliant little book. It contains words for all those annoying things that there ought to be words for but aren't. For example: 'the precise distance between your outstretched fingers and the ticket sticking out of the machine at the gate entrance to a parking lot'. If you want something to make you giggle, this is the book! A collection of explanations of strange & bizarre place names from around the world, Mr Adams and Mr Lloyd truly show off their incredibly imaginations and pure wit. While the reader may need a "Monty Pythonish" (or even a Hitch-Hikers Guide!) sense of humour, this is a genuinely very funny book.

Dirk Gently is a private detective who is more interested in telekinesis, quantum mechanics and lunch than fiddling around with fingerprint powder, so his investigations tend to produce startling and unexpected results. A simple search for a missing cat uncovers a bewildered ghost, a secret time-traveller, and the devastating secret that lies behind the whole human history and threatens to bring it to a premature end. Dirk Gently has an unshakeable belief in the interconnectedness of all things, but his Holistic Detective Agency mainly succeeds in tracking down missing cats for old ladies. Then Dirk stumbles upon an old friend behaving bizarrely – and is drawn into afour-billion year old mystery that must be solved if the human race is to avoid immediate extinction.

When a passenger check-in desk at London's Heathrow Airport disappears in a ball of orange flame, the explosion is deemed an act of God. But which god, wonders holistic detective Dirk Gently? What god would be hanging around Heathrow trying to catch the 3:37 to Oslo? And what has this to do with Dirk's latest--and late-- client, found only this morning with his head revolving atop the hit record "Hot Potato"? Amid the hostile attentions of a stray eagle and the trauma of a very dirty refrigerator, super-sleuth Dirk Gently will once again solve the mysteries of the universe.

The BBC asked this team to film some of the most endangered animal species throughout the world. Adams has recorded their adventures seeking the komodo dragon, northern white rhinoceros, mountain gorilla, kakapo, baiji dolphin, and the rodrigues fruit bat. There is biological information here, but it is inaccessible for report writers due to the lack of an index and the wordy descriptions. However, these same accurate portrayals and Adams's entertaining style will expose students to the worlds of these animals. He moves rapidly from informal, laugh-out-loud descriptions of his travels to serious pleas for awareness and conservation of all animals. The full-color photographs are in two separate sections and help readers to visualize the unusual animals (including the authors).

The idea behind The Meaning of Liff, first published in 1983, as well as The Deeper Meaning of Liff, which followed seven years later, is actually quite simple. As the authors put it: there are hundreds of common experiences, feelings, situations and even objects which we all know and recognize, but for which no word exists. On the other hand, the world is littered with thousands of spare words doing nothing but loafing about on signposts pointing at places.