Douglas Adams

Douglas Noël Adams (March 11, 1952 - May 11, 2001) -- also known as Bop Ad or Bob after his illegible signature, or by his initials DNA -- was a British comic radio dramatist and author, most notably of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGG).

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Education and early works

Adams was born in Cambridge and educated at Brentwood School, Essex where he became friends with Griff Rhys Jones. Adams attended St John's College, Cambridge, and worked with Rhys Jones in the Cambridge University Footlights Dramatic Club. In 1974, Adams received a BA (and later, an MA) in English literature.

An autobiography from an early edition of one of the HHGG novels provided the following description of his early career:

After graduation he spent several years contributing material to radio and television shows as well as writing, performing, and sometimes directing stage revues in London, Cambridge and at the Edinburgh Fringe. He has also worked at various times as a hospital porter, barn builder, chicken shed cleaner, bodyguard, radio producer and script editor of Doctor Who.

Douglas worked with Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame and has a writing credit in one episode (episode 45: "Party Political Broadcast on Behalf of the Liberal Party") of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Subsequently he worked as a script editor of the BBC Television programme Doctor Who and wrote three serials for that series.

In 1979 Douglas Adams and John Lloyd together wrote the script for two half hour episodes of Doctor Snuggles, one of them called "The remarkable fidgety river". John Lloyd was also co-author of the original "Hitchhiker" radio series and of "The Meaning of Liff".

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was originally a twelve-part (each part titled a "Fit" after Lewis Carroll's The Hunting of the Snark) radio series broadcast in the UK by BBC Radio 4 in 1978. The radio programme served as the basis for the first two novels of what eventually became a "trilogy in five parts". It was also the basis for a six-part BBC television series in 1981.

Adams was never a prolific writer and usually had to be forced by others to do any writing. This included being locked in a hotel suite with his editor for a sizable period of time to ensure that So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish was completed. He has been quoted as saying, "I love deadlines, especially the whooshing sound they make as they go by."

Plans to make HHGG into a major motion picture were in the works for more than twenty years, and were finally freed from development hell in late September 2003. Although Austin Powers director Jay Roach was at one time signed on to the project, the Hammer and Tongs duo, Garth Jennings and Nick Goldsmith, got the responsibility. Key to the go-ahead was a rewrite of the screenplay by Karey Kirkpatrick, who had earlier worked on Chicken Run. Shooting is scheduled to begin in spring 2004, with Robbie Stamp, Douglas' friend and business partner, as an Executive Producer, and Walt Disney Pictures as distributors. Adams once described the Hollywood process as "trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people come into the room and breathe on it."

The BBC has dramatised the final three books in the Hitchhikers series for radio with the surviving members of the original radio cast. These new adaptations will be broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2004 and May 2005. Douglas Adams himself will be heard playing the part of Agrajag.

Doctor Who

Doctor Who is the world's longest running science fiction television series. Created in 1963, it was continually produced until 1989, when production was stopped. The programme is being revived in 2005. After contributing a well-received story to the sixteenth season in 1978, Adams served as script editor on the show for its seventeenth season in 1979. Altogether, he wrote three serials starring Tom Baker as the Doctor:

  • The Pirate Planet (the second serial in the "Key To Time" Season 16 arc)
  • City of Death (with producer Graham Williams, from an original storyline by writer David Fisher. It was transmitted under the pseudonym "David Agnew")
  • Shada (only partially filmed and not broadcast due to industrial disputes)

Elements of Shada and City of Death were reused in Adams' later novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular the character of Professor Chronotis. Shada was eventually remade by Big Finish Productions as an audio play starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. Acompanied by partially-animated illustrations, it was webcast on the BBCi website in 2003.

Pink Floyd

His official biography shares its name with a song by Pink Floyd. Adams was friendly with their guitarist David Gilmour and, as a birthday gift, was allowed to make a guest appearance at one of their 1994 concerts in London, playing rhythm guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse". Adams had named their 1994 album, The Division Bell by picking the words from the lyrics to one of its tracks.

Pink Floyd and their reputation for lavish stage shows were also the inspiration for the Adams-created fictional rock band "Disaster Area", renowned as the loudest band in the universe.

Computer games and projects

Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG together with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984. Later he was also involved in creating Bureaucracy (also by Infocom, but not based on any book). Adams was also responsible for the computer game Starship Titanic, which was published in 1999 by Simon and Schuster. The accompanying book, entitled Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic, was written by Terry Jones, since Adams was too busy with the computer game to do both. In April 1999, Adams initiated the H2G2 collaborative writing project, a forerunner of the AskFactMaster.Com medium.

Environmentalism

Adams was also an environmental activist who campaigned on behalf of a number of endangered species. This activism included the production of the non-fiction radio series Last Chance to See, in which he and naturalist Mark Carwardine visited rare species such as the kakapo, and the publication of a tie-in book of the same name. In 1992, this was made into a CD-ROM combination of audio-book, eBook and picture slide show a decade before such things became fashionable.

Premature death

Adams died of a heart attack at the age of 49, while working out at his gym in Santa Barbara, California. He had moved to Santa Barbara in 1999. He was survived by his wife, Jane, and daughter, Polly. In May 2002, The Salmon of Doubt was published, which includes many short stories, essays, and letters, and eulogies from Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry and Terry Gilliam. It also includes eleven chapters of his long-awaited but unfinished novel, The Salmon of Doubt, which was to be a new Dirk Gently and/or HHGG novel, or neither.

Biographies

His official biography, Wish You Were Here, by Nick Webb, was published on October 6, 2003 (ISBN 0755311558) - [1] (http://www.douglasadams.com/news/#20030703-0-n.dna).

Another recent biography is Hitchhiker: a Biography of Douglas Adams (2003) by M. J. Simpson, with a foreword by John Lloyd (ISBN 0340824883).

Upon the mutual discovery that Webb and Simpson were both working on new posthumous biographies, the two authors agreed that the former would focus on Adams' life and personality, and the latter on his work.

Earlier biographies include:

  • Don't Panic (1988, 1993, 2003), Neil Gaiman et al. Reissued October 2003 (ISBN 1840237422) with new chapters by M. J. Simpson and David K. Dickson.
  • The Unofficial Guide to the Hitchhiker's Guide (2001), M. J. Simpson. Published as The Pocket Essential Hitchhiker's Guide (2001) in the U.K.

alt.fan.douglas-adams

Douglas Adams pleased his coterie of fans in the USENET newsgroup alt.fan.douglas-adams by following the group and occasionally posting himself.

In response to a fan's complaint

My apologies if this has been dragged out and beaten mercilessly already, but did everyone else get entirely bored with Mostly Harmless? I knew a couple chapters in that Adams was going to kill everyone off, and from there, it felt like that was the WHOLE purpose of the book.

Adams replied [2] (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&selm=adamsd-120694234431%40dadams.demon.co.uk)

Well, you were ahead of me then. I didn't know till a couple of chapters before the end.

He disappointed a Canadian fan who asked

Who is your maiden aunt who lives in winnipeg. the reason I absolutely must know is... yes, you guessed it... I LIVE IN WINNIPEG!!! and that line from the first of the gently books has been driving me insane ever since I read it!! I'd be REALLY, REALLY thrilled if Douglas responded to this himself!

by confessing: [3] (http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=en&lr=&safe=off&selm=dna.1100799802B%40158.152.1.69)

I don't have [a] maiden aunt who lies in Winnipeg. I was making it up.

In response to a query about a rumor about an upcoming film, he said:

Second. Jim Carrey is not going to play Arthur Dent. Here's a clue as to why not. Arthur Dent is English.

Douglas Adams' works

Novels in the HHGG series

All of the above are also available as audio books, read by Adams.

The Dirk Gently series

Other works

Tributes and honorifics

See also

  • alt.fan.douglas-adams
  • h2g2

External links







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