Douglas Adams

Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, humorist, and screenwriter, best known as the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy evolved into a "trilogy" of sixTemplate:Efn books which sold more than 14 million copies in his lifetime. It was adapted into a 1981 television series, several stage plays, comics, a 1984 video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

Adams wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990) and Last Chance to See (1991). He wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, including the unaired serial Shada, co-wrote City of Death (1979), and served as script editor for its 17th season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Known for his sharp wit and procrastination, Adams called himself a "radical atheist" and was an advocate for environmentalism and conservation. He was a lover of music, fast cars, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh.

Early life and education

Family

Douglas Noël AdamsTemplate:Efn was born in Cambridge on 11 March 1952 to Christopher Douglas Adams, a management consultant and computer salesman who formerly worked as a probation officer, and nurse Janet Dora Sydney Adams (née Donovan). He had Scottish, Irish and German ancestry. His paternal grandfather, born in Glasgow, came from a long line of distinguished doctors.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Shortly after his birth, the family moved to the East End of London.Template:Sfn His sister Susan was born in March 1955.Template:Sfn By the time he was five his parents had divorced; Douglas, Susan and their mother subsequently moved to an RSPCA animal shelter in Brentwood run by his maternal grandparents.Template:Sfnm Each parent remarried, giving Adams several half-siblings.Template:Sfn

Education

Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood.Template:Sfn He entered the prep school for Brentwood School in September 1959.Template:Sfnm Adams felt isolated at school because of his large stature;Template:Sfn he was tall by the age of 12, and stopped growing at .Template:Sfn His form master Frank Halford had a profound influence on him. Adams was the only student to be awarded 10/10 by Halford for creative writing – something Adams remembered for the rest of his life, particularly when facing writer's block.Template:Sfn

Some of his earliest writing was published at Brentwood School. His first published work was a brief report on the prep school's photography society in The Brentwoodian in September 1962.Template:Sfn In early 1965, he had a surreal short story titled Suspense published in the children's comic Eagle.Template:Sfnm In early 2014, a poem written by Adams in January 1970 was discovered in a school cupboard. He became a boarder at the school in September 1964,Template:Sfn and eventually left in December 1970.Template:Sfn

"Certainly when I was at Cambridge I wanted to be a writer-performer – I very much had the Pythons in my sights – that's why I wanted to do that kind of stuff. But for some reason the world wasn't that keen on me being a performer. And probably quite rightly."Template:Sfn

—Adams

On the strength of a religious poetry essay that discussed the Beatles and William Blake,Template:Sfn Adams was awarded an exhibition to study English at St John's College, Cambridge, where his father had studied.Template:Sfn He entered the university in 1971,Template:Sfn hoping to follow in the footsteps of comedy writer-performers like Monty Python.Template:Sfnm Adams desperately wanted to join Footlights, the invitation-only student comedy club, and was elected to the club in February 1972. However he was disappointed by its aloof culture. He began writing comedy sketches with fellow student Keith Jeffery (with whom he shared a room), but this partnership ended in November 1972.Template:Sfn He subsequently wrote and performed in revues with students Will Adams (no relation) and Martin Smith; their troupe was called "Adams-Smith-Adams".Template:Sfn Although Adams-Smith-Adams' written material featured prominently in Footlights' 1974 May Week Revue (titled Chox),Template:Efn Douglas was gutted when he was not cast on the basis that his performing abilities were not strong enough.Template:Sfn He graduated in 1974 with a 2:2 in English literature.Template:Sfn Many of Adams' Cambridge peers played important roles in his career, such as Jon Canter, John Lloyd, Mary Allen and Simon Jones.Template:Sfnm

Career

Writing

Adams moved back to London after leaving university, determined to break into TV and radio as a writer.Template:Sfn The Adams-Smith-Adams trio continued working together until late 1975.Template:Sfn The BBC occasionally accepted sketches from Adams, but his writing style was unsuited to the current style of radio and TV comedy.Template:Sfn To make ends meet he took a job as a bodyguard for a wealthy Arab family, which involved long night shifts guarding their hotel rooms.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn In 1976 he directed Footlights' May Week Revue, A Kick in the Stalls.Template:Sfn In August 1976, his career had a brief improvement when he co-wrote and performed Unpleasantness at Brodie's Close at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with John Lloyd, David Renwick and Andrew Marshall.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn By the end of the year, Adams' career again stalled and he moved in with his family in Dorset.Template:Sfn

Adams and Lloyd unsuccesfully developed various comedy projects, such as The Swasivious Zebu, Knight and Day and a Guiness Books of Records film. The latter project, which involved aliens competing with humans in an intergalactic sporting event, was cancelled due to there being "no market for science fiction films". Adams and Lloyd also pitched Sno 7 and the White Dwarfs, a radio sitcom about two astrophysicists trapped in a Mt Everest observatory, but were told by the BBC that science-fiction was "too 1950s".Template:Sfn Adams' first professional solo work was a sketch for the radio comedy series The Burkiss Way, broadcast in early 1977. Around the same time he wrote for The News Huddlines.Template:Sfn

Shortly before being commissioned to write the pilot episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Adams was considering leaving the industry out of frustration and moving to Hong Kong.Template:Sfn After the series' release, he got a job as a BBC radio producer in May 1978,Template:Sfn and produced the sketch show Week Ending. He produced only one original project, a pantomime version of Cinderella titled Black Cinderella Two Goes East. He left the position in October 1978 to become script editor for Doctor Who season 17.Template:Sfn Adams and Lloyd wrote two 1979 episodes of the animated children's show Doctor Snuggles, "The Remarkable Fidgety River" and "The Great Disappearing Mystery".Template:Sfn The pair also co-wrote the humorous dictionary-style books The Meaning of Liff (1983) and The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990).Template:Sfn

"I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."Template:Sfn

—Douglas Adams, in a widely quoted citation of unknown origin

Adams struggled with writing and did not find pleasure from it. He often suffered from low confidence and writer's block,Template:Efn and was infamous for his procrastination. Weeks before his manuscript for So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984) was due, he had only written 25 pages. He was locked in a hotel suite with Sonny Mehta (editorial director of Pan Books) who kept an eye on him until the manuscript was completed.Template:Sfn The 1997 tie-in novel to Adams' video game Starship Titanic was ultimately written by Terry Jones because Adams kept putting it off. On Quote... Unquote, Adams suggested his own epitaph: "He finally met his deadline."

Monty Python and Graham Chapman

File:DNA in Monty Python.jpg

Adams in his first Monty Python appearance, in surgeon's garb

Once he had established himself in Footlights, Adams quickly sought out his idol John Cleese of Monty Python, interviewing him for the student newspaper Varsity in November 1972. Adams later admitted "I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was taken".Template:Sfn Cleese quit Monty Python's Flying Circus in early 1974, leaving his writing partner Graham Chapman to search for a new collaborator. Chapman met Adams in July 1974 at the West End opening night party of Chox. The two formed a writing partnership, earning Adams a writing credit in Monty Python's fourth series for a sketch called "Patient Abuse".Template:Sfn Adams also contributed to the "Marilyn Monroe" sketch that appeared on The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Adams later stated that his contributions were "hardly worth mentioning" and that he had written "about half a dozen lines that appeared here and there in Python". Nevertheless, he is one of only two non-Python members to receive a writing credit on the television series (the other is Neil Innes).Template:Sfn

Adams had two brief appearances in Monty Python's fourth series. At the beginning of episode 42, "The Light Entertainment War", Adams is in a surgeon's mask (as Dr. Emile Koning, according to on-screen captions) pulling on gloves.Template:Sfn At the beginning of episode 43, "Mr. Neutron", Adams is dressed in a pepper-pot outfit and loads a missile onto a cart driven by Terry Jones, who is calling for scrap metal ("Any old iron...").Template:Sfn Jones was the Python member with whom Adams formed the closest friendship.Template:Sfn

Adams, Chapman and Bernard McKenna co-wrote a 1976 television pilot titled Out of the Trees, in which Adams cameod as a thug beating up an old lady. The pilot did not go to series. Adams was disappointed by the production, calling it "excellent in parts [but] also dreadful in parts".Template:Sfn Adams and Chapman also wrote the episode "For Your Own Good" for the sitcom Doctor on the Go. By the time the episode aired in February 1977, Adams had ended their partnership as Chapman's heavy drinking made him difficult to work with.Template:Sfn

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

File:RadioCast HitchhikersGuide 1970s.png

Cast and crew of the first Hitchhiker's Guide radio series. From left: Adams, producer Geoffrey Perkins, actors David Tate, Geoffrey McGivern, Mark Wing-Davey, Simon Jones and Alan Ford.

Adams became obsessed with combining the comedy and science fiction genres in a single project.Template:Sfn In 1977, he got that chance when producer Simon Brett encouraged him to pitch a comedy science fiction radio show to BBC Radio 4. Adams' initial idea was The Ends of the Earth, an anthology series where the Earth was destroyed in a different way each episode.Template:Sfn He started developing the pilot episode—in which Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace express route—and realised he needed an alien character to provide context. He decided this character should be a journalist who had come to Earth researching for a guide book for space travellers.Template:Sfn Adams first conceived of the title in 1971 while he lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck gazing at the stars. He was carrying a copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe, and it occurred to him that somebody should write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.Template:SfnmTemplate:Efn He abandoned the anthology approach in favour of a single narrative following the travels of ordinary Englishman Arthur Dent and his alien friend Ford Prefect.Template:Sfnm

Adams submitted the pilot script on 4 April, and the episode was recorded on 28 June (starring Adams' Footlights' peers Simon Jones and Geoffrey McGivern as Dent and Prefect respectively). The remaining five episodes of the series were officially commissioned on 1 September.Template:Sfn Adams developed the series episode-by-episode, without an overarching storyline.Template:Sfnm Facing time constraints, he turned to John Lloyd to co-write the final two episodes; Lloyd contributed concepts from his unfinished novel GiGax.Template:Sfnm The radio series, directed by Geoffrey Perkins (with the exception of the pilot, directed by Brett),Template:Sfn was innovative in its use of sound effects and music. Adams wanted the series to sound "like a rock album". Unusually for a writer, he was heavily involved in its post-production.Template:Sfn The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's first series, broadcast weekly from 8 March 1978,Template:Sfn quickly became a hit with audiences and spread via positive word of mouth.Template:Sfn By its fourth episode, the Post Office was receiving letters addressed to Megadodo (the fictional publisher of the guide book).Template:Sfn In August, Adams was commissioned to write a Christmas special (broadcast on Christmas Eve) and a second series (broadcast in five parts in January 1980).Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Both series were condensed and re-recorded for an LP release.Template:Sfn

File:Towelday-Innsbruck.jpg

Towel Day 2005 in Innsbruck, Austria; In the novels, a towel is the most useful thing a space traveller can have. The first annual Towel Day was celebrated on 25 May 2001, two weeks after Adams's death.

In August 1978, Pan Books bought the rights to a novel based on the series. Adams was thrilled that the opportunity had come to him so easily.Template:Sfn He arranged to co-write the novel with John Lloyd, but had a change of heart and told Lloyd he would write it alone—a decision which temporarily damaged their friendship, especially as Lloyd was in debt at the time. Adams later admitted he "should have handled it a bit better". The two men split the £3000 advance.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn Adams only adapted the series' first four episodes for the novel as he did not want to use any co-written material.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn The novel (titled The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), published in October 1979, was an instant bestseller.Template:Sfnm It sold one million copies faster than any title in Pan's history.Template:Sfn Adams wrote four more novels in the series: The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984), and Mostly Harmless (1992). Upon the publication of the fourth book, he began to jokingly describe the series as a "trilogy".Template:Sfn He had plans for a sixth book to conclude the series, noting that Mostly Harmless was "a bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number, six is a better kind of number." After his death, his estate permitted Eoin Colfer to write a sixth and final book in the series, And Another Thing... (2009). 14 million copies of Hitchhiker's Guide books had been sold worldwide by the time of Adams' death.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has been adapted into various mediums. Ken Campbell produced a stage version in May 1979.Template:Sfn The first radio series was adapted into a 1981 BBC television miniseries with various members of the radio cast reprising their roles. A 1984 interactive fiction computer game version was co-written with Steve Meretzky. A three-part comic book adaptation was published in 1993.

Adams and radio producer Dirk Maggs planned, as early as 1993, to create further radio series based on the third, fourth and fifth Hitchhiker's novels.Template:Sfn This was realised only after Adams's death in 2001.Template:Sfn The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases of the radio series were broadcast from September 2004 to June 2005,Template:Sfn with most of the original cast reprising their roles.Template:Sfn With the aid of a recording of Adams reading Life, the Universe and Everything, he posthumously voices the character Agrajag.Template:Sfn The final episode of the fifth series was dedicated to Adams.Template:Sfn A sixth radio series, broadcast in 2018, was based on And Another Thing...

For almost two decades, Adams attempted to adapt The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy into a feature film.Template:Sfnm He was approached by a film producer as early as 1979. Adams moved to Montecito, California, in 1999 when the film was close to being made,Template:Sfn but it remained in development hell. In 2000 he likened the Hollywood process to "trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it".Template:Sfn The film's development was affected by Adams' desire for both creative control and a large budget.Template:Sfn The long-awaited feature film adaptation, directed by Garth Jennings, was finally released in April 2005. The screenplay is credited to Adams and Karey Kirkpatrick.

Doctor Who

File:4th Doctor Costume - Tom Baker (11030094835).jpg

Adams contributed to Doctor Who from 1977 to 1979, which then starred Tom Baker, the Fourth Doctor (his costume is pictured).

Adams was a fan of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who,Template:Sfn and at prep school he wrote a spoof about Daleks being powered by Rice Krispies.Template:Sfnm He submitted at least two story ideas to the Doctor Who production office, in 1974 and 1976, which were rejected.Template:SfnTemplate:Efn Whilst awaiting a commission for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in 1977, BBC producer Richard Imison sent Adams' pilot script to the Doctor Who production office. Script editor Anthony Read was impressed and commissioned Adams to write the Doctor Who serial The Pirate Planet (1978).Template:Sfn Despite years of inactivity, Adams ironically found himself writing for The Pirate Planet and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's first series simultaneously.Template:Sfn

Adams replaced Read as script editor in October 1978 for Doctor Who's 17th season (1979-80).Template:Sfn He heavily rewrote Terry Nation's script for Destiny of the Daleks (1979) "from the ground up" to bring it within budget, but was uncredited.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn He co-wrote City of Death (1979) with producer Graham Williams, from an original storyline by David Fisher; it was credited to the pseudonym "David Agnew". In 2008, The Daily Telegraph named City of Death one of the ten greatest Doctor Who stories. Adams wrote the unaired serial Shada, which was only partly filmed due to industrial action at the BBC. Adams also pitched a story for season 17 where the Doctor becomes a bitter recluse and is eventually called back into action. This storyline inspired Steven Moffat to write the 2012 Doctor Who Christmas special "The Snowmen".Template:Sfn

Adams left Doctor Who in 1979. Scenes from Shada were used to cover Tom Baker's absence in "The Five Doctors" (1983).Template:Sfn As Shada's production was abandoned, Adams reused its story elements in his 1987 novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. He was unhappy with his script for Shada, calling it a "patchwork", and was extremely displeased when the existing footage was released on home media in 1992 (it has been stated that he signed over permission for the project's release by accident). Per his request, he was not credited on the release and his fee was donated to Comic Relief.Template:Sfn

He declined lucrative offers to novelise his Doctor Who scripts and did not allow others to do so in his lifetime.Template:Sfn Shada was novelised by Gareth Roberts in 2012, and City of Death and The Pirate Planet by James Goss in 2015 and 2017 respectively.Template:Sfn Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen was novelised by Goss in 2018. In 2003, Shada was adapted into an audio drama starring Paul McGann. A partially-animated reconstruction of Shada voiced by most of the original cast was released in 2017.

Dirk Gently

Adams satirised detective fiction with Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987), a humorous whodunit novel about a "holistic detective" named Dirk Gently. A sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, was published in 1988.Template:Sfn Before his death he was writing a third Dirk Gently novel, which he apparently considered adapting into a sixth Hitchhiker's Guide novel. The unfinished novel was posthumously published in 2002 under the title The Salmon of Doubt, with eulogies from Adams' friends Richard Dawkins and Stephen Fry. After Adams' death, the Dirk Gently series was adapted into a BBC Radio 4 series (2007–2008) starring Harry Enfield,Template:Efn a BBC television series (2010–2012) starring Stephen Mangan and a BBC America television series (2016–2017) starring Samuel Barnett.

Music

File:DouglasAdams PinkFloyd 1994.png

Adams (wearing white) playing guitar with David Gilmour of Pink Floyd in 1994

Music was a significant part of Adams' life. During a segment on music programme Private Passions, Adams remarked that he "would have loved to have been a rock musician". He had a collection of 24 left-handed electric guitars and also studied piano as a child.Template:Sfnm Procol Harum's song Grand Hotel inspired the restaurant Milliways from The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe. He cited the Beatles as one of his biggest creative influences.Template:Sfn He was also a devotee of Johann Sebastian Bach and called the Mass in B minor "one of the great pinnacles of human achievement".Template:Sfn

Adams was a huge Pink Floyd fan. His official biography shares its name with "Wish You Were Here" and an excerpt of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was featured in the Hitchhiker's Guide radio series (this was cut from commercial releases). Pink Floyd also inspired the fictional rock band Disaster Area from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.Template:Efn Adams became good friends with the band and, on his 42nd birthday, he was invited to play guitar with them live on stage in Earls Court. He also suggested the name for their 1994 album The Division Bell from the lyrics to its track "High Hopes". Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour performed at Adams' memorial service in 2001, and at Adams' "virtual 60th birthday" in 2012.

Video games and digital projects

Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984. In 1986, he participated in a week-long brainstorming session with the Lucasfilm Games team for the game Labyrinth. Later he was also involved in creating Bureaucracy as a parody of events in his own life.

Adams was a founder-director and Chief Fantasist of The Digital Village, a digital media and Internet company with which he created Starship Titanic, a Codie award-winning and BAFTA-nominated adventure game, which was published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster. In April 1999, Adams initiated the h2g2 collaborative writing project, an experimental attempt at making The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a reality, and at harnessing the collective brainpower of the internet community. It was hosted by BBC Online from 2001 to 2011.

Adams wrote and presented the "fantasy documentary" Hyperland (1990) which featured Tom Baker as the personification of a software programme. It included an interview with Ted Nelson, the co-inventor of hypertext and the person who coined the term. Adams was an early adopter and advocate of hypertext. Adams became a prolific lecturer towards the end of his life, which friend Jon Canter said allowed him to fulfill his desire to be a performer.

Personal beliefs and activism

Atheism and views on religion

"...imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in - an interesting hole I find myself in - fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!'"

—Adams in September 1998, expressing disbelief in the fine-tuned universe argument for God

Adams' parents belonged to a Christian community. He described his childhood self as "extremely religious"Template:Sfn and an "active Christian".Template:Sfn In adulthood Adams described himself as a "radical atheist". He added "radical" for emphasis so he would not be mistaken for an agnostic. He remained fascinated by religion because of its effect on human affairs, stating "I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I've thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing." The evolutionary biologist and prominent atheist Richard Dawkins invited Adams to participate in his 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lecture, where Adams read a passage from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe about a talking cow which had been bred to desire being eaten. Dawkins cited Adams in his 2006 book The God Delusion, jokingly calling him his greatest convert to atheism.

Environmental activism

Adams was also an environmental activist who campaigned on behalf 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 kākāpō and baiji, and the publication of a tie-in book of the same name. In 1992, this was made into a CD-ROM combination of audiobook, e-book and picture slide show. Adams's first trip to Madagascar with Mark Carwardine in 1985, and their series of travels, formed the basis for the radio series and non-fiction book Last Chance to See.

Adams and Mark Carwardine contributed the 'Meeting a Gorilla' passage from Last Chance to See to the book The Great Ape Project. This book, edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer, launched a wider-scale project in 1993, which calls for the extension of moral equality to include all great apes, human and non-human.

In 1994, Adams participated in a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro while wearing a rhino suit for the British charity organisation Save the Rhino International. Puppeteer William Todd-Jones, who had originally worn the suit in the London Marathon to raise money and bring awareness to the group, also participated in the climb wearing a rhino suit; Adams wore the suit while travelling to the mountain before the climb began. About £100,000 was raised through that event, benefiting schools in Kenya and a black rhinoceros preservation programme in Tanzania. Adams was also an active supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Since 2003, Save the Rhino has held an annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture around the time of his birthday to raise money for environmental campaigns.

Technology and innovation

File:Douglas Adams San Francisco.jpg

Adams speaking at the Internet Security Conference in March 2000

Adams bought his first word processor in 1982, having considered one as early as 1979. His first purchase was a Nexu. In 1983, when he and Jane Belson went to Los Angeles, he bought a DEC Rainbow. Upon their return to England, Adams bought an Apricot, then a BBC Micro and a Tandy 1000. In Last Chance to See, Adams mentions his Cambridge Z88, which he had taken to Zaire on a quest to find the northern white rhinoceros.

Adams's posthumously published work, The Salmon of Doubt, features several articles by him on the subject of technology, including reprints of articles that originally ran in MacUser, and in The Independent on Sunday. In these, Adams claims that one of the first computers he ever saw was a Commodore PET, and that he had "adored" his Apple Macintosh ("or rather my family of however many Macintoshes it is that I've recklessly accumulated over the years") since he first saw one at Infocom's offices in Boston in 1984. An Apple Macintosh SE/30 once owned by Adams is on display at The Centre for Computing History in Cambridge.

Adams was a Macintosh user from the time they first came out in 1984 until his death in 2001. He was the first person to buy a Mac in Europe, the second being Stephen Fry. Adams was also an "Apple Master", celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products (others included John Cleese and Gregory Hines). Adams's contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version of iMovie with footage featuring his daughter Polly. The video was available on Adams's .Mac homepage. Adams installed and started using the first release of Mac OS X in the weeks leading up to his death. His last post to his own forum was in praise of Mac OS X and the possibilities of its Cocoa programming framework. He said it was "awesome...", which was also the last word he wrote on his site.

Adams was an early adopter of the internet. He used email to correspond with Steve Meretzky in the early 1980s, during their collaboration on Infocom's version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. While living in New Mexico in 1993 he set up another e-mail address and began posting to his own USENET newsgroup, alt.fan.douglas-adams, and occasionally, when his computer was acting up, to the comp.sys.mac hierarchy. Challenges to the authenticity of his messages later led Adams to set up a message forum on his own website to avoid the issue. In 1996, Adams was a keynote speaker at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC) where he described the personal computer as being a modelling device. The video of his keynote speech is archived on Channel 9. Adams was also a keynote speaker for the April 2001 Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, one of the major technical conferences on embedded system engineering.

Chess-playing computers Deep Thought and Deep Blue were named after the fictional Deep Thought supercomputer imagined by Adams. Google's AI research laboratory DeepMind was also named in homage. Tech entrepreneur Elon Musk called the writer the "best philosopher ever", and in 2018 he launched a Tesla car into space with a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide in its glovebox.

Personal life

Adams lived in Islington for much of his career. In autumn 1978 he moved from Arlington Avenue to Kingsdown Road with his university friend Jon Canter. He later moved to Highbury New Park. Adams moved to Upper Street in 1981. He moved to Duncan Terrace, a few minutes walk away, in the late 1980s.

In the early 1980s, Adams had a relationship with novelist Sally Emerson, who was separated from her husband at that time. Adams later dedicated his book Life, the Universe and Everything to Emerson. In 1981, Emerson returned to her husband, Peter Stothard, a contemporary of Adams at Brentwood School and later editor of The Times. Adams was soon introduced by friends to Jane Belson with whom he later became romantically involved.

Belson was the "lady barrister" mentioned in the jacket-flap biography printed in his books during the mid-1980s ("He [Adams] lives in Islington with a lady barrister and an Apple Macintosh"). The two lived in Los Angeles together during 1983, while Adams worked on an early screenplay adaptation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. When the deal fell through, they moved back to London and after several separations ("He is currently not certain where he lives, or with whom") and a broken engagement, they married in November 1991.Template:Sfn

Adams and Belson had one daughter together, Polly Jane Rocket Adams, born on 22 June 1994. In 1999, the family moved from London to Santa Barbara, California, where they lived until his death. Following the funeral, Jane Belson and Polly Adams returned to London. Belson died on 7 September 2011 of cancer, aged 59.

Adams was left-handed.

Death and legacy

File:Highgate Cemetery - East - Douglas Adams 01.jpg

Adams's gravestone in Highgate Cemetery, North London

Adams died of a heart attack due to undiagnosed coronary artery disease on 11 May 2001, aged 49, after resting from his regular workout at a private gym in Santa Barbara, California, United States.Template:Sfn He was survived by his wife, mother and daughter. Adams' funeral was held on 16 May in Santa Barbara. His ashes were placed in Highgate Cemetery in north London in June 2002. A memorial service was held on 17 September 2001 at St Martin-in-the-Fields in Trafalgar Square—the first church service broadcast online by the BBC.

Two days before Adams died, the Minor Planet Center announced that asteroid 18610 Arthurdent had been named after the protagonist of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In 2005, the asteroid 25924 Douglasadams was named in his memory.

On 25 May 2001, two weeks after Adams's death, his fans organised an annual tribute known as Towel Day. The annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lectures began in 2003. In 2018, John Lloyd presented an episode of the BBC Radio Four documentary Archive on 4 discussing Adams's private papers held at St John's College. Travessa Douglas Adams, a street in São José, Brazil, is named in Adams's honour. In 2023, Unbound published 42: The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, a collection of Adams' notes and essays edited by Kevin Jon Davies.

Awards and nominations

Year	Award	Work	Category	Result	Ref.
1979	Hugo Award	The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (shared with Geoffrey Perkins)	Best Dramatic Presentation	Nominated
1983	Inkpot Award	—	—	Template:Win

Body of work

NovelsTemplate:Col div

• The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979)
• The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980)
• Life, the Universe and Everything (1982)
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984)
• Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987)
• The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)
• Mostly Harmless (1992)

See also

• List of animal rights advocates
• List of atheists in film, radio, television and theater
• Save the Rhino, organisation co-founded by Adams

References

Sources

• Template:Link note

Further reading

Articles

• Herbert, R. (1980). "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Book Review)". Library Journal, 105(16), 1982.
• Adams, J., & Brown, R. (1981). "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Book Review)". School Library Journal, 27(5), 74.
• Nickerson, S. L. (1982). "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Book)". Library Journal, 107(4), 476.
• Nickerson, S. L. (1982). "Life, the Universe, and Everything (Book)". Library Journal, 107(18), 2007.
• Morner, C. (1982). "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Book Review)". School Library Journal, 28(8), 87.
• Morner, C. (1983). "Life, the Universe and Everything (Book Review)". School Library Journal, 29(6), 93.
• Shorb, B. (1985). "So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Book)". School Library Journal, 31(6), 90.
• "The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (Book)" (1989). Atlantic (02769077), 263(4), 99.
• Hoffert, B., & Quinn, J. (1990). "Last Chance To See (Book)". Library Journal, 115(16), 77.
• Reed, S. S., & Cook, I. I. (1991). "Dances with Template:As written". People, 35(19), 79.
• "Last Chance to See (Book)" (1991). Science News, 139(8), 126.
• Field, M. M., & Steinberg, S. S. (1991). "Douglas Adams". Publishers Weekly, 238(6), 62.
• Dieter, W. (1991). "Last Chance to See (Book)". Smithsonian, 22(3), 140.
• Dykhuis, R. (1991). "Last Chance To See (Book)". Library Journal, 116(1), 140.
• Beatty, J. (1991). "Good Show (Book)". Atlantic (02769077), 267(3), 131.
• "A guide to the future" (1992). Maclean's, 106(44), 51.
• Zinsser, J. (1993). "Audio reviews: Fiction". Publishers Weekly, 240(9), 24.
• Taylor, B., & Annichiarico, M. (1993). Audio reviews. Library Journal, 118(2), 132.
• Good reads (1995). NetGuide, 2(4), 109.
• Stone, B. (1998). The unsinkable starship. Newsweek, 131(15), 78.
• Gaslin, G. (2001). Galaxy Quest. Entertainment Weekly (599), 79.
• "So long, and thanks for all the fish" (2001). The Economist, 359(8222), 79.
• Geier, T., & Raftery, B. M. (2001). "Legacy". Entertainment Weekly (597), 11.
• "Passages" (2001). Maclean's, 114(21), 13.
• "Don't panic! Douglas Adams to keynote Embedded show" (2001). Embedded Systems Programming, 14(3), 10.
• Ehrenman, G. (2001). "World Wide Weird". InternetWeek, (862), 15.
• Zaleski, J. (2002). "The Salmon of Doubt (Book)". Publishers Weekly, 249(15), 43.
• Mort, J. (2002). "The Salmon of Doubt (Book)". Booklist, 98(16), 1386.
• Lewis, D. L. (2002). "Last Time Round The Galaxy". Quadrant Magazine, 46(9), 84.
• Burns, A. (2002). "The Salmon of Doubt (Book)". Library Journal, 127(15), 111.
• Burns, A., & Rhodes, B. (2002). "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Book)". Library Journal, 127(19), 118.
• Kaveney, R. (2002). "A cheerful whale". TLS (5173), 23.
• Pearl, N., & Welch, R. (2003). "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Book)". Library Journal, 128(11), 124.
• "Preying on composite materials" (2003). R&D Magazine, 45(6), 44.
• Webb, N. (2003). "The Berkeley Hotel hostage". The Bookseller (5069), 25.
• "The author who toured the universe" (2003). The Bookseller (5060), 35.
• Osmond, A. (2005). "Only human". Sight & Sound, 15(5), 12–15.
• "Culture vulture" (2005). Times Educational Supplement, (4640), 19.
• Maughan, S. (2005). "Audio Bestsellers/Fiction". Publishers Weekly, 252(30), 17.
• "Hitchhiker At The Science Museum" (2005). In Britain, 14(10), 9.
• Rea, A. (2005). The Adams asteroids. New Scientist, 185(2488), 31.
• "Most Improbable Adventure" (2005). Popular Mechanics, 182(5), 32.
• "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase" (2005). Publishers Weekly, 252(14), 21.
• Bartelt, K. R. (2005). "Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams". Library Journal, 130(4), 86.
• Larsen, D. (2005). "I was a teenage android". New Zealand Listener, 198(3390), 37–38.
• Tanner, J. C. (2005). "Simplicity: it's hard". Telecom Asia, 16(6), 6.
• Nielsen Bookscan Charts (2005). The Bookseller, (5175), 18–21.
• "Buena Vista launches regional site to push Hitchhiker's movie" (2005). New Media Age, 9.
• "Shynola bring Beckland to life" (2005). Creative Review, 25(3), 24–26.
• Carwardine, M. (15 September 2007). "The baiji: So long and thanks for all the fish". New Scientist. pp. 50–53.
• Czarniawska, B. (2008). "Accounting and gender across times and places: An excursion into fiction". Accounting, Organizations & Society, 33(1), 33–47.
• Pope, M. (2008). "Life, the Universe, Religion and Science". Issues (82), 31–34.
• Bearne, S. (2008). "BBC builds site to trail Last Chance To See TV series". New Media Age, 08.
• "Arrow to reissue Adams" (2008). The Bookseller (5352), 14.
• Page, B. (2008). "Colfer is new Hitchhiker". The Bookseller (5350), 7.
• "I've got a perfect puzzle for you" (2009). The Bookseller (5404), 42.
• "Mostly Harmless..." (2009). The Bookseller (5374), 46.
• "Penguin and PanMac hitch a ride together" (2009). The Bookseller (5373), 6.
• "Adams, Douglas". Britannica Biographies [serial online]. October 2010;:1
• "Douglas (Noël) Adams (1952–2001)". Hutchinson's Biography Database [serial online]. July 2011;:1
• "My life in books" (2011). Times Educational Supplement (4940), 27.

Other

• Template:Webarchive, established by him, and still operated by The Digital Village
• Template:TED speaker
• Douglas Adams speech at Digital Biota 2 (1998) Template:Webarchive (The audio of the speech) Template:Webarchive
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
• Douglas Adams & his Computer article about his Mac IIfx
• BBC2 Omnibus tribute to Adams, presented by Kirsty Wark, 4 August 2001
• Mueller, Rick and Greengrass, Joel (2002). Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams, documentary.
• Simpson, M. J. (2001). The Pocket Essential Hitchhiker's Guide. Template:ISBN. Updated April 2005, Template:ISBN
• Special edition of BBC Bookclub featuring Douglas Adams, first broadcast 2 January 2000 on BBC Radio 4
• Adams' speech at UCSB in May 2001: "Parrots, the Universe and Everything"

External links

• Template:First word/ Template:PAGENAMEBASE at IMDbTemplate:EditAtWikidata
• Template:British Comedy Guide
• Interview with Douglas Adams, A DISCUSSION WITH National Authors on Tour TV Series, Episode No. 33 (1992)