Douglas Adams 1952 - 2001

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Following the disastrous entry in peer review recently I thought someone with standing had better get a well researched version into the guide. Oh BTW this is a Work in Progress. In honour of DNA do not impose any deadlines on the author, thank you.

In the meantime a little picture to keep you occupied.

Characters from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams was a writer and visionary. Without him this site would not be called what it is, nor more than likely have been set up. Or at least set up in the way and with the vision that it was. For Douglas was the man behind The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams led an interesting life, not least because actually remembering how it had come about was not an easy task for him; as everything he ever seemed to achieve happened in a whirl to him. Therefore to write this article although reliable sources are used their reliability may be scuppered from the fact that although some information comes from interviews or articles, these are from the mixed up world of Douglas Adams.

Early Life

Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge in March 1952, a whole year before James Watson and Francis Crick published their paper on the structure of DNA, which they discovered later that year. This fact gave the writer great pleasure in later life given the fact that he was the first DNA to be discovered in Cambridge that year

He was educated at Brentwood School in Essex and at St. John's College, Cambridge where he graduated with a BA in English Literature. The reason he had gone to Cambridge, or so he says, was to follow in the footsteps of his idols, the Monty Python team, and appear in the Footlights review. However it was while he was there that the man who matched John Cleese in height turned his talents to writing rather than performing. Despite the Footlights history for cutting edge comedy the early 70s, when Douglas came to be up at Cambridge, the Footlights was on a low ebb and too conservative for his surreal Pythonesque humour. In fact they insisted on not using writer/performers but writers to write and actors to perform, this may have been the reason that initially Douglas joined the CULES (Cambrigde University Light Entertainment Society) who basically did the same as Footlights but put on shows for charity. However because of disputes with the Footslight people Douglas, along with two friends, set up an alternative revue company, Adams/Smith/Adams, with them he continued to write, perform and direct revue shows in Cambridge, London and the Edinburgh Fringe.

Early Writing

Shortly after graduation he sent some scripts of to Graham Chapman,one of the Python team, and these were used for a new radio show, he collaborated with Chapman on a number of projects including a TV pilot, which failed to become a series. Soon he ended up contributing bits and pieces to other radio shows, including the game Mornington Crescent to the radio show I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue, before settling in as a script editor for Doctor Who. However even here he got to thinking that his talents deserved more that this.

However of all his early writing Douglas was most proud of achieving a perfect ten for an essay he wrote at school. The reason for this pride is that the master had never before, nor since, ever given a ten to any piece of writing by a pupil.

Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas's greatest success was undoubtedly the body of work that began as an idea for a series for Radio 4. How the idea came about is open to much apographal telling, not least from Douglas himself, who in one television interview said 'I'm not sure myself how it happened, but I've told the story so much that even I believe it'.

However, the story goes that one day while Douglas was hitch-hiking around Europe, with that essential guide to hitch-hiking in his backpack The Hitch-hikers Guide to Europe. He was lying on his back looking up at the stars and thought wouldn't it be good if someone wrote a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The idea didn't resurface until after he left University and had become a struggling writer when his friend Simon Brett a BBC Radio producer approached him. As a result of this meeting, with Brett, Adams was commissioned to write a pilot episode for the series. For possibly the only time in his entire writing career Douglas Adams returned the manuscript to Simon Brett for the deadline he was set. Brett took this script to his bosses in Light Entertainment at the BBC who after reading it asked Brett ‘Is this funny?’, when he confirmed that it was it passed up the chain to the big bosses, who wisely commissioned a series.

The original concept for Radio was to have been six unrelated stories about the perils of Hitchhiking across the Galaxy, thankfully this was shelved for the episodes that did hit the airwaves for the first time in March 1978. The episodes were called Fit the First to Fit the Sixth1 and it was a whole new genre at the time as no comedy had then been set in space. By the time it came to actually produce the series Simon Brett had moved on to BBC television, so the job of producing passed to his prodigy Geoffrey Perkins. Douglas’s good record of getting the pilot in on time soon fell apart as the dates for recording approached, instead of making small amendments to tweak his script he start typing all over again; from the top. The pressure of time became so much that he called on his friend, John Lloyd, to help him complete the last two episodes.

The first series introduced the world to Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect, who turned out not to be, as he claimed to be, from Guildford, but a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse. The actors chosen to play these parts were Simon Jones and Geoffrey McGivern who agreed to play them, which was just as well, as Douglas had written the parts with his fellow ex-footlighters in mind. These two escaped the earth just before it was destroyed by Vogon's to later find themselves thrown into space without the aid of space suits.

Fortunately Arthur and Ford were rescued by Ford's semi-cousin2 Zaphod Beeblebrox (Mark Wing-Davey) and his earthling girlfriend Trillian (aka Tricia McMillian played by Susan Sheridan) as they cruised past in the Improbability driven ship the Heart of Gold complete with android, with Genuine People Personality, Marvin (Stephen Moore).

However the star of the piece, is considered by many to be, the narrator also doubling as the Guide itself. When it came to how they cast this part again details are sketchy. Douglas claims that he thought the narrator should be someone with a Peter Jones-ey style voice but the thought took some time to reach him that Peter Jones could do a very good Peter Jones-ey voice and so Peter Jones' Peter Jones-ey voice passed into comedic sci-fi legend.

The radio series has the unique honour of being the only one ever to be nominated for a Hugo3 sadly losing out in 1979 to the film Superman.

However the cult listening that the show got soon expanded by word of mouth by when the BBC deemed to repeat the series pretty soon after its original airing. There was then a commission for a Christmas special4 followed by another five episodes. It was also adapted into a Television series, books, two albums, a towel and computer games; before in April 1999, as part of the Digital Village, as h2g2 an interactive Internet version written by earthlings.

The Books

The first two books in the series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe largely follow the story as laid out in the Primary Phase of the Radio show. There were some changes and several omissions no doubt as Douglas had time to think a bit rather that typing to fill 30 minutes of air-time under pressure of deadlines. But still ends up with Ford and Arthur abandoned on pre-historic earth watching the Golgarfrinchian's slowly erode at the organic matter that was essential to finding the Ultimate Question to which the answer is forty two.

The third book Life, the Universe and Everything finds Arthur and Ford still on the earth several years later, only to be rescued by a temporal anomaly in the shape of a Chesterfield sofa. The sofa takes them to Lord's Cricket Ground on the Tuesday before the Vogon's initially destroyed the earth. The concept for this book about the planet jealous about the rest of the Universe came from Douglas’s girlfriend at the time, fellow author Sally Emerson, to whom this book is dedicated. Douglas, a bit of a cricket fan, said that he purposely wrote the bit about chasing the sofa on prehistoric Earth just so that he could absently throw in the line about them appearing at Lords before forming a whole book about mans misrepresntation of Krikkit.

Slartibartfast meets them there and takes them on a quest to stop the Robot Warriors from the planet Krikkit from reassembling the Wicket Gate Key to free their masters who are intent on reaping bloody revenge on the galaxy for the crime of existing. Having obtained four of the elements once scattered through time and space they only required the silver stump. Which turns out to be the artificial leg of one very familiar paranoid android who has suffered a lot though the history of the galaxy5

Having completed this task Arthur is surprised to find himself back on an undemolished earth in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, which was subtitled the forth book of the Hitch Hiker's Trilogy. Only to find himself falling in love with the girl who features in the prologue to the first book as having found an answer to the world's problems. She is Called Fenchurch and by a quirk of fate lives in the exact spot in Islington where 2 millions years previously Arthur lived in a cave between Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, the Universe and Everything.

However the two of them both mysteriously have a bowl which put together make up the Dolphin's last message to mankind before evacuated, preceding the impending demolition, which is the title of the book.

The fifth book takes its name from Ford's update on the entry for Earth: Mostly Harmless. Arthur having somehow managed to lose Fenchurch and is searching for one of the alternative Earths where he can settle down and relax. He finds one where the days are 25 hours long. Where apart from the slight inconvenience of resetting his digital watch each morning he settles down quite happily to making Perfectly Normal Beast Sandwiches for the locals. That is until a surprise package lands on the planet.

The surprise is a daughter Random Dent who was conceived via a sperm donation, made by Arthur at one of the Galaxies many sperm banks to help finance his trips. The mother is the one of the only other earth women to explore the galaxy Trillian. All the main characters end up on the earth which hadn't been destroyed by Vogon's only to have it destroyed shortly after they all locate each other in a London hotel.

As this book was being launched Douglas along with Ford and Arthur (played by the original actors) along Marvin's head6 (and what we assume was the rest of Stephen Moore) appeared in a South Bank show in which Arthur is shocked to find out as were the readers that he had a daughter, whilst going through the draft of the book on Adams’ faithful MacIntosh.

The Records

The story also enjoyed two glorious outings on 12" vinyl7. The first of these is roughly the story as told in the radio series but as with the other genre’s there were slight variations. The cover of the first album features a black and white picture of Douglas in his favourite location, the bath, along with a bright yellow rubber duck. These are perhaps the rarest versions of the story available today, if you have one treasure it.

The Television Series

More alterations from the Radio Series and books led to the BBC television series. Most of the main cast was reassembled with the exception of Trillian who was played by Sandra Dickenson. One major problem encountered in producing the TV show was the throw-away line on the radio about Zaphod having three arms and two heads. Sadly at this time special effects a BBC budget where not up to those of the recently completed Star Wars Trilogy of films. So sadly for most of the time on set one of the arms rested in Zaphod's pockets and one of the heads, not that of Actor Mark Wing-Davey, was constantly running out of battery power and resultantly looking constantly drunk.

Douglas himself crops up in one of the Book's narrative passages in the first episode about Earthling being unhappy, thinking that happiness came from little green pieces of paper8 and this was upsetting even those with digital watches. At the end of this sequence, and readers of a nervous dispostion should look away now, we see the back of a naked Douglas Adam's abandoning all hope and walking into the see9.

The Computer Game

Hitchhikers came out just at the time that personal computers were beginning to take off. So the next venture was a text adventure game. For those too young to remember text adventure games, these were games which relied on text alone to let you traverse the game zones. With the advancement of available memory and better graphics these have now been replaced by first graphic adventures then platform games of greater and action games with far greater complexity. But at the time to be able to direct Arthur Dent on his adventure was a great thrill, and you got to use your imagination to visualise his surroundings.

The Film

The one genre Hitchhikers had yet to be produced in was the silver screen. But that was about to rectified, Douglas was living in California along with his wife and daughter, working on yet another adaptation of his magnus opus into Film. With the development in special effects Zaphod was going to have two fully functioning head and three fully functional arms and the Heart of Gold and other effects would surpass the visual image that fans had since the TV series. But as always it was the tinkering with the plot and story that was taking time. The film was still unfinished when Douglas dies and its future remains unclear.

The Meaning of Liff

The Meaning of Liff is a dictionary of sorts. It stems from a little nonsense that Douglas had started while at school, taking the names of places and giving them alternative meanings. Together with John Lloyd who was involved in some of the Radio episodes of Hitchhikers they started to invent some more which became a little pocket sized book. A second collection followed called The Deeper Meaning of Liff which is an expansion upon the original version.

Dirk Gently

After the fourth novel in the Hitch Hikers Trilogy10, Douglas wanted to find a different direction for his creative writing. This he did by inventing the character of Dirk Gently.

Svlad Cjelli, or Dirk Gently as he prefers to be known ('more of a Scottish dagger feel to it'), is a small man who wears more than the usual number of hats. That is, he wears a hat. He believes that everything in the Universe has a completely rational and scientific explanation, but is plagued by unusual occult events happening around him. In the first Dirk Gently book, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, he tries to solve a mystery by holistic means, taking into account the interconnectedness of all things.

This leads to an adventure involving a tall thin computer expert called Richard, an electric monk from another dimension, the conjuring tricks of an absent-minded Cambridge professor and an encounter with Samuel Coleridge's 'Rime of the Ancient Mariner'. The final solution to the mystery is a science-fiction masterpiece reminiscent of Back to the Future or Dr Who at his best.

All of this despite being sent down from Cambridge after an unusual occurance in which opening a sealed envelope revealed word for word coies of the exam papers. This led to him leaving Cambridge University in the back of a Police black Maria.

In the second Dirk Gently book, The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, Kate Schechter, a disillusioned American woman living in London, has an encounter with the Norse god Thor, while Dirk himself in on the trail of Odin and the pact he has made to the detriment of all the other gods. While an amusing book, some fans cinsider that it lacks the cleverness of the first one, and is not as convincing. However, the book is another example of a fine final line punchline from Douglas, whose books always seemed to end on a belly laugh.

The Environment

In the late 1980s wildlife specialist Mark Carwardine came up with an idea to take a variety of celebrities to hunt down and see some of the world’s most rare and endangered species. His first encounter turned out to be Douglas Adams in a quest to locate an aye-aye. However instead of moving on to other celebrities Mark and Douglas went on a year long search together discovering and sighting some of the rarest creatures on the planet including the Komodo Dragon, mountain Gorillas and white Rhinos. The result of their travels was the book Last Chance to See (1990) as well as Douglas new found passion for the environment.

Douglas continued to show and interest in wildlife and the environment becoming a Director of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Trust as well as becoming involved and putting his name to other conservation issues.

The Website

The concept for this website11 stems from Douglas Adams. In the mid-1990s he set up a company called the Digital Village to do some work with computers which if you ever read the prefaces to Douglas books, never mind his many articles in Mac User you know he was seriously intrigued by.

An upshot of the Digital Village was h2g2.com which was launched on 28 April 1999 on the BBC1 show Tomorrow's World12. The site grew and developed but financial probelms were encountered in late 2000 and the site disappeared for a period of months. Researchers got there H2G2 fix through various groups to which many had either previously belonged or through groups set up to help with the grieving. However the site was resurrected within the BBC in 2001 and has continued to grow ever since.

Salmon of Doubt and Other Bit and Pieces

When Douglas died in May 2001 there were various items still locked inside the various hard drives of his many beloved Macintosh computers. His widow, Jane Belson, along with other friends decided that these, which included the first seven chapter of a third Dirk Gently novel and other assorted articles and writings into a book. Amongst the collection Salmon of Doubt is Douglas’s only edited entry on H2G2 which is on one of his favourite subjects tea.

Personal Life

Reading the writers biography gives an interesting insight into Douglas's perception of his personal life. At the end of each of these short pen sketches is generally a note as to his current marital status, or lack of, and current location of abode, sometimes with a cry that he does not want to hear from estate agents.

1Named with reference to Lewis Carroll's humorous poem "The Hunting of the Snark" which was divided into fits.2If you don’t know don’t ask.3The highest awards in science fiction, voted for each year by the members of the World Science Fiction Convention.4Fit the Seventh.5Several times over.6The BBC costume department apparently had misplaced the rest of him.7For younger readers this was the principle way of transmitting music and drama before the introduction of CD’s.8The now defunct Bank of England one pound note.9A scene lifted straight from the title sequence of the TV show The Rise and Fall of Reginald Perrin.10The subtitle used on the cover of So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.11Not the BBC just the H2G2 bit and the DNA hub and branches.12Many of the researchers with really low U numbers joined that evening or soon afterwards.

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