Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author,humorist, and screenwriter, best known as the creator ofThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978BBC radio comedy,The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy evolved into a "trilogy" of six (or five, according to the author) books which sold more than 15 million copies in his life. It was made intoa television series, several stage plays, comics,a video game, and a 2005feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated inThe Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.[2]
Adams was born inCambridge, England, on 11 March 1952 to Christopher Douglas Adams (1927–1985), a management consultant and computer salesman, former probation officer and lecturer on probationary group therapy techniques, and nurse Janet (1927–2016), née Donovan.[4][5] A few months after his birth, the family moved to theEast End of London, where his sister, Susan, was born three years later.[6] His parents divorced in 1957; Douglas, Susan and their mother moved then to anRSPCA animal shelter inBrentwood, Essex, run by his maternal grandparents.[7] Each parent remarried, giving Adams four half-siblings.[8]
Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood. At the age of nine, he passed the entrance exam forBrentwood School. He attended theprep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970. Adams was 6 feet (1.8 m) tall by the age of 12, and stopped growing at 6 feet 5 inches (1.96 m). His form master, Frank Halford, said that Adams's height had made him stand out and that he had been self-conscious about it.[9][10] His ability to write made him well-known in the school.[11] Adams became the only student ever to be awarded a ten out of ten by Halford for creative writing – something he remembered for the rest of his life, particularly when facingwriter's block.[6]
Some of his earliest writing was published at the school, such as a report on its photography club inThe Brentwoodian in 1962, or spoof reviews in the school magazineBroadsheet, edited byPaul Neil Milne Johnstone, who later became a character inThe Hitchhiker's Guide. Adams also designed the cover of one issue of theBroadsheet, and had a letter and short story published inThe Eagle, the boys' comic, in 1965. A poem entitled "A Dissertation on the task of writing a poem on a candle and an account of some of the difficulties thereto pertaining" written by Adams in January 1970 at the age of 17, was discovered in a cupboard at the school in early 2014.[12]
On the strength of an essay on religious poetry that discussedthe Beatles andWilliam Blake, Adams was awarded anExhibition in English atSt John's College, Cambridge (where his father had been a student), going up in 1971.[13] He wanted to join theFootlights, an invitation-only student comedy club, that has acted as a hothouse for comic talent. He was not elected immediately as he had hoped and started to write and perform in revues with Will Adams (no relation) and Martin Smith; they formed a group called "Adams-Smith-Adams". He became a member of the Footlights by 1973.[14] Despite doing very little work – he recalled having completed three essays in three years – he graduated in 1974 with a 2:2 inEnglish literature.[5]
After leaving university, Adams moved back to London, determined to break into TV and radio as a writer. An edited version of theFootlights Revue appeared onBBC2 television in 1974. A version of the Revue performed live in London'sWest End led to Adams being discovered byMonty Python'sGraham Chapman. The two formed a brief writing partnership, earning Adams a writing credit inepisode 45 ofMonty Python for a sketch called "Patient Abuse". The pair also co-wrote the "Marilyn Monroe" sketch that appeared on the soundtrack album ofMonty Python and the Holy Grail. Adams is one of only two people other than the original Python members to receive aMonty Python writing credit (the other beingNeil Innes).[15]
Adams in his firstMonty Python appearance, in surgeon's garb
Adams had two brief appearances in the fourth series ofMonty Python's Flying Circus. 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, whileMichael Palin narrates a sketch that introduces one person after another but never gets started.[citation needed] At the beginning of episode 44, "Mr. Neutron", Adams is dressed in apepper-pot outfit and loads a missile onto a cart driven byTerry Jones, who is calling for scrap metal ("Any old iron...").[citation needed] The two episodes were broadcast in November 1974.[16] Adams and Chapman also attempted non-Python projects, includingOut of the Trees.[17]
At this point, Adams's career stalled; his writing style was unsuited to the current style of radio and TV comedy.[5] To make ends meet he took a series of odd jobs, including as a hospital porter, barn builder, and chicken-shed cleaner. He was employed as a bodyguard by aQatari family, who had made their fortune in oil.[18] Adams continued to write and submit sketches, though few were accepted. In 1976, his career had a brief improvement when he wrote and performedUnpleasantness at Brodie's Close at theEdinburgh Fringe festival. By Christmas, work had dried up again and a depressed Adams moved to live with his mother.[5] The lack of writing work hit him hard, and low confidence became a feature of Adams's life, "I have terrible periods of lack of confidence [...] I briefly did therapy, but after a while I realised it was like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can't fix the weather – you just have to get on with it".[19]
In 1979, Adams andJohn Lloyd wrote scripts for two half-hour episodes ofDoctor Snuggles, "The Remarkable Fidgety River" and "The Great Disappearing Mystery" (episodes eight and twelve).[22] Lloyd was also co-author of two episodes from the originalHitchhiker radio series ("Fit the Fifth" and "Fit the Sixth", also known as "Episode Five" and "Episode Six"), as well asThe Meaning of Liff andThe Deeper Meaning of Liff.
By 1976, Adams had submitted several story ideas to theDoctor Who production office which had been rejected, as well as a potential film script,Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen. It later became his novelLife, the Universe and Everything (which in turn became the thirdHitchhiker's Guide radio series).[23] Two years later, he sent theHitchhiker's Guide pilot script. Script editorAnthony Read was impressed by it and commissioned him to writeThe Pirate Planet.[24] Adams replaced Read as script editor for its17th season in 1979. Altogether, he wrote threeDoctor Who serials starringTom Baker as theFourth Doctor:
The Pirate Planet (the second serial inThe Key to Time story arc ofseason 16)[25]
Shada (only partly filmed; not televised due to industry disputes but was later completed using animation for the unfinished scenes and broadcast as "Doctor Who: The Lost Episode" onBBC America on 19 July 2018)[27]
The episodes authored by Adams are some of the few that were not originally novelised, as Adams would not allow anyone else to write them and asked for a higher price than the publishers were willing to pay.[28]Shada was adapted as a novel byGareth Roberts in 2012,[29] andCity of Death andThe Pirate Planet byJames Goss in 2015 and 2017 respectively.[30][31]
Elements ofShada andCity of Death were reused in Adams's later novelDirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular, the character ofProfessor Chronotis.Big Finish Productions eventually remadeShada as an audio play starringPaul McGann as the Doctor. Accompanied by partly animated illustrations, it waswebcast on theBBC website in 2003, and subsequently released as a two-CD set later that year. An omnibus edition of this version was broadcast on the digital radio stationBBC7 on 10 December 2005.
In theDoctor Who 2012 Christmas episode "The Snowmen", writerSteven Moffat was inspired by a storyline that Adams pitched calledThe Doctor Retires.[32]
Towel Day 2005 inInnsbruck, Austria, where Adams conceivedThe Hitchhiker's Guide. In the novels, a towel is the most useful thing a space traveller can have. The annual Towel Day (25 May) was first celebrated in 2001, two weeks after Adams's death.
According to Adams, the idea for the title occurred to him in 1971 while he lay drunk in a field inInnsbruck, Austria, gazing at the stars. He was carrying a copy of theHitch-hiker's Guide to Europe, and it occurred to him that "somebody ought to write aHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".[33][34]
Despite the original outline, Adams was said to make up the stories as he wrote. He turned toJohn Lloyd for help with the final two episodes ofthe first series. Lloyd contributed bits from an unpublished science fiction book of his own, calledGiGax.[35] Very little of Lloyd's material survived in later adaptations ofHitchhiker's, such as the novels and the TV series. The TV series was based on the first six radio episodes, and sections contributed by Lloyd were largely re-written.
BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first radio series weekly in the UK starting 8 March 1978, lasting until April.[36] The series was distributed in the United States byNational Public Radio. Following the success of the first series, another episode was recorded and broadcast, which was commonly known as the Christmas Episode.A second series of five episodes was broadcast one per night, during the week of 21–25 January 1980.
While working on the radio series (and with simultaneous projects such asThe Pirate Planet) Adams found difficulty in keeping to writing deadlines; the problem became worse as he proceeded to publish novels. He 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 three weeks to ensure thatSo Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was completed.[37] Adams was quoted as saying, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."[38] Despite the difficulty with deadlines, he wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992.
The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventurecomputer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994. This latter edition featured a42 Puzzle designed by Adams, which was later incorporated into paperback covers of the first fourHitchhiker's novels (the paperback for the fifth re-used the artwork from the hardback edition).[39]
In 1980, Adams began attempts to turn the firstHitchhiker's novel into a film, making several trips to Los Angeles, and working with Hollywood studios and potential producers. The next year, the radio series became the basis for a BBC television mini-series[40] broadcast in six parts. When he died in 2001 in California, he had been trying again to get the film project started withDisney, which had bought the rights in 1998. The screenplay was rewritten byKarey Kirkpatrick and theHitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film was released in 2005.
Radio producerDirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in theHitchhiker's series.[41] They also discussed the possibilities of radio adaptations of the final two novels in the five-book "trilogy". As with the film, this project was realised only after Adams's death. The third series,The Tertiary Phase, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2004 and was subsequently released on audio CD. With the aid of a recording of his reading ofLife, the Universe and Everything and editing, Adams can be heard playing the part of Agrajag posthumously.So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish andMostly Harmless made up the fourth and fifth radio series, respectively (on radio they were titledThe Quandary Phase andThe Quintessential Phase) and these were broadcast in May and June 2005, and also subsequently released on Audio CD. The last episode in the last series (with a new, "more upbeat" ending) concluded with, "The very final episode ofThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is affectionately dedicated to its author."[42]
Between Adams's first trip toMadagascar withMark Carwardine in 1985, and their series of travels that formed the basis for the radio series and non-fiction bookLast Chance to See, Adams wrote two other novels with a new cast of characters.Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was published in 1987, and was described by its author as "a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics".[43]
A sequel,The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, was published a year later. It was Adams's first original work sinceSo Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. After the book tour, Adams set off on his round-the-world excursion, which supplied him with the material forLast Chance to See.The Salmon of Doubt was incomplete when published posthumously.
Adams played the guitar left-handed and had a collection of 24 left-handed guitars when he died (having received his first guitar in 1964). He also studied piano in the 1960s.[44]Pink Floyd andProcol Harum had important influence on his work. During his segment on music discussion programmePrivate Passions, Adams remarked that he "would have loved to have been a rock musician".[45][46][47]
Adams's official biography shares its name with the song "Wish You Were Here" byPink Floyd. The opening section of "Shine On You Crazy Diamond" was featured in a section of the third episode of the original 1978Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series (broadcast only, cut from commercial releases). Adams was friends with Pink Floyd guitaristDavid Gilmour and, on Adams's 42nd birthday, he was invited to make a guest appearance at Pink Floyd's concert of 28 October 1994 at Earls Court in London, playing guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse".[48] Adams chose the name for Pink Floyd's 1994 album,The Division Bell, by picking the words from the lyrics to one of its tracks, "High Hopes".[48] Pink Floyd and the song "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" in particular, inspired Adams to create the rock band Disaster Area who appear inThe Restaurant at the End of the Universe, who planned to crash a space ship into a nearby star as a stunt during a concert.[49] Gilmour also performed at Adams's memorial service in 2001, and what would have been Adams's 60th birthday party in 2012.[50]
In 1990, Adams wrote and presented a television documentary programmeHyperland[53] which featuredTom Baker as a "software agent" (similar to the assistant pictured in Apple'sKnowledge Navigator video of future concepts from 1987), and interviews withTed Nelson, the co-inventor ofhypertext and the person who coined the term. Adams was an early adopter and advocate of hypertext.
Adams described himself as a "radicalatheist", adding "radical" for emphasis so he would not be asked if he meant agnostic. He toldAmerican Atheists that this conveyed the fact that he really meant it. He imagined asentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "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!" to express his disbelief in thefine-tuned universe argument for God.[54]
He remained fascinated by religion because of its effect on human affairs. "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."[55]
The evolutionary biologist and atheistRichard Dawkins invited Adams to participate in his 1991Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where Dawkins calls Adams from the audience to read a passage fromThe Restaurant at the End of the Universe which satirises the absurdity of the thought that any one species would exist on Earth merely to serve as a meal to another species, such as humans.[56] Dawkins also uses Adams's influence to exemplify arguments for non-belief in his 2006 bookThe God Delusion. Dawkins dedicated the book to Adams, whom he jokingly called "possibly [my] only convert" to atheism[57] and wrote on his death that "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, themountain gorilla and theblack rhino have lost a gallant defender."[58]
Adams was also anenvironmental activist who campaigned on behalf ofendangered species. This activism included the production of the non-fiction radio seriesLast Chance to See, in which he and naturalistMark Carwardine visited rare species such as thekākāpō andbaiji, and the publication of a tie-in book of the same name. In 1992, this was made into a CD-ROM combination ofaudiobook,e-book and picture slide show.
Adams and Mark Carwardine contributed the 'Meeting a Gorilla' passage fromLast Chance to See to the bookThe Great Ape Project.[59] This book, edited byPaola Cavalieri andPeter 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 ofMount Kilimanjaro while wearing a rhino suit for the British charity organisationSave 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 inTanzania. Adams was also an active supporter of theDian 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.[60]
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 aDECRainbow. Upon their return to England, Adams bought anApricot, then aBBC Micro and aTandy 1000.[61] InLast Chance to See, Adams mentions hisCambridge Z88, which he had taken toZaire on a quest to find thenorthern white rhinoceros.[62]
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 inMacUser, and inThe Independent on Sunday. In these, Adams claims that one of the first computers he ever saw was aCommodore 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.[63]
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 beingStephen Fry.[64] Adams was also an "Apple Master", celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products (others includedJohn Cleese andGregory Hines). Adams's contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version ofiMovie with footage featuring his daughter Polly. The video was available on Adams's.Mac homepage. Adams installed and started using the first release ofMac 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 itsCocoa programming framework. He said it was "awesome...", which was also the last word he wrote on his site.[65]
Adams used email to correspond withSteve Meretzky in the early 1980s, during their collaboration on Infocom's version ofThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.[61] While living in New Mexico in 1993 he set up another e-mail address and began posting to his ownUSENET newsgroup, alt.fan.douglas-adams, and occasionally, when his computer was acting up, to the comp.sys.mac hierarchy.[66] 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 theMicrosoftProfessional Developers Conference (PDC) where he described the personal computer as being a modelling device. The video of his keynote speech is archived onChannel 9.[67]Adams was also a keynote speaker for the April 2001Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, one of the major technical conferences onembedded system engineering.[68]
Although there is no explicit admission to this effect, it is not uncommon to find claims in the media that the variousDeep Thought,Deep Blue, andDeepMind are named after the Deep Thought supercomputer imagined by Adams.[34] Elon Musk was among the first funders of DeepMind, and has often admitted that Adams was fundamental to its formation. According to Musk, Adams is the "best philosopher ever",[34] andHitchhiker's "highlighted an important point which is that a lot of times the question is harder than the answer. And if you can properly phrase the question, then the answer is the easy part".[69]
Adams moved toUpper Street,Islington in 1981[70] and to Duncan Terrace, a few minutes walk away, in the late 1980s.[70]
In the early 1980s, Adams had a relationship with novelistSally Emerson, who was separated from her husband at that time. Adams later dedicated his bookLife, the Universe and Everything to Emerson. In 1981, Emerson returned to her husband,Peter Stothard, a contemporary of Adams atBrentwood School and later editor ofThe Times. Adams was soon introduced by friends to Jane Belson with whom he later became romantically involved.
Belson was the "ladybarrister" mentioned in the jacket-flapbiography 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 ofHitchhiker's. 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")[71] and a broken engagement, they married on 25 November 1991.
Adams and Belson had one daughter together, Polly Jane Rocket Adams, born on 22 June 1994 shortly after Adams turned 42. In 1999, the family moved from London toSanta Barbara, California, where they lived until his death. Following the funeral, Jane Belson and Polly Adams returned to London.[72] Belson died on 7 September 2011 of cancer, aged 59.[73]
In May 2002,The Salmon of Doubt was published, containing many short stories, essays and letters as well as eulogies fromRichard Dawkins,Stephen Fry (in the UK edition),Christopher Cerf (in the US edition), andTerry Jones (in the US paperback edition). It also includes eleven chapters of his unfinished novel,The Salmon of Doubt, which was originally intended to become a newDirk Gently novel but might have later become the sixthHitchhiker novel.[79][80]
Other events after Adams's death included awebcast production ofShada, allowing the complete story to be told, radio dramatisations of the final three books in theHitchhiker's series and the completion ofthe film adaptation ofThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The film, released in 2005, posthumously credits Adams as a producer and several design elements – including a head-shaped planet seen near the end of the film – incorporated Adams's features.
A 12-part radio series based on theDirk Gently novels was announced in 2007.[81]
BBC Radio 4 also commissioned a third Dirk Gently radio series based on the incomplete chapters ofThe Salmon of Doubt and written byKim Fuller;[82] but this was dropped in favour of a BBC-TV series based on the two completed novels.[83] A sixthHitchhiker novel,And Another Thing..., byArtemis Fowl authorEoin Colfer, was released on 12 October 2009 (the 30th anniversary of the first book), published with the support of Adams's estate. A BBC Radio 4Book at Bedtime adaptation and an audio book soon followed.
On 25 May 2001, two weeks after Adams's death, his fans organised a tribute known asTowel Day, which has been observed every year since then.[84]
In 2018, John Lloyd presented an hour-long episode of the BBC Radio Four documentaryArchive on 4 discussing Adams's private papers, which are held atSt John's College, Cambridge. The episode used to be available online.[86]
In March 2021,Unbound announced acrowdfunder for42: the wildly improbable ideas of Douglas Adams, on the 20th anniversary of his death, a book based on Adams's papers, edited byKevin Jon Davies.[88]
^Botti, Nicholas."Interview with Frank Halford".Life, DNA, and H2G2. 2009. Web. Retrieved 20 November 2025. (Click on link at bottom for facsimile page fromDaily News article, 7 March 1998.)
^Roberts, Jem.The Clue Bible: The Fully Authorised History of I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue from Footlights to Mornington Crescent: London, 2009, pp. 164–165.
^Adams, Douglas (2005).Maggs, Dirk (ed.).The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Radio Scripts: The Tertiary, Quandary and Quintessential Phases. Pan Books. xiv.ISBN0-330-43510-8.
^"Douglas Adams."Private Passions, hosted by Michael Berkeley, BBC Radio 3, 13 September 1997. "...I would have loved to have been a rock musician. A couple of years ago I had an enormous extraordinary treat. I got to play one song live on stage with Pink Floyd at Earls Court..."
^"Douglas Adams at The Barbican".procolharum.com. 8 February 1996.Archived from the original on 27 November 2024. Retrieved5 July 2024.I've been a very, very great fan of Gary Brooker and Procol Harum ever since nearly thirty years ago...
^"Grand Designs".Record Collector Magazine. 3 September 2013.Archived from the original on 30 November 2024. Retrieved5 July 2024.
^abMabbett, Andy (2010).Pink Floyd – The Music and the Mystery. London: Omnibus Press.ISBN978-1-84938-370-7.
Ray, Mohit K (2007).Atlantic Companion to Literature in English. Atlantic Publishers and Distributors.ISBN978-81-269-0832-5.
Roberts, Jem (10 September 2015).The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official Biography of Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. London: Arrow Books.ISBN978-0-09-959076-7.OCLC920836076.
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