Douglas Adams

Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter. He was best known as the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a 1978 radio comedy series which he adapted into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 14 million copies in his lifetime. He also adapted it into a 1981 television series, a 1984 video game and a posthumously-released 2005 feature film. Adams was born in Cambridge and raised in Essex. He entered St John's College, Cambridge, in 1971 where he became a member of the student comedy club Footlights. Despite initial hopes to become a comedian in the mold of John Cleese, Adams began attempting to break in to the industry as a writer. Although a brief writing partnership with Graham Chapman gave Adams a credit on a 1974 episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, Adams subsequently entered a period of career difficulty, with many pitched projects going unproduced. The first series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an innovative comedy science fiction series, led to sudden success for Adams. He also wrote three serials for the television series Doctor Who, including the unaired serial Shada and City of Death (1979), which he co-wrote with producer Graham Williams, and served as script editor for its 17th season. Adams wrote the novels Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote the comic dictionaries The Meaning of Liff (1983) and The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990) and the travel book Last Chance to See (1990). A posthumous collection of his selected works, including chapters 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.

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