Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter. He wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which originated in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy, before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 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. In 1971, he entered St John's College, Cambridge, where he became a member of the student comedy club Footlights. Despite initial hopes to become a comedian in the mould of John Cleese, Adams began his career as a television and radio writer. Although a brief writing partnership with Graham Chapman gave Adams a credit on a 1974 episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus, he entered a period of career difficulty, with many pitched projects going unproduced. In 1978, he was commissioned to write for Doctor Who and served as script editor for its 17th season (1979–1980).
The success of the first radio series and 1979 book adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy led to sudden fame for Adams. He subsequently 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).
Adams's writing output declined in the 1990s. He developed various digital media projects, including co-founding the company The Digital Village, and lectured prolifically on information technology. He died in 2001, aged 49. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including chapters of his final unfinished novel, was published in The Salmon of Doubt (2002). He was known for his environmental advocacy, his self-described "radical atheism", his infamous tendency to procrastinate, and his love of rock music.
Early life and education
Family Douglas Noël Adams 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 English, Scottish, Irish and German ancestry. His paternal grandfather, born in Glasgow, came from a long line of distinguished doctors. Adams later joked that he had been DNA, his initials, in Cambridge before DNA, as he was born nine months before the publication of Francis Crick and James Watson's 1953 paper.
Shortly after his birth, the family moved to the East End of London. His sister Susan was born in March 1955. 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. Each parent remarried, giving Adams several half-siblings.
Education Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood. He entered the prep school for Brentwood School in September 1959. Adams felt isolated at school because of his large stature; he was tall by the age of 12, and stopped growing at . 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.
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. He was a fan of the BBC science fiction series Doctor Who and wrote a sketch about Daleks powered by Rice Krispies. His poem "Tramp's Eye View", written when he was twelve years old, is held by the University of Cambridge. In early 1965, he had a surreal short story titled Suspense published in the children's comic Eagle. A poem written by Adams in January 1970 was discovered in a school cupboard in early 2014. He became a boarder at the school in September 1964, and eventually left in December 1970.
On the strength of a religious poetry essay that discussed the Beatles and William Blake, Adams was awarded an exhibition to study English at St John's College, Cambridge, where his father had studied. He entered the university in 1971, hoping to follow in the footsteps of comedy writer-performers like Monty Python. 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.
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 was inspired by Cleese's work on The Frost Report (1966–67) and similarly tall stature, later admitting "I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was taken".
Adams subsequently wrote and performed in revues with students Will Adams (no relation) and Martin Smith; their troupe was called "Adams-Smith-Adams". Although Adams-Smith-Adams's written material featured prominently in Footlights' 1974 May Week Revue (titled Chox), Douglas was disappointed when he was not cast on the basis that his performing abilities were not strong enough. He later stated "for some reason the world wasn't that keen on me being a performer. And probably quite rightly". He graduated in 1974 with a 2:2 in English literature. Many of Adams's Cambridge peers played important roles in his career, such as Jon Canter, John Lloyd, Mary Allen and Simon Jones. Adams took a series of odd jobs during his time at Cambridge, which included working as a hospital porter and a chicken-shed cleaner.
Career
1974–1977: Early career and collaboration with Graham Chapman Adams moved back to London after leaving university, determined to break into television and radio as a writer. The BBC occasionally accepted sketches from Adams, but his writing style was unsuited to the current style of radio and television comedy. 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.
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 (1974) for a sketch called "Patient Abuse". 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 (1975). 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).
Adams had two brief appearances in Monty Python's fourth series. In "The Light Entertainment War", Adams is in a surgeon's mask (as Dr. Emile Koning, according to on-screen captions) pulling on gloves. In "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..."). Jones was the Python member with whom Adams formed the closest friendship.
Adams and Chapman co-wrote a 1974 comedy science fiction script as a vehicle for Ringo Starr, which was rejected by all major American television networks. Adams, Chapman and Bernard McKenna co-wrote a 1976 television pilot titled Out of the Trees. The pilot did not go to series. Adams was disappointed by the production, stating it "actually had some very good material in it, but just didn't hang together properly".
Adams submitted at least two story outlines to the Doctor Who production office, in 1974 and 1976, which were rejected. His first concept, about a spaceship full of useless passengers fleeing a catastrophe, was rejected for being too similar to The Ark in Space (1975). The second story concept, Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, was rejected by producer Graham Williams for being "too silly". The Adams-Smith-Adams trio continued working together until late 1975. Adams directed Footlights' 1976 May Week Revue, A Kick in the Stalls. 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. By the end of the year, Adams's career again stalled and he moved in with his family in Stalbridge, Dorset.
Adams and Chapman wrote the episode "For Your Own Good" for the sitcom Doctor on the Go, but by the time it aired in February 1977, Adams had ended their partnership as Chapman's heavy drinking made him difficult to work with. The two men also "virtually came to blows" over Adams's assistance in writing Chapman's autobiography. Adams expected his Monty Python work to be his big break, but was disappointed that he had "nothing to show for it except a large overdraft and not much achieved". He subsequently "went through a total crisis of confidence".
Adams became obsessed with combining the comedy and science fiction genres in a single project. Adams and John Lloyd shared a passion for science fiction, and the two men unsuccessfully developed various comedy projects, such as The Swasivious Zebu, Knight and Day and a Guinness Book 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 Mount Everest observatory, but were told by the BBC that science fiction was "too 1950s". Adams's 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.
1977–1978: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series
Adams was frustrated by his writing career and considered leaving the industry and moving to Hong Kong. In 1977, he finally got his chance to work on a comedy science fiction series when producer Simon Brett encouraged him to pitch one to BBC Radio 4. Adams's initial idea was The Ends of the Earth, an anthology series where the Earth was destroyed in a different way each episode. 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. 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. 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. Adams submitted the pilot script on 4 April, and the episode was recorded on 28 June (starring Adams's Footlights' peers Simon Jones and Geoffrey McGivern as Dent and Prefect respectively).