Douglas Adams

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. He gained work as a writer on 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.