Douglas Adams - Mostly Harmless
Douglas Adams was an English author and humourist, best known for the BBC radio comedy series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which first aired in 1978, and introduced listeners to the awful possibility that any advanced galactic civilisation would be just as absurd and incompetent as late twentieth century Britain.
Adams was born in 1952. His parents divorced when he was small and he grew up in Brentwood in Essex. At primary school he won a scholarship to public school, and from there went to study at Cambridge University where he wrote comedy sketches for the Cambridge Footlights. Following university, he did a succession of odd jobs, whilst writing scripts and sketches that failed to find an audience. At this time, his stalled writing career saw him move back home with his mother.
In 1977, Adams and radio producer Simon Brett pitched a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series to BBC Radio 4. Adams came up with an outline for a pilot episode for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy as well as a few other stories that could be used in the series.
According to Adams, the idea for the title occurred to him while he lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, gazing at the stars. He was carrying a copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe, and it occurred to him that "somebody ought to write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".
The series follows the misadventures of ordinary Earthman Arthur Dent and his unexpectedly alien best friend Ford Prefect after they escape from the demolition of planet Earth (to make way for a hyperspace bypass). Whilst hitching around the cosmos, they are helped, or possibly hindered, by their digital guide book - the voice of which at times acts as narrator.
Assuming that the series would be a one-off, Douglas Adams ended the adventure with his protagonists stuck for good on prehistoric Earth - which caused problems for him when the BBC re-commissioned the series after its enormous success. The following radio series ended on a cliff-hanger. Naturally, the BBC failed to commission a third series.
Adams then became a writer and script editor for the television series Doctor Who. He also adapted his radio plays - with many changes - into several novels. Other books that followed included the Dirk Gently detective series and the non-fiction book Last Chance to See, with naturalist Mark Carwardine, about species on the brink of extinction.
Douglas Adams sold more than fifteen million books in Britain, the United States and Australia and was a best seller in many languages including German and Swedish.
He died at the age of 49 from a heart attack in California, where he was working on the script of a Hollywood film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
* a classic phrase in the Hitchhiker's universe - being the entire entry for Planet Earth in the Guide after roving reporter Ford Prefect was able to send through updated information.
Further reading
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