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Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge on 11 March 1952. "I was the only kid who anybody I knew has ever seen actually walk into a lamppost with his eyes wide open. Everybody assumed that there must be something going on inside, because there sure as hell wasn't anything going on on the outside!"
He was educated at Brentwood School, Essex and St John's College, Cambridge where, in 1974 he gained a BA (and later an MA) in English Literature. His first published work was a short story in Eagle comic, age 11. He started writing and performing seriously at Cambridge, and his early work led on from material written for Footlights 'smokers'. Some of his early work featured on Weekending, and The Burkiss Way. He also collaborated with Graham Chapman (from Monty Python) and produced a Radio 4 christmas pantomime. He moved from radio to become script editor of Doctor Who, also writing several stories for the Tom Baker incarnation of the Doctor. He would work with Tom again in 1990 for the documentary Hyperland. Whilst writing for Doctor Who, the The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was comissioned, originally appearing as a Radio 4 series in March 1978. Since then it has been transformed into a series of best-selling novels, a television series, records, cassettes and CDs, a computer game and several stage adaptations. It is | currently under development as a major motion picture with Disney.
Douglas Adams' other publications include the Dirk Gently books, and The Meaning of Liff, written with John Lloyd. He teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine in 1990 and wrote Last Chance to See - an account of their world-wide search for rare and endangered species of animals. In 1991 he married Jane Elizabeth Belson and leaves a daughter, Polly Jane Rocket. In a long and varied career Douglas also worked as a chicken shed cleaner, a bodyguard for an Arab royal family, and even appeared as a guitarist for Pink Floyd. His moment of rock glory was a birthday present from Dave Gilmour. Douglas was a founder-director and Chief Fantasist of The Digital Village, a digital media and Internet company with which he created the 1998 CD-ROM Starship Titanic, a Codie Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated adventure game. The Digital Village built the online guide h2g2, inspired by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally launched in 1999, it found a new home at BBC Online in 2001. Sadly, Douglas Adams died suddenly of a heart attack on May 11th, 2001. The Minor Planet Centre space agency has named an asteroid Arthurdent, coincidentally announcing its plan the day Adams died. |
