Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams

1952-2001

The entire front page of the London daily tabloid read “Don’t Panic.”  I’d arrived in London just minutes before and was feeling kind of jetlagged but I knew the headline could only mean one thing: Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and many other brilliant bits of satirical humor had died.  Apparently he had collapsed during his workout in Montecito, California of a massive heart attack.  He was only 49.  I was devastated the way others were by the deaths of Michael Jackson or Elvis.

Adams was born in Cambridge, England on March 11, 1952 and moved to Brentwood, Essex five years later after his parents divorced.  He stood out in school simple because he was so tall.  He was admitted to Cambridge in 1971 although his primary motive was to join Footlights, the comedy troupe that had yielded some of the greatest comedians in England.  Through a Footlights Revue, he met Graham Chapman of Monty Python.  The two wrote together on a number of projects including some Monty Python sketches.  Adams even appeared in two episodes of Monty Python’s Flying Circus.

In 1977, Adams wrote a science-fiction comedy radio program for BBC Radio 4 called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (H2G2).  The first six episodes broadcast weekly in March and April of 1978 and was wildly received by its audience.  There was a single Christmas episode made in 1978 and then a second series extended the story another five episodes in 1980.  It tells the story of Arthur Dent who escapes earth with Ford Prefect just before it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass.  Fortunately, Ford, an intergalactic hitchhiker, is carrying The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy which has the words ‘Don’t Panic’ written on its cover in large friendly letters.  Arthur and Ford hitch a ride on a Vogon spaceship where they are tormented by the Vogon captain’s poetry before being jettisoned into space.  The probability of being rescued in space being infinitesimally small, they are nonetheless rescued by the spaceship Heart of Gold, powered by the infinity improbability drive.  And that’s just the first episodes.  Soon, we meet Marvin, the paranoid android, Zephod Beeblebrox, Galactic President and ‘just this guy, you know’ (if you don’t count this two heads and three arms), and Trillian, whom Arthur once met at a party.  This zany plot is spiked with little vignettes from ‘The Book’ about various locations throughout the galaxy where a hapless hitchhiker might find himself and his towel.  One of these tells the tale of Deep Thought, the giant computer built to answer the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.  Throughout the story, Adams satirizes a wide range of earth-bound follies, in particular useless bureaucracy.  H2G2 has had many incarnations including a five book ‘trilogy’, a television program, several stage versions, video games, comic books and a 2005 feature film.

I heard Adams speak in 1983 just before So Long and Thanks for All the Fish was published. He seemed to be tired of the nerdy fandom that was developing around H2G2.  A member of the audience asked why the Restaurant at the End of the Universe was on Magrathea in the Radio Program but on the Frog Star in the book.  Adams sighed and said “because it’s on Magrathea in the Radio Program and on the Frog Star in the book.”  I wasn’t surprised when Adams came out with the brand new, non-H2G2 novel Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency a few years later.  Adams described Dirk Gently as "a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic”.  Dirk Gently and its sequel The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul are much darker and weirder than H2G2 but the sardonic humor is the same.

For another BBC radio series entitled Last Chance to See, Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine travelled the world to find endangered species including the Komodo Dragon in Indonesia, the Mountain Gorilla in Zaire, the Amazonian Manatee in Brazil, and the Aye-Aye in Madagascar.  Years later, when I heard Adams read from the 1990 book of the same title, he said every author has a favorite child – this is his.  He was very proud of the impact of the book and his ongoing work as an endangered species advocate.

Throughout the 80’s and 90’s, Douglas Adams was a fearless champion for the Apple Macintosh computer.  He loved technology and its possibilities.  MacWorld often published his hilarious, thought-provoking articles (e.g. Dongly Things).  He created two cutting-edge computer games Starship Titanic and Bureaucracy with Capcon and pioneered characters that answered questions with real voices.

In the end of movie version of H2G2, the Heart of Gold flashes through a series of improbable forms before disappearing into space.  Pay attention to last image: it’s Douglas – an improbably great writer, comedian, satirist, and human being.  

Question of the Day: What is the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything?