A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002. Adams was an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, a lover of fast cars, technological innovation and the Apple Macintosh, and a self-proclaimed "radical atheist". ==Early life== Adams was born on 11 March 1952 to Janet (née Donovan; 1927–2016) and Christopher Douglas Adams (1927–1985) in Cambridge.
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, screenwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist.
A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002. Adams was an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, a lover of fast cars, technological innovation and the Apple Macintosh, and a self-proclaimed "radical atheist". ==Early life== Adams was born on 11 March 1952 to Janet (née Donovan; 1927–2016) and Christopher Douglas Adams (1927–1985) in Cambridge.
His parents divorced in 1957; Douglas, Susan, and their mother moved then to an RSPCA animal shelter in Brentwood, Essex, run by his maternal grandparents. ===Education=== Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood.
He attended the prep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970.
He also studied piano in the 1960s.
He became the only student ever to be awarded a ten out of ten by Halford for creative writing — something he remembered for the rest of his life, particularly when facing writer's block. Some of his earliest writing was published at the school, such as a report on its photography club in The Brentwoodian in 1962, or spoof reviews in the school magazine Broadsheet, edited by Paul Neil Milne Johnstone, who later became a character in The Hitchhiker's Guide.
He attended the prep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970.
After the book tour, Adams set off on his round-the-world excursion which supplied him with the material for Last Chance to See. ===Music=== Adams played the guitar left-handed and had a collection of twenty-four left-handed guitars when he died (having received his first guitar in 1964).
He also designed the cover of one issue of the Broadsheet, and had a letter and short story published in The Eagle, the boys' comic, in 1965.
He attended the prep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970.
A poem entitled "A Dissertation on the task of writing a poem on a candle and an account of some of the difficulties thereto pertaining" written by Adams in January 1970 at the age of 17, was discovered in a cupboard at the school in early 2014. On the strength of an essay on religious poetry that discussed the Beatles and William Blake, he was awarded an Exhibition in English at St John's College, Cambridge, going up in 1971.
A poem entitled "A Dissertation on the task of writing a poem on a candle and an account of some of the difficulties thereto pertaining" written by Adams in January 1970 at the age of 17, was discovered in a cupboard at the school in early 2014. On the strength of an essay on religious poetry that discussed the Beatles and William Blake, he was awarded an Exhibition in English at St John's College, Cambridge, going up in 1971.
He became a member of the Footlights by 1973.
Despite doing very little work — he recalled having completed three essays in three years — he graduated in 1974 with a 2:2 in English literature. ==Career== ===Writing=== After leaving university Adams moved back to London, determined to break into TV and radio as a writer.
An edited version of the Footlights Revue appeared on BBC2 television in 1974.
The two episodes were broadcast in November 1974.
In 1976 his career had a brief improvement when he wrote and performed Unpleasantness at Brodie's Close at the Edinburgh Fringe festival.
You can't fix the weather – you just have to get on with it". Some of Adams's early radio work included sketches for The Burkiss Way in 1977 and The News Huddlines.
He also wrote, again with Chapman, 20 February 1977 episode of Doctor on the Go, a sequel to the Doctor in the House television comedy series.
An omnibus edition of this version was broadcast on the digital radio station BBC7 on 10 December 2005. In the Doctor Who 2012 Christmas episode "The Snowmen", writer Steven Moffat was inspired by a storyline that Adams pitched called The Doctor Retires. ====The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy==== The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977.
Adams was author of 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 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and in 2005 a feature film.
John Lloyd was also co-author of two episodes from the original Hitchhiker radio series ("Fit the Fifth" and "Fit the Sixth", also known as "Episode Five" and "Episode Six"), as well as The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff. ====Work on Doctor Who==== Adams sent the script for the HHGG pilot radio programme to the Doctor Who production office in 1978, and was commissioned to write The Pirate Planet.
The TV series was based on the first six radio episodes, and sections contributed by Lloyd were largely re-written. BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first radio series weekly in the UK starting 8 March 1978, lasting until April.
He wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death, and served as script editor for its seventeenth season in 1979.
He left after six months to become the script editor for Doctor Who. In 1979, Adams and John Lloyd wrote scripts for two half-hour episodes of Doctor Snuggles: "The Remarkable Fidgety River" and "The Great Disappearing Mystery" (episodes eight and twelve).
Adams then went on to serve as script editor on the show for its seventeenth season in 1979.
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992. The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994.
A second series of five episodes was broadcast one per night, during the week of 21–25 January 1980. While working on the radio series (and with simultaneous projects such as The Pirate Planet) Adams developed problems keeping to writing deadlines that got worse as he published novels.
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992. The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994.
This latter edition featured a 42 Puzzle designed by Adams, which was later incorporated into paperback covers of the first four Hitchhiker's novels (the paperback for the fifth re-used the artwork from the hardback edition). In 1980, Adams began attempts to turn the first Hitchhiker's novel into a film, making several trips to Los Angeles, and working with Hollywood studios and potential producers.
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992. The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994.
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992. The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994.
Gilmour also performed at Adams's memorial service in 2001, and what would have been Adams's 60th birthday party in 2012. ===Computer games and projects=== Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984.
The last episode in the last series (with a new, "more upbeat" ending) concluded with, "The very final episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is affectionately dedicated to its author." ====Dirk Gently series==== Between Adams's first trip to Madagascar with Mark Carwardine in 1985, and their series of travels that formed the basis for the radio series and non-fiction book Last Chance to See, Adams wrote two other novels with a new cast of characters.
In 1986 he participated in a week-long brainstorming session with the Lucasfilm Games team for the game Labyrinth.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was published in 1987, and was described by its author as "a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics".
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992. The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994.
The screenplay got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick, and the resulting film was released in 2005. Radio producer Dirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in the Hitchhiker's series.
I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992. The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994.
Adams was friends with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and, on Adams's 42nd birthday, he was invited to make a guest appearance at Pink Floyd's concert of 28 October 1994 at Earls Court in London, playing guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse".
Adams chose the name for Pink Floyd's 1994 album, The Division Bell, by picking the words from the lyrics to one of its tracks, "High Hopes".
The screenplay got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick, and the resulting film was released in 2005. Radio producer Dirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in the Hitchhiker's series.
When he died in 2001 in California, he had been trying again to get the film project started with Disney, which had bought the rights in 1998.
Later he was also involved in creating Bureaucracy as a parody of events in his own life. Adams was a founder-director and Chief Fantasist of The Digital Village, a digital media and Internet company with which he created Starship Titanic, a Codie award-winning and BAFTA-nominated adventure game, which was published in 1998 by Simon & Schuster.
In April 1999, Adams initiated the
The screenplay got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick, and the resulting film was released in 2005. Radio producer Dirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in the Hitchhiker's series.
Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English author, screenwriter, essayist, humorist, satirist and dramatist.
When he died in 2001 in California, he had been trying again to get the film project started with Disney, which had bought the rights in 1998.
Gilmour also performed at Adams's memorial service in 2001, and what would have been Adams's 60th birthday party in 2012. ===Computer games and projects=== Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984.
A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002. Adams was an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, a lover of fast cars, technological innovation and the Apple Macintosh, and a self-proclaimed "radical atheist". ==Early life== Adams was born on 11 March 1952 to Janet (née Donovan; 1927–2016) and Christopher Douglas Adams (1927–1985) in Cambridge.
Accompanied by partially animated illustrations, it was webcast on the BBC website in 2003, and subsequently released as a two-CD set later that year.
The third series, The Tertiary Phase, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2004 and was subsequently released on audio CD.
Adams was author of 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 15 million copies in his lifetime and generated a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and in 2005 a feature film.
An omnibus edition of this version was broadcast on the digital radio station BBC7 on 10 December 2005. In the Doctor Who 2012 Christmas episode "The Snowmen", writer Steven Moffat was inspired by a storyline that Adams pitched called The Doctor Retires. ====The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy==== The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977.
The screenplay got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick, and the resulting film was released in 2005. Radio producer Dirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in the Hitchhiker's series.
So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and Mostly Harmless made up the fourth and fifth radio series, respectively (on radio they were titled The Quandary Phase and The Quintessential Phase) and these were broadcast in May and June 2005, and also subsequently released on Audio CD.
Shada was later adapted as a novel by Gareth Roberts in 2012 and City of Death and The Pirate Planet by James Goss in 2015 and 2017 respectively. Elements of Shada and City of Death were reused in Adams's later novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular, the character of Professor Chronotis.
An omnibus edition of this version was broadcast on the digital radio station BBC7 on 10 December 2005. In the Doctor Who 2012 Christmas episode "The Snowmen", writer Steven Moffat was inspired by a storyline that Adams pitched called The Doctor Retires. ====The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy==== The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977.
Gilmour also performed at Adams's memorial service in 2001, and what would have been Adams's 60th birthday party in 2012. ===Computer games and projects=== Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984.
A poem entitled "A Dissertation on the task of writing a poem on a candle and an account of some of the difficulties thereto pertaining" written by Adams in January 1970 at the age of 17, was discovered in a cupboard at the school in early 2014. On the strength of an essay on religious poetry that discussed the Beatles and William Blake, he was awarded an Exhibition in English at St John's College, Cambridge, going up in 1971.
Shada was later adapted as a novel by Gareth Roberts in 2012 and City of Death and The Pirate Planet by James Goss in 2015 and 2017 respectively. Elements of Shada and City of Death were reused in Adams's later novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular, the character of Professor Chronotis.
Shada was later adapted as a novel by Gareth Roberts in 2012 and City of Death and The Pirate Planet by James Goss in 2015 and 2017 respectively. Elements of Shada and City of Death were reused in Adams's later novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular, the character of Professor Chronotis.
It was transmitted under the pseudonym "David Agnew") Shada (only partially filmed; not televised due to industry disputes, but was later completed using animation for the unfinished scenes and broadcast as "Doctor Who: The Lost Episode" on BBC America 19 July 2018) The episodes authored by Adams are some of the few that were not novelised, as Adams would not allow anyone else to write them and asked for a higher price than the publishers were willing to pay.
All text is taken from Wikipedia. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License .
Page generated on 2021-08-05