- Adams, Douglas Noel
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▪ 2002British novelist (b. March 11, 1952, Cambridge, Eng.—d. May 11, 2001, Santa Barbara, Calif.), was the creator of the satiric science-fiction whimsy The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which first saw life as a radio series and then became a book, a television series, a play, record albums, comic books, and a computer game, gaining cult status along the way. The book and its sequels feature British suburbanite Arthur Dent, who—after being rescued by Ford Prefect, a visitor from the planet Betelgeuse, just before Earth is destroyed to clear the way for a hyperspace freeway—encounters such characters as the two-headed alien Zaphod Beeblebrox and learns that the secret of the universe is the number 42. More than 14 million copies of the books were sold worldwide. Adams was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, earning an M.A. in English literature in 1974. At Cambridge he wrote comedy sketches for the Footlights revue, and following graduation he occasionally worked on writing projects while making his living at a series of odd jobs, including serving as a bodyguard for the Qatari royal family. From 1978 to 1980 Adams wrote scripts for the BBC and worked as a script editor for the Dr. Who TV series. In 1978 The Hitchhiker's Guide, the culmination of an idea he had had while hitchhiking in Europe in 1971, began on BBC radio. It quickly gained a huge following, and a stage version was produced in 1979. Adams turned it into a novel that same year, and it became a TV series in 1981. The first book was joined by four sequels—The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1985), and Mostly Harmless (1992)—to become what Adams called his five-part trilogy. Adams also wrote such books as The Meaning of Liff (with John Lloyd; 1983) and two detective-story satires—Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988)—as well as the nonfiction Last Chance to See (with Mark Carwardine; 1990), which reflected his interest in ecology and his concerns about endangered species. He also formed (1996) a multimedia company, the Digital Village, and shortly before his death finished writing the script for a Hollywood film version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The day before Adams died, his main character achieved immortality when asteroid 18610 was named Arthurdent.
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Universalium. 2010.