Douglas Adams
Douglas Noël Adams was an English author, humorist, and screenwriter, best known as the creator of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy evolved into a "trilogy" of six books which sold more than 14 million copies in his lifetime. It was adapted into a 1981 television series, several stage plays, comics, a 1984 video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Adams wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff, The Deeper Meaning of Liff and Last Chance to See. He wrote three stories for the television series Doctor Who including the unaired serial Shada and City of Death which he co-wrote with producer Graham Williams, and served as script editor for its 17th season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including his final novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.
Known for his sharp wit and procrastination, Adams called himself a "radical atheist" and was an advocate for environmentalism and conservation. He was a lover of music, fast cars, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh.
Early life and education
Family
Douglas Noël Adams was born in Cambridge on 11 March 1952 to Christopher Douglas Adams, a management consultant and computer salesman who formerly worked as a probation officer, and nurse Janet Dora Sydney Adams. He had Scottish, Irish and German ancestry. His paternal grandfather, born in Glasgow, came from a long line of distinguished doctors.Shortly after his birth, the family moved to the East End of London. His sister Susan was born in March 1955. By the time he was five his parents had divorced; Douglas, Susan and their mother subsequently moved to an RSPCA animal shelter in Brentwood run by his maternal grandparents. Each parent remarried, giving Adams several half-siblings.
Education
Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood. He entered the prep school for Brentwood School in September 1959. Adams felt isolated at school because of his large stature; he was tall by the age of 12, and stopped growing at. His form master Frank Halford had a profound influence on him. Adams was the only student to be awarded 10/10 by Halford for creative writing – something Adams remembered for the rest of his life, particularly when facing writer's block.Some of his earliest writing was published at Brentwood School. His first published work was a brief report on the prep school's photography society in The Brentwoodian in September 1962. His poem "Tramp's Eye View", written when he was twelve years old, is held by the University of Cambridge. In early 1965, he had a surreal short story titled Suspense published in the children's comic Eagle. A poem written by Adams in January 1970 was discovered in a school cupboard in early 2014. He became a boarder at the school in September 1964, and eventually left in December 1970.
On the strength of a religious poetry essay that discussed the Beatles and William Blake, Adams was awarded an exhibition to study English at St John's College, Cambridge, where his father had studied. He entered the university in 1971, hoping to follow in the footsteps of comedy writer-performers like Monty Python. Adams desperately wanted to join Footlights, the invitation-only student comedy club, and was elected to the club in February 1972. However he was disappointed by its aloof culture. He began writing comedy sketches with fellow student Keith Jeffery, but this partnership ended in November 1972. He subsequently wrote and performed in revues with students Will Adams and Martin Smith; their troupe was called "Adams-Smith-Adams". Although Adams-Smith-Adams' written material featured prominently in Footlights' 1974 May Week Revue, Douglas was gutted when he was not cast on the basis that his performing abilities were not strong enough. He graduated in 1974 with a 2:2 in English literature. Many of Adams's Cambridge peers played important roles in his career, such as Jon Canter, John Lloyd, Mary Allen and Simon Jones. Adams took a series of odd jobs during his time at Cambridge, which included working as a hospital porter and a chicken-shed cleaner.
Career
Adams moved back to London after leaving university, determined to break into TV and radio as a writer. The Adams-Smith-Adams trio continued working together until late 1975. The BBC occasionally accepted sketches from Adams, but his writing style was unsuited to the current style of radio and TV comedy. To make ends meet he took a job as a bodyguard for a wealthy Arab family, which involved long night shifts guarding their hotel rooms. In 1976 he directed Footlights' May Week Revue, A Kick in the Stalls. In August 1976, his career had a brief improvement when he co-wrote and performed Unpleasantness at Brodie's Close at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with John Lloyd, David Renwick and Andrew Marshall. By the end of the year, Adams's career again stalled and he moved in with his family in Dorset.Adams and Lloyd unsuccessfully developed various comedy projects, such as The Swasivious Zebu, Knight and Day and a Guiness Books of Records film. The latter project, which involved aliens competing with humans in an intergalactic sporting event, was cancelled due to there being "no market for science fiction films". Adams and Lloyd also pitched Sno 7 and the White Dwarfs, a radio sitcom about two astrophysicists trapped in a Mt Everest observatory, but were told by the BBC that science fiction was "too 1950s". Adams's first professional solo work was a sketch for the radio comedy series The Burkiss Way, broadcast in early 1977. Around the same time he wrote for The News Huddlines.Shortly before being commissioned to write the pilot episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Adams was considering leaving the industry out of frustration and moving to Hong Kong. He got a job as a BBC radio producer in May 1978 "for the money", and worked on satirical programme Week Ending, documentary Here's More Egg on Your Face and panel show The News Quiz. He produced only one original project, a pantomime version of Cinderella titled Black Cinderella Two Goes East. He left the position in October 1978 to become script editor for Doctor Who season 17. Adams and Lloyd wrote two 1979 episodes of the animated children's show Doctor Snuggles, "The Remarkable Fidgety River" and "The Great Disappearing Mystery". The pair also co-wrote the mock dictionary books The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff. On his death in 2001, Adams was on a long break from writing books.
Adams struggled with writing and usually did not find pleasure from it. He often suffered from low confidence and writer's block, and was infamous for his procrastination. Weeks before his manuscript for So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish was due, he had only written 25 pages. He was locked in a hotel suite with Sonny Mehta who kept an eye on him until the manuscript was completed. The 1997 tie-in novel to Adams's video game Starship Titanic was ultimately written by Terry Jones because Adams kept putting it off. On Quote... Unquote, Adams suggested his own epitaph: "He finally met his deadline."
''Monty Python'' and Graham Chapman
Once he had established himself in Footlights, Adams quickly sought out his idol John Cleese of Monty Python, interviewing him for the student newspaper Varsity in November 1972. Adams was inspired by Cleese's work on The Frost Report and Cleese's similarly tall stature. He later admitted "I wanted to be John Cleese and it took me some time to realise that the job was taken". Cleese quit Monty Python's Flying Circus in early 1974, leaving his writing partner Graham Chapman to search for a new collaborator. Chapman met Adams in July 1974 at the West End opening night party of Chox. The two formed a writing partnership, earning Adams a writing credit in Monty Python's fourth series for a sketch called "Patient Abuse". Adams also contributed to the "Marilyn Monroe" sketch that appeared on The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Adams later stated that his contributions were "hardly worth mentioning" and that he had written "about half a dozen lines that appeared here and there in Python". Nevertheless, he is one of only two non-Python members to receive a writing credit on the television series.Adams had two brief appearances in Monty Python's fourth series. At the beginning of episode 42, "The Light Entertainment War", Adams is in a surgeon's mask pulling on gloves. At the beginning of episode 43, "Mr. Neutron", Adams is dressed in a pepper-pot outfit and loads a missile onto a cart driven by Terry Jones, who is calling for scrap metal. Jones was the Python member with whom Adams formed the closest friendship.Adams and Chapman co-wrote a 1974 comedy science fiction script as a vehicle for Ringo Starr, which was rejected by all major American TV networks. Adams, Chapman and Bernard McKenna co-wrote a 1976 television pilot titled Out of the Trees. The pilot did not go to series. Adams was disappointed by the production, stating it "actually had some very good material in it, but just didn't hang together properly". Adams and Chapman also wrote the episode "For Your Own Good" for the sitcom Doctor on the Go. By the time the episode aired in February 1977, Adams had ended their partnership as Chapman's heavy drinking made him difficult to work with. The two men also "virtually came to blows" over Adams's assistance in writing Chapman's autobiography. Adams expected his Monty Python work to be his big break, but was disappointed that he had "nothing to show for it except a large overdraft and not much achieved". He subsequently "went through a total crisis of confidence".