Science fiction author, humorist and environmentalist.
Born Cambridge, England, March 11, 1952. Died Santa Barbara,
California, May 11, 2001, aged 49.
The late Douglas Adams credited his wife for saying that
"time immemorial" began in 1189. If something
was true then, it's been true since time immemorial.
Douglas Adams could almost have been "the science
fiction writer for those who hate science fiction".
His space parodies could not be further removed from the
"serious" science fiction epitomised by scribes
like Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke. Nonetheless, Adams's
inventive wit was somehow able to please both sci-fi sceptics
and hard-nosed fans.
Take his most prominent work, "The Hitch-Hikers' Guide
the Galaxy", which suggested that the meaning of life
was "42" -- leading to many theories about the
spiritual significance of that number. Adams, however, claimed
that it meant nothing -- and that "Guide", for
all its satire and intellectual brilliance, had no great
depth. Merely the ability to make people laugh.
Adams hatched the idea while backpacking through Austria
in 1971, with a European hitch-hikers' guide. "At one
point I found myself lying in the middle of a field, a little
bit drunk, when it occurred to me that somebody should write
a Hitch-hiker's guide to the galaxy," he recalled.
"It didn't occur to me that it might actually be me."
After writing revues at Cambridge University, he worked
for BBC Radio 4's satirical program "WeekEnding".
However, uncomfortable with the caustic "WeekEnding"
style, he was encouraged by producer Simon Brett to find
his own voice.
The result was the first "Guide" series in 1978,
which begins as the Earth is demolished to make way for
an interstellar bypass, and continues with the adventures
of two survivors, armed with the all-knowing Guide (a handy
e-book).
Produced for Radio 4, the series led to a prime job (at
age 27) as script editor for the long-running series "Doctor
Who", which had recently been criticised for its violence
and horror content. (Though known as a children's show,
60 percent of its viewers were adults.) Working with producer
Graham Williams, he took the show into another, more comical
direction, focusing on Tom Baker's goofy lead performance.
Adams also wrote a few episodes. "City of Death"
(co-written with Williams) featured Scaroth, an alien stranded
on Earth, who orders Leonardo to paint several extra Mona
Lisas in 1505, then sells them 500 years later to finance
a time machine. The concept was pure Adams. Its final episode
remains the single highest-rated episode in the 25-year
history of "Doctor Who". Many years later, fans
voted "City of Death" among the 10 best stories.
As "Guide" was winning a cult following through
its reruns, a stage version was launched in 1979. Later,
Adams' novelisation would sell 14 million copies, becoming
Britain's best-selling science fiction novel of both 1980
and 1981. In December 1982, he had three books in the New
York Times bestseller list. Strangely, this was followed
by years of writer's block and missed deadlines. "He
once told me how he had come to find it very hard to write,"
said Monty Python's Terry Jones (a close friend), "because
he couldn't deal with the fact that each word was worth
so much money."
Most Australians became aware of the Guide through a 1981
television version, with its clever (if low-budget) visual
effects. By then, many of its more famous aspects (Vogan
poetry, the Babel fish, the catchphrase "Don't Panic!")
were already part of the culture, and Adams had written
two sequels. By 1992, the "inaccurately named trilogy"
had grown to five books.
If these books had any major subtext, it was an environmental
one, revealing Adams' idealism. Of all his writings, his
favourite was the non-fiction book "Last Chance to
See" (1990), co-written by zoologist Mark Carwardine,
about the worldwide search for rare and endangered fauna.
Perhaps ironically, the anti-science fiction writer had
developed a passionate interest in science. On his last
Australian visit in 1999, he was a guest of the Australian
Science Festival, discussing the plight of endangered species
with enthusiasm.
His scientific interest was also focused in technology.
He was one of the first to embrace the internet, which he
saw as "a chance to change the way people thought and
advanced," said comedian Stephen Fry. (According to
Fry, Adams regarded the dotcom boom with "tolerant
scepticism".) Adams also founded a multimedia company,
The Digital Village, best-known for the CD-Rom adventure
game "Starship Titanic" and a multimedia game
version of "Guide".
Adams felt that his true writing talent lay in screenplays,
an ambition that had been delayed by his unforeseen success
as a novelist. In 1998, he signed a deal with Disney to
write a big-screen version of "Guide" -- which,
he insisted, gave him adequate creative control. He completed
the script soon before his death.
In the final analysis, it seems that, like Asimov and Clarke,
part of Adams' vision actually came true. "I really
didn't foresee the Internet," he recently said. "But
then, neither did the computer industry." Not that
that tells us very much ... The computer industry didn't
even foresee that the century was going to end."
Adams is survived by his wife, lawyer Jane Belson, and
their six-year-old daughter, Polly.
