Douglas Adams. March 11, 1952-May 11, 2001

On Friday May 11, 2001 we lost the greatest sci-fi comedy writer to ever come out of Cambridge, England. Yes, Douglas Adams, author of The Hitchhiker Trilogy, has gone to find the real meaning of life. And that is generally considered to be a big mistake. After being born, Douglas grew up…and that took quite a while. At least 18-49 years, in fact. He traveled a bit, and ended up going on a hitchhiking trip in 1971 with only his borrowed copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Europe to his name. Sort of. It was “borrowed” from a book store. Somewhere in Innsbruck he went flat on his back in a field, looked up into the stars and, in a drunken and poor stupor, thought, “Wouldn’t it be great if someone wrote a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the galaxy?”

By the end of the decade he would pay the bookstore back by selling more copies of his own book than the publisher’s of the original ever dreamed possible.

This is the period of his life when he worked with Graham Chapman of Monty Python, John Lloyd of “Black Adder” and “Spitting Image,” and the rather imaginatively named Adams-Smith-Adams. But none of that really panned out. Not a sausage. Only one of the Adams-Chapman shows ever saw the light of day…but it was more of the dead of night because that’s when BBC decided to play it. It looked as if the 24 year old Douglas Adams was going to be obscure for the rest of his life.

Simon Brett would change all of that. In 1976 Simon was the producer of “The Burkiss Way,” a popular Radio 4 comedy. He met Douglas through John and decided that he wanted to do a sci-fi comedy radio program. So that’s when Douglas went back to his old idea of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Originally, though, it was going to be called The Ends Of The Earth and was going to be about the earth being destroyed for different reasons in every one of the six episodes. There was also a character whose house was being destroyed for the same reason.

But Doug went back to the Hitchhiker’s Guide idea. He wrote the pilot, recorded it and waited for the time and permission to make more.

And he waited.

And he waited some more.

And, just to be different, he waited some more.

Finally, in August of 1977 word was handed down, the show was a go.

The pilot was finally made and was a big hit. It stretched the boundaries of comic radio of the time. Doug ended up working on “Dr. Who” as a script editor (not knowing that that position apparently had to come up with every story on the show) and also worked on the “Radio 4 Christmas Pantomime,” “Black Cinderella II Goes East” (it went nowhere), wrote the book version of his Hitchhiker’s Guide, a theatrical version of the story and the second radio series.

Then he quit “Dr. Who.” Who wouldn’t?

Even with quitting his formal job, the first book was late…as was pretty much everything else. He once said, “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.” Yep. Pretty much sums it up.

But the book was written and was finally published in October of 1979, the same day that the album came out. Hipgnosis, creators of album covers by Pink Floyd, Genesis and pretty much any 70s rock icons you can think of, created the cover. Sales went through the roof.

So that’s how the whole thing started. There were more radio series, more books, a video game or two and an internet venture.

It’s his books that I know best. In 1980 he released The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe, sometimes considered the best of the Trilogy. Then, in 1982 there was Life, The Universe And Everything, which was not quite as good as the first two, but still pretty damn good. After that he surprised everyone by writing a fourth book for the Trilogy. So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish came in 1984 and is my personal least favorite. Still not bad, though.

He put the Trilogy down for a while and, in 1987 went on to a sci-fi murder mystery with a difference, Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. The next year he wrote the sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul. It had everything: time travel, murder, baggage claim.

Then, eight years after the last Hitchhiker’s book, for variety, he wrote another one, this time giving up on the long titles that people hated to say, he gave us Mostly Harmless. (This is when I actually got to meet him! It was an extremely short visit that consisted of three words: “Hi,” another “Hi” and “Thanks” as he signed my copy of the book and motioned for the next person in line. Starstruck teenagers don’t say much.)

That same year Doug took up a cause. He visited the rain forest and realized how damaged it really was. In response he wrote, with Mark Carwardine, Last Chance To See, a humorist’s look at the destruction of animal and plant life.

Douglas took a genre of sci-fi and bent it to his own needs. In doing so he found a way to make it entertaining in a way that no one else ever has. His absurdist storylines make absolutely no sense, and yet they make all the sense in the world. His cast of characters are among the most widely recognized in the sci-fi world: Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Trillian, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Slartibartfast, the Triple-Breasted Whore.

In 1997 he worked with his friend Terry Jones of Monty Python to create a new world, the world of the Starship Titanic. The computer game was the first of it’s kind, one where you could talk to different characters and get a different answer out of them every time. Almost like artificial intelligence. It responded to pop culture cues among other things. The book, which was only an introduction to the game, was very funny in a way that only a collaboration between Adams and a member of Python could be.

Before Douglas died he was working on the script of the Hitchhiker’s Guide movie (he’s the only one I would trust with it) and a real-world internet version of the Guide. (Check it out at www.h2g2.com.) He was very excited by the prospects of everyone in the world being able to contribute to the biggest encyclopedia in the known universe. And, with handheld wireless technology, his dream from 1971 has now come true. We can hold all of the knowledge in the world in the palms of our hands.

Douglas Adams was a creative genius who had only begun to show us where his mind could go. Now he has been taken from us, but his work will make us laugh and think hopefully for the rest of this measly planet’s lifetime.

I may seem to be making light of things in this tribute, but it’s only because I think that that’s the way he would want it. The news of his death shocked and saddened me more than any entertainment news since Phil Hartman died. It damn near ruined my day. He is one of my favorite authors of all time and it’s hard to believe that there will never be another book. Not that he was a very fast writer, but it was always nice to have the possibility.

So long, Douglas, and thanks for all the laughs.

If you don’t have his books, BUY THEM NOW!!!

The Hitchhiker’s Trilogy:

The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide–The best way to get all five books and a short story. Everything you ever wanted to know about the greatest misnamed trilogy ever.

Dirk Gently:

Misc. stuff: