Douglas Adams is a British writer and screenwriter, creator of the fantastic Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. In 2005, the first novel of this series was filmed in Hollywood. Such famous actors as John Malkovich, Martin Freeman, Sam Rockwell, etc. took part in the film adaptation.
Childhood and adolescence
Douglas Adams was born in March 1952 in Cambridge, England. When he was still very young, his parents divorced. After that, the mother, along with Douglas and his younger sister Susan, settled in the city of Brentwood in Essex.
Already at school, Douglas began to get involved in literature. He received good grades for his essays and published his stories in the school magazine.
In 1970, after graduating from school, the young man went on a hitchhiking trip to Turkey. Douglas had no money, and sometimes he even had to spend the night right in an open field, under the open sky. There is evidence that it was on this trip that Adams got the idea for his most famous novel.
In 1971, Douglas entered St John's College, Cambridge. Three years later, he graduated from this institution with the status of a Bachelor of English Literature.
Then Douglas started writing scripts for TV shows and sketches. Among other things, he has collaborated with the popular comedian group Monty Python. However, at first, this activity did not bring prosperity, the guy could not even rent his own apartment and huddled in the same house with his mother.
Radio show "Hitchhiking around the Galaxy"
In 1976, Adams came up with the idea of putting his own fantastic comedy show on radio, but he could not convince the producers to invest in this project. The author was able to get support only from the BBC radio producer Simon Brett.
Douglas called the production “Hitchhiking in the Galaxy”. Its first episode aired on March 8, 1978, at 10:30 pm. Although few believed in this, the broadcast generated great interest among radio listeners and received good reviews.
One of the features of the production was the use of stereo sound (then it was an innovation). And in general, it was on sound effects that a significant part of the funds allocated for the transmission was spent. Adams said that he wanted to ensure that the sound quality was not inferior to the quality of the best rock records of those years.
The release of the first novel
Soon, Adams received an offer from a reputable publishing house with a request to rework the radio show into a literary work. Adams responded to this request, and in 1979 the book “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” appeared in stores (literally this name can be translated into Russian as “Guide for hitchhikers in the Galaxy”). In the first three months after publication, the novel sold 250,000 copies. Some time later, Adams received the prestigious Golden Pan award, which is awarded to literary men for a million books sold. Interestingly, Adams was only 26 years old at the time.
The protagonist of "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is an ordinary man Arthur Dent and his friend Ford Prefect, who leave Earth a moment before it is destroyed by the Vogons - strange green-skinned aliens. Then Arthur and Ford are picked up by a certain starship, and they begin their fascinating journey across the vast expanses of space.
The novel really has many merits: an interesting non-trivial plot, vivid characters, subtle English humor … And it is not at all surprising that many fragments from this work were diverted into quotations.
But the novel was filmed only twenty-six years after its release, in 2005. It was screened by the Hollywood film company Touchstone Pictures, and the budget of the film was $ 50 million.
It is also worth noting that at the beginning of the 2000s, the fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy established a special holiday - Towel Day (celebrated annually on May 25). Why does the holiday have such a name? The fact is that in the novel, almost an entire chapter is devoted to towels and their meaning for earthly and intergalactic hitchhikers.
Further creativity
In 1980, the author published the second book of the cycle - "Restaurant at the End of the Universe", which described the further wanderings of Arthur and his companions.
The next novel of the cycle - "Life, Universe and Everything else" appeared in 1982. Around the same period, Adams' works were included in the bestseller list of The New York Times. And it was not at all an ordinary event. The British writer in the States has not achieved such recognition since the days of Ian Fleming, the author of stories about MI6 agent James Bond.
Two years later, in 1984, the fourth book from the series was published - "Good day, and thanks for the fish!"
It is also known that in the eighties, Adams became very interested in computer technology. At some point, he even accepted an offer from Infocom to develop a PC game based on his "galactic cycle". This game went on sale in 1984 and later even received a special award from Thames TV. This cooperation between Adams and Infocom did not end there. A little later, he created another exciting interactive fiction game - Bureaucracy.
In addition, in the eighties, Adams created several works that were not related to fiction. In 1984, he co-wrote the Meaning of Liff with producer John Lloyd. In 1987, Detective Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was published. In 1988, he had a sequel - the novel "The Long Tea Party".
Then the book "Meaning of Liff" was continued. Douglas's new vocabulary was called The Deeper Meaning of Liff. By the way, it was also co-written - this time with Greg Chapman, one of the members of the Monty Python team.
In 1992, the author published the fifth work of his fantastic cycle. It got the name "Mostly harmless".
Personal life facts
There is information about two women with whom the writer had affairs. One of them is the writer Sally Emerson. The romance between them broke out in the early eighties. For the sake of Douglas, the woman at that moment left her husband, Peter Stothard, the editor of the weekly newspaper The Times (interestingly, Peter and Adams went to the same school when they were children).
Alas, the lovers did not live together for long. Sally soon returned back to Stothard.
Then the friends introduced the humorist writer to the lawyer Jane Belson. This relationship was pretty turbulent. Between Douglas and Jane there were scandals, and partings, and even a break in the engagement.
But in the end, they still became husband and wife - it happened on November 25, 1991. And in the summer of 1994, the couple had a daughter, Polly Jane Adams. Five years later, in 1999, the family moved from Great Britain to the United States, to the famous, thanks to the series of the same name, the Californian town of Santa Barbara.
Last years and death
In 1998, the writer became the founder of The Digital Villiage, which released the Starship Titanic computer quest in the same year. The literary basis for this game was developed directly by Adams.
After that, the writer worked on a new novel about the detective Dirk Gently (he eventually received the title "Salmon of Doubt"), as well as on the script for the feature film "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy". But he was not destined to see the film itself.
The death of the writer came unexpectedly - he passed away on May 11, 2001 at his home in California. The official cause of death is heart attack. Douglas Adams was buried in London at Highgate Cemetery.
