But The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , in all its many and varied manifestations, is not the limit of Douglas Adams' wit, creativity, and compassion. True fans know and love the episodes he wrote for the British sci-fi show Dr. Who, starring Tom Baker as the fourth doctor. He also created Dirk Gently, protagonist of several genre-defying detective novels.
There have been numerous adaptations of the franchise since then, including a television series in and a feature film in , starring future-Hobbit Martin Freeman as reluctant hitchhiker Arthur Dent. There's also been a comic book series published under DC Comics, a video game in , a continuation of the radio series and a stage show.
The novel series was given one final outing in under author Eoin Colfer. Adams died of a heart attack in at the age of 49, leaving the third entry to his Dirk Gently series unfinished. A year after his death, this unfinished draft was collected along with some of his other unpublished writings into a book, The Salmon of Doubt.
It's a cracking read so definitely take a look if you enjoyed Hitchhiker's Guide or Adams' other work. He had one daughter, Polly Jane Rocket Adams. He claimed to have had the initial idea for his most famous work, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy , while lying drunk in a field holding a copy of The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. He was working on having a film of it produced at the time of his death. He died of an apparent heart attack on 11 May ; collapsed while working out in a gym.
He was left-handed and had a large collection of left-handed guitars. He helped Keith Allen with his piano lessons. He was a big fan of the progressive rock band Pink Floyd and a friend of the guitarist David Gilmour. He was also huge fan of The Beatles and referenced them constantly in his work. He stated once that he always found it difficult to write for female characters.
The instant messaging software Trillian is named after the lead female character in "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Prior to his death, Adams had begun work with Dirk Maggs on adapting books of the "trilogy" for radio. Maggs has taken on the mantle of finishing the writing based on Adams' extensive notes and directing the episodes.
Phase 4 "Quandary" began airing in May , with phase 5 "Quintessential" to follow. The online site H2G2. The site was one of the first "reference" web sites maintained by contributions from the public at large. He was an early pioneer in the personal computer explosion of the s and 90s.
For example, he owned the first two Apple Macintosh computers sold in the UK; was heavily involved in the development of first-person computer games such as the computer version of "The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy", "Bureaucracy" and "Starship Titanic" ; and was an early adopter of the Internet. For several years, he was actively involved in the Internet newsgroup, alt. Adams used to shower with the hot water running, and stay there until he had come up with an idea.
His water bill was extremely high. He had been a huge fan of the British science-fiction series Doctor Who since its debut and had submitted story ideas to the series which were initially rejected before being accepted to write Doctor Who: The Pirate Planet: Part One His second script for the series, Doctor Who: City of Death: Part One , which he co-wrote with producer Graham Williams under the pseudonym of David Agnew, is regarded by many fans as one of the best stories in the series' entire run.
It was voted the seventh greatest story in a Doctor Who Magazine poll in and the fifth greatest Doctor Who story in fan site Outpost Gallifrey's 40th Anniversary Poll. When he died, his Internet site was flooded by condolence messages, a big amount of whose simply read "So long and thanks for all the fish", one of the catchphrases from the Hitchhiker's Guide. The same sentence is also his gravestone epitaph. During a lecture Neil Gaiman told that when he was a guest in Adams' house, he asked "Where are the towels?
Half of the audience sniggered at that, and Gaiman said, "Many of you don't know why it's funny that Adams didn't know where his towels were. Too bad. He was proud that his initials spelled DNA and used to point it out.
He was well-known for his love of technology, especially products by Apple. He was a notorious procrastinator and his editors once had to lock him inside of a hotel room to get him to finish a book. This was done by incorporating recordings of him reading his books. According to ''The Salmon of Doubt'', he once took an impromptu trip to Australia to comparatively test-drive a new underwater vehicle and a sting ray for an article so that he could procrastinate on a book.
Similarly, he once hiked up Mt. Kilimanjaro - spending a part of a trip in a rhino suit - for similar purposes. The Asteroid Apophis, which was classified as a Near Earth Object with a record-breaking Torino Scale rating and thought to be a threat to Earth in more accurate measurements followed and the threat was scaled down entirely had the designation Numerology enthusiasts would notice that that is the UK Emergency Services phone number and the number of the Meaning of Life in quick succession.
From The Salmon of Doubt: "Douglas had an amazing capacity for procrastination, but more about that later On the documentary Paris in the Springtime , Steven Moffat claimed that if Adams had lived he would probably have been approached to write for the 21st century revival of Doctor Who This is despite the fact no other writer from the original series was used until Here's a sample quote from the lecture:.
So just imagine if you will, this male kakapo sitting up here, making all this booming noise which, if there's a female out there—which there probably isn't—and if she likes the sound of this booming—which she probably doesn't—then she can't find the person who's making it!
As Adams predicted in the talk, the Yangtze River Dolphin also known as the baiji became functionally extinct in On the bright side, the endangered kakapo is still hanging on.
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