About Douglas Adams
author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
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Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge, England in March 1952. He was educated at Brentwood School, Essex and St John's College, Cambridge where he was awarded a Bachelor of Arts in 1974 (and later a Masters degree) in English literature. Adams created all the manifestations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which started life as a BBC Radio 4 series. He followed this success with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980); Life, The Universe and Everything (1982); So Long and Thanks for all the Fish (1984); and Mostly Harmless (1992). The first two books in the Hitchhiker series were adapted into a fabulously successful six-part television series that aired in 1982. |
In 1984 Douglas Adams, at 31 years-old, became the youngest author to be awarded a Golden Pan from Pan Books, the UK publisher of the book series. He accomplished the rare feat of winning two more and was nominated for the first Best of Young British Novelists awards. Over 15 million of his books have sold in the UK, the US and Australia and they have become best-selling translations in German, Swedish and many other languages.
Adams' other publications include Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988). In 1984 Adams teamed up with John Lloyd to write The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff in 1990. In 1990 he teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine to write Last Chance to See - an account of a world-wide search for rare and endangered animal species. It was one of Adams' personal favourites.
Adams was a founding director of H2G2, formerly The Digital Village, a digital media and Internet company where he created the 1998 CD-ROM Starship Titanic, a Codie Award-winning and BAFTA-nominated adventure game.
Adams died unexpectedly in May 2001 of a sudden heart attack. He was 49. He was living in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and daughter, and at the time of his death he was working on the screenplay for a feature film version of Hitchhiker.