56 Facts About Douglas Adams

Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, humorist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff, The Deeper Meaning of Liff, and Last Chance to See.

Douglas Adams wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death, and served as script editor for its seventeenth season.

Douglas Adams co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

Douglas Adams was a self-proclaimed "radical atheist", an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, and a lover of fast cars, technological innovation and the Apple Macintosh.

Douglas Adams's parents divorced in 1957; Douglas, Susan and their mother moved then to an RSPCA animal shelter in Brentwood, Essex, run by his maternal grandparents.

Douglas Adams attended the prep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970.

Douglas Adams designed the cover of one issue of the Broadsheet, and had a letter and short story published in The Eagle, the boys' comic, in 1965.

Douglas Adams wanted to join the Footlights, an invitation-only student comedy club that has acted as a hothouse for comic talent.

Douglas Adams was not elected immediately as he had hoped, and started to write and perform in revues with Will Adams and Martin Smith; they formed a group called "Adams-Smith-Adams".

Douglas Adams became a member of the Footlights by 1973.

Douglas Adams is one of only two people other than the original Python members to get a writing credit.

Douglas Adams had two brief appearances in the fourth series of Monty Python's Flying Circus.

At the beginning of episode 42, "The Light Entertainment War", Douglas Adams is in a surgeon's mask, pulling on gloves, while Michael Palin narrates a sketch that introduces one person after another but never gets started.

At this point Douglas Adams's career stalled; his writing style was unsuited to the then-current style of radio and TV comedy.

Douglas Adams was employed as a bodyguard by a Qatari family, who had made their fortune in oil.

Douglas Adams wrote, again with Chapman, the 20 February 1977 episode of Doctor on the Go, a sequel to the Doctor in the House television comedy series.

Douglas Adams left after six months to become the script editor for Doctor Who.

Douglas Adams sent the script for the HHGG pilot radio programme to the Doctor Who production office in 1978, and was commissioned to write The Pirate Planet.

Douglas Adams had previously attempted to submit a potential film script, called Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen, which later became his novel Life, the Universe and Everything.

Douglas Adams then went on to serve as script editor on the show for its seventeenth season in 1979.

The episodes authored by Douglas Adams are some of the few that were not originally novelised, as Douglas Adams would not allow anyone else to write them and asked for a higher price than the publishers were willing to pay.

Douglas Adams came up with an outline for a pilot episode, as well as a few other stories that could be used in the series.

Douglas Adams was carrying a copy of the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe, and it occurred to him that "somebody ought to write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

Douglas Adams turned to John Lloyd for help with the final two episodes of the first series.

Douglas Adams was never a prolific writer and usually had to be forced by others to do any writing.

In 1980, Douglas Adams began attempts to turn the first Hitchhiker's novel into a film, making several trips to Los Angeles, and working with Hollywood studios and potential producers.

Douglas Adams played the guitar left-handed and had a collection of twenty-four left-handed guitars when he died.

Douglas Adams was friends with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and, on Douglas Adams's 42nd birthday, he was invited to make a guest appearance at Pink Floyd's concert of 28 October 1994 at Earls Court in London, playing guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse".

Douglas Adams chose the name for Pink Floyd's 1994 album, The Division Bell, by picking the words from the lyrics to one of its tracks, "High Hopes".

Pink Floyd and the song "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun" in particular, inspired Douglas Adams to create the rock band Disaster Area who appear in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, who planned to crash a space ship into a nearby star as a stunt during a concert.

Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984.

In 1990, Douglas Adams wrote and presented a television documentary programme Hyperland which featured Tom Baker as a "software agent", and interviews with Ted Nelson, the co-inventor of hypertext and the person who coined the term.

Douglas Adams described himself as a "radical atheist", adding "radical" for emphasis so he would not be asked if he meant agnostic.

Douglas Adams told American Atheists that this conveyed the fact that he really meant it.

Douglas Adams remained fascinated by religion because of its effect on human affairs.

The evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins invited Douglas Adams to participate in his 1991 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, where Dawkins calls Douglas Adams from the audience to read a passage from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe which satirizes the absurdity of the thought that any one species would exist on Earth merely to serve as a meal to another species, such as humans.

Douglas Adams was an environmental activist who campaigned on behalf of endangered species.

Puppeteer William Todd-Jones, who had originally worn the suit in the London Marathon to raise money and bring awareness to the group, participated in the climb wearing a rhino suit; Douglas Adams wore the suit while travelling to the mountain before the climb began.

Douglas Adams was an active supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund.

Douglas Adams bought his first word processor in 1982, having considered one as early as 1979.

Douglas Adams's posthumously published work, The Salmon of Doubt, features several articles by him on the subject of technology, including reprints of articles that originally ran in MacUser magazine, and in The Independent on Sunday newspaper.

Douglas Adams was a Macintosh user from the time they first came out in 1984 until his death in 2001.

Douglas Adams was the first person to buy a Mac in Europe, the second being Stephen Fry.

Douglas Adams was an "Apple Master", celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products.

Douglas Adams's contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version of iMovie with footage featuring his daughter Polly.

Douglas Adams installed and started using the first release of Mac OS X in the weeks leading up to his death.

Douglas Adams used email to correspond with Steve Meretzky in the early 1980s, during their collaboration on Infocom's version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Challenges to the authenticity of his messages later led Douglas Adams to set up a message forum on his own website to avoid the issue.

In 1996, Douglas Adams was a keynote speaker at the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference where he described the personal computer as being a modelling device.

Douglas Adams was a keynote speaker for the April 2001 Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, one of the major technical conferences on embedded system engineering.

Douglas Adams moved to Upper Street, Islington, in 1981 and to Duncan Terrace, a few minutes' walk away, in the late 1980s.

Douglas Adams later dedicated his book Life, the Universe and Everything to Emerson.

Douglas Adams was introduced by friends to Jane Belson, with whom he later became romantically involved.

Douglas Adams died of a heart attack due to undiagnosed coronary artery disease on 11 May 2001, aged 49, after resting from his regular workout at a private gym in Montecito, California.

Douglas Adams's ashes were placed in Highgate Cemetery in north London in June 2002.