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Douglas Adams
Comedy has lost a giant. Literature has lost a giant. TV and radio have lost a giant. Even
the Internet and technology have lost a giant.Douglas Adams has
gone to that great starship in the sky and this tiny blue planet is a little bit darker
for the loss. Douglas Adam's was the real deal, a genus who put his formidable talents
towards one extraordinarily noble goal - making people laugh and think simultaneously, and
he succeeded beyond anyone's wildest expectations.I met the man once, at a signing at The
Forbidden Planet bookstore, and he was as cordial, witty and genuinely nice as
the bloke next door, only he was one of the greatest humorists of his, or any other
generation It comes as no surprise that he was an avid and active tech-geek who regularly
conversed with fans in the message forum of his official website and had created h2g2.com, an online version of the Hitchhiker's
Guide - an encyclopedia by and for the people.
Adam's career in entertainment began with that other British Sci-fi institution Doctor
Who where he worked as script editor and writer of eight stories. He also did a
dab of work, and briefly appeared in an episode, of Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Inspired by a hitchhiking trip through Europe in the early seventies Adam's went on to
write The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, one of the best written and
most beloved novels in both the humor and science fiction genres. Soon there followed
acclaimed radio and telly versions of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy
as well as a number of equally brilliant sequels including The Restaurant at the
End of the Universe and Mostly Harmless.
As utterly fab as HHGttG was it wasn't all Adam's got up to
literature-wise. There was also the highly amusing Dirk Gently's Holistic
Detective Agency and it's sequel The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul as
well as Last Chance to See (co-written with Mark Carwardine)
a funny and oft heartbreaking look at the worlds endangered species.
An adaptation of HHGttG had been one of the very first computer games I
ever played, back when computer games were text based adventures that required you to use
your imagination rather than simply be bombarded with special effects and the ability to
kill things, and years later Adams was responsible for one of the very finest computer
games ever released, the astonishing Starship Titanic.
To say Douglas Adams will be missed is an absurd understatement, we can
only take solace in the fact that he was here amongst us for nearly fifty years and while
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