Name: ADAMS, Douglas Noel Aged: 49
Born: Mar 11, 1952 Where: Cambridge, ENGLAND
Died: May 11, 2001 Where: Santa Barbara, CA
Interred: Cremated
Married: Jane Elizabeth Belson When: 1991
Awarded: 1978, 1979, & 1980 British Science Fiction Awards for Best Dramatic Presentations for "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" in the categories of Radio Series, Record, & 2nd Radio Series respectively; 1980 Australian Ditmar Award for Best International Long Fiction for Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Actually, Adams thought of himself as a script writer and had started his career that way. But events overtook him when a zany radio script for the BBC named "Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy" took on a life of its own and forced Adams to become Science Fiction's first successful cosmic satirist. Even so, with book sales in the 15 millions, you may not know who he was . . . but don't worry about it . . . it's just another aspect of your generation gap showing. Try buying a Babel Fish from a vending machine and letting it swim in your ear.

Douglas Adams was educated at the Brentwood School in Essex, England, and at St. John's College, in Cambridge. Given to occasional flights of freedom, Adams hitchhiked about Europe in 1971, carrying with him The Hitchhiker's Guide to Europe. One night at Innsbruck, Austria, while drinking and flat on his back looking at the stars, Adams thought someone should write a hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy as well . . . why wait for technology to build spaceships when you could just hitch a ride on those that already exist. A few years later, he created the script based on that idea. Eventually, five novels composed the Hitchhiker's Trilogy, which makes perfect sense when you know that 42 is the ultimate numerical answer to the universe.

Delighted by computers, Adams also loved the internet where he maintained a personal web site. He was very busy in this area - assembling teams, creating projects and computer games, one of which was Starship Titanic, a fun whodunit. He had moved to Santa Barbara from England a couple years ago to be near Disney Studios where the filming project of Hitchhiker's Guide had become boggled in cost over-run. The stalling of this project was very frustrating for Adams but it was turn-about-is-fair-play . . . as Adams himself was a notorius deadline buster having been locked in a hotel room by an editor and not allowed to leave until the book was finished. Another editor moved in with him until a manuscript was finished. But Adams had become disillusioned with the project, "I wish I had never thought of doing it as a movie. I'd have about 10 years of my life back."

Douglas Adams will forever be known as a member of "The Aware," that group of human beings cursed to see reality as it is, without the protective cushions of belief, self-delusion, and faith-in-a-whatever . . . a minority perspective even in the best of times. In Hitchhiker's Guide . . . , he destroys the Earth to make way for an interstellar highway. Earth was, after all, just "an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet circling a small unregarded yellow sun." As his cynicism increased (as cynicism is wont to do), in Mostly Harmless, his last completed novel, Adams destroys every possible Earth, in every possible dimension and universe . . . he didn't say how but probably it was in alphabetical order.

On the one hand, Adams died young with many dreams in progress and things left to do . . . but on the other hand, he died seven years after his work was finished. A last enigma - at 49, not 42.

"There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened."

BIBLIOGRAPHY: Mine here.

OBITUARY: Reuters, Detroit Times, & The Times of London here.

George C. Willick, 514 East Street, Madison, IN 47250