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 Douglas
Adams, author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, died
on Saturday in Santa Brabara, California, following a heart attack.
He was 49.
That line
seems to be the intro for most of the obituaries that have sprouted
over the past few days, but fails to do justice to the man who gave
science fiction something that had been sadly lacking: humor. His
vision of a confusing, yet somehow bourgeois and bureaucratic universe
satirized everything from poets and politics to the genre itself,
but Adams never saw himself as a science fiction writer - just a
humorist who somehow found in scifi his most effective platform.
Born in Cambridge
in 1952, Adams attended the university there, emerging with a BA
and MA in English Literature. He then went on to a series of jobs
before ending up at the BBC as a script editor for the classic Dr.
Who series. This was during the Tom Baker era, arguably the
golden age of the long-running show. Baker infused the character
with a dry wit and offhand manner not a million miles from Adams'
own sensibilities. Some of the episodes he wrote during this period
were the most entertaining in the show's history and provide glimpses
of what was to come. In particular, 1978's "The Pirate Planet" took
us to a hollow man-made planet which would port through space, surrounding
smaller planets and destroying them for their mineral wealth. Commanded
by a pirate, known as The Captain, who had been assembled from parts
following a horrible crash, it also featured a robot parrot, a nerdy
scientist and an evil queen. It was very silly and lots of fun,
a true harbinger of what was in store.
The world
didn't have to wait long. That same year, while working on Dr
Who, Adams began work on what would be his masterpiece. Originally
conceived as a radio series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
was a late night show that soon attained cult status (to hear the
complete radio version click
here). Following the success of the radio show, Adams penned
the book, which in turn spawned a TV series in 1979. The book, together
with its sequels, has sold over 15 million copies worldwide and
remains one of the most popular works in the genre.
Adams himself
never thought he was a serious science fiction writer. "I didn't
see myself as a predictive kind of science fiction writer, like
Arthur C. Clarke," he wrote, claiming that the Guide was
just a narrative device that allowed him to "…run off at tangents
whenever the story seemed to be getting a bit dull." But he turned
out to have been a predictive writer after all: the Hitchhiker's
Guide was supposedly put together by travelers roaming around
the galaxy, beaming in their copy, which was then immediately available
for everyone to read. He called this the SubEthaNet. The significance
of this in light of more recent developments wasn't lost on Adams,
who loved the potential of the Internet, founding Digital Village
and, more recently h2g2, which he envisioned as an earthbound equivalent
of the Hitchhhikers' Guide, in which users constantly update the
content. You can read about his vision of h2g2
here. The BBC, which partnered with Adams in creating the site,
has said that it will continue.
In 1999 Adams
moved to Santa Barbara to concentrate on the development of a movie
version of the Guide. His partner in this enterprise was
Disney, but it was embroiled in problems from the beginning. One
problem, of course, is its…well, its essential Englishness. As a
hero, Arthur Dent shambles around in his pajamas and robe, never
quite sure of what is going on. Not exactly Hollywood's idea of
a scifi hero. Numerous screenplays were written and vilified over
the net as word of their content drifted out. Finally, last year,
Disney apparently did what they should have done in the first place
- they asked Adams to write it. Still, it's hard to believe that
it could really be any better than the 1979 version. There was something
so appealing about the tacky production values that perfectly fit
the story. The acting was superb, all dripping sarcasm in the best
Pythonesque/Blackadder tradition. It's hard to imagine those words
coming out of the mouths of American actors. Stuff like:
"The best
way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his
throat..."
"If there's
anything more important than my ego around, I want it caught and
shot now."
"In the beginning
the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry
and been widely regarded as a bad move."
(For more
quotes from Adams' work go to the Douglas
Adams Quote Directory.)
Perhaps the
most memorable aspect of both the radio show and the TV series was
the voice of the book: Peter Jones. His calm, matter-of-fact delivery
of often terrifying, and frequently mundane details of life, community
and creatures throughout the galaxy truly was the Guide.
I defy anyone reading the book not to hear his voice in their head!
Sadly, Jones himself died last month, another unsung legend. Adams
wrote a touching and funny remembrance of the man, recalling their
first meeting:
"He had the
air of a bank manager who had been fired for being too nice to people:
a rumpled raincoat, black glasses and a kind of genial 'oh well'
quality, as if we were all going to be awfully brave and cheerful
about something dreadful that had just happened, though he wasn't
quite certain what it was or if it really was going to matter terribly
much. He wasn't quite certain where, in the circumstances, to put
his umbrella."
To read all
of Douglas Adams' obituary of Jones, click
here.
Here in Los
Angeles his passing was buried at the back of a subsection of the
LA Times (Perry Como made it to page one), which is typical of a
town which traditionally accords the least recognition to those
it owes the most. Would there have been a Men In Black without
Adams? A Ghost Busters or an Evolution? Sure, Harry
Harrison wrote some funny scifi back in the sixties, but that was
for aficionados. Adams wrote for everyone, his stuff was just funny
- whether you liked science fiction or not. As actor Stephen Fry
noted on Adams' tribute page, "He brought wit to science fiction.
His ability to connect cosmic ideas with the banal commonplaces
of everyday life was unique."
It was indeed.
We will all miss him.
Douglas Adams
is survived by his wife, Jane and daughter Polly.
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