Who is Douglas Adams

Douglas Noël Adams (11 March 1952 - 11 May 2001) was an English writer, dramatist, and musician. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams' contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.

He also wrote Dirk Gentlys Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Known to some of his fans as "Bop Ad" for his illegible signature,FAQ posted to alt.fan.douglas-adams, Groups.google.com. Retrieved August 11, 2009. Adams became known as an advocate for animals and the environment, and a lover of fast cars, cameras, and the Apple Mac. He was a staunch atheist, famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesnt it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"Adams 1998; Dawkins 2003, p. 169. The biologist Richard Dawkins dedicated his book, The God Delusion, to Adams, writing on his death that, "science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender."Dawkins 2001.

Category: Image - :Hitchhiker's Guide (book cover).jpg|frame|The cover of the first novel in the Hitchhiker's series, from a late 1990s printing. The cover features the 42 Puzzle devised by Douglas Adams.

'''The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy''' is a science fiction comedy series created by English writer, dramatist and musician Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon. Adaptations have included stage shows, a series of five books first published between 1979 and 1992 (and a sixth by Eoin Colfer published in 2009), a 1981 TV series, a 1984 computer game, and three series of three-part comic book adaptations of the first three novels published by DC Comics between 1993 and 1996. There were also two series of towels, produced by Beer-Davies, that are considered by some fans to be an "official version" of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, as they include text from the first novel.A wiki devoted to the history of H2G2 themed towels. A Hollywood-funded film version, produced and filmed in the UK, was released in April 2005, and adaptations of the third, fourth and fifth novels were broadcast from 2004 to 2005. Many of these adaptations, including the novels, the TV series, the computer game, and the earliest drafts of the Hollywood film's screenplay, were done by Adams himself, and some of the stage shows introduced new material written by Adams.

The title is the name of a fictional eccentric electronic travel guide, The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, prominently featured in the series.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the GalaxyThe spelling of Hitchhiker's Guide has varied in different editions. For consistency this article always spells it this way. See Spelling of Hitchhikers Guide. is often abbreviated "HHGTTG" (as used on fan websites) or "H2G2" (first used by Neil Gaiman as a chapter title in Category: Dont Panic - : The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion|Don't Panic and later by the online guide run by the BBC). The series is also often referred to as "'The Hitchhiker's Guide", "Hitchhiker's", or simply "The Guide'''". This title can refer to any of the various incarnations of the story of which the books are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005.

BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967.History of the BBC: 1960s

:For the Australian political activist see Albert Langer. For the Puritan author and minister see Arthur Dent (Puritan).

Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and antiheroToland, Bill. "Deep in space lurks the Flying Spaghetti Monster", Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, September 22, 2005. Accessed October 16, 2008. "Arthur Dent, the timid anti-hero of the "Hitchhiker's Guide" movie, radio show and book series, begins wandering the universe after aliens vaporize Earth to make room for an intergalactic superhighway."Johnston, Philip. "Home front", The Daily Telegraph, August 3, 2004. Accessed October 16, 2008. "Arthur Dent, the book's anti-hero, finds that his house is to be knocked down to make way for a new road." in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams.

Along with Ford Prefect, Dent barely escapes the Earths destruction as it is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Arthur spends the next several years, still wearing his dressing gown, helplessly launched from crisis to crisis while trying to straighten out his lifestyle. He rather enjoys tea, but seems to have trouble obtaining it in the far reaches of the galaxy. In time, he learns how to fly and carves a niche for himself as a sandwich-maker.

In the radio, LP and television versions of the story, Arthur is played by Simon Jones, no relation to Peter Jones, the voice of the Guide. In Ken Campbell's stage production from 1979, Chris Langham took the part. In the theatrical movie he is played by Martin Freeman. In The Illustrated Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'', he is portrayed by Jonathan Lermit.

Ford Prefect (also called Ix) is a fictional character in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. He is the only character other than the protagonist, Arthur Dent, to appear throughout the entire Hitchhiker's'' saga.

Zaphod Beeblebrox is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams who based him on his Cambridge contemporary, Johnny Simpson.

He is from a planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and is a "semi-half-cousin" of Ford Prefect, with whom he "shares three of the same mothers". Because of "an accident with a contraceptive and a time machine", his direct ancestors from his father are also his direct descendants (see Zaphod Beeblebrox the Fourth).

Marvin, the Paranoid Android is a fictional character in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ships robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold. He was built as a prototype of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation's GPP (Genuine People Personalities) technology. Marvin is apparently afflicted with severe depression and boredom, in part because he has a "brain the size of a planet" which he is seldom able to use. Indeed, the true horror of Marvin's existence is that no task he could be given would occupy even the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect. Marvin claims he is 50,000 times more intelligent than a human, (or 30 billion times more intelligent than a live mattress) though this is, if anything, a vast underestimation. When kidnapped by the bellicose Krikkit robots and tied to the interfaces of their intelligent war computer, Marvin simultaneously manages to plan the entire planet's military strategy, solve "all of the major mathematical, physical, chemical, biological, sociological, philosophical, etymological, meteorological and psychological problems of the Universe except his own, three times over," and compose a number of lullabies. He seemed to find this last task the hardest, and only one, "How I Hate the Night", is known.

Marvin's voice was performed by Stephen Moore on radio and television, while Alan Rickman played this role in the film. David Learner operated his body on television, having previously played and voiced the part for the stage version, and Warwick Davis wore the Marvin costume for the feature film.

He is "probably... the most popular character to appear in the Guide", according to Geoffrey Perkins, producer of the radio series.

Tricia McMillan, also known as Trillian Astra, is a fictional character from Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. According to the movie version, her middle name is Marie. Physically, she is described as "a slim, darkish humanoid, with long waves of black hair, a full mouth, an odd little knob of a nose and ridiculously brown eyes."The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy'' Chapter 4.

Slartibartfast is a character in The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, a comedy/science fiction series created by Douglas Adams. The character appears in the first and third novels, the first and third radio series (and the LP adaptation of the first radio series), the 1981 television series and the 2005 feature film. The character was modeled after actor John Le Mesurier.