Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams was an English writer and humorist born in Cambridge in 1952. He first created The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy for BBC radio in 1978, then adapted it as a novel published in 1979. He also worked on Doctor Who, including as a script editor, and died in 2001.

His fiction mixes science fiction, satire and verbal comedy. Vast questions about existence collide with missed appointments, administrative rules and machines that do the wrong thing impeccably. In Hitchhiker’s, the Earth is demolished for a hyperspace bypass, leaving the bewildered Arthur Dent to cross the galaxy with Ford Prefect and a guide whose cover offers the unusually practical advice “DON’T PANIC.”

Adams expanded Hitchhiker’s into five novels and several other forms, including television, stage and a computer game. His other books include Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul and Last Chance to See, an account of journeys made in search of endangered animals.

Start with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It introduces Arthur, Ford, Marvin and the Heart of Gold while establishing Adams’s peculiar balance of cosmic scale and everyday frustration. It is both the clearest doorway into his work and the beginning of the series that defined his career.