Douglas Adams
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“I admire any man capable of stringing pseudo-random humour into success.”
~ Oscar Wilde on Douglas Adams
“Douglas Adams is tall, really tall! You won't believe how vastly, hugely, dwarf scaringly tall he is.”
~ Al-pocalypse
Douglas Noel Adams (1952-2001) was a mildly interesting ape-descendant residing on a small blue-green planet in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Milky Way Galaxy. He otherwise would be of no interest at all if he hadn't written a series of successful novels, but if it wasn't for the activities of the Hellen Keller Society's memorial festival then Douglas Adams would never have ended up lying drunk in a field somewhere near Innsbruck then would he? Coincidentally, while he was lying drunk in that field somewhere near Innsbruck he rolled over on a small hallucinatory mushroom, which days later was eaten by a mongoose that ended its life when it attacked the tyre of a UPS delivery truck on its way to deliver a new suspension cord for a faulty exercise machine.
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[edit] Early Career
Due to a time warp, Douglas Adams' Early Career actually happened sometime after his Later Career. Nobody has been able to satisfactorily explain this, though it does explain why Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency is "from the bestselling author of The Salmon of Doubt"
Douglas began his career in radio, fixing technical knobs and such to provide better clarity for listeners eagerly awaiting to hear whether their favorite cricket team won the game or not, after being demoted from an ordinary announcer. However, he found his job - announcing scores for cricket matches - to be uninteresting. It was only open because the regular announcer had sprained his ankle on a bottle while going for a stroll in a field near his home. Douglas was fired from his job sometime in May for knocking over a shelf of nuts and bolts while trying to set mousetraps in the basement. Instead of a severance cheque, the boss gave Adams a bath towel in lieu of payment. Years later, after promising to return a copy of the Hitchhikers' Guide to Europe in just a month to a friend he borrowed it from, the idea of a Hitchhikers' guide to the galaxy resurfaced from whatever deep dark place it had been fermenting in at this time.
Adams also worked on a computer game Starship Titanic, based on a book he did not write. If playing this game, talk to the parrot for extensive periods of time. Only he can disarm the bomb.
[edit] Origins of his Novels
Douglas Adams' novels are generally criticised for being bought from an 11 year old girl. Adams refuted this contention, replying with "Slartibartfast." The jury was utterly stumped, and ended up severing their own heads with ballpoint pens in the ruckus.
His first novel was inspired by his affair with NASA. He allegedly stowed away aboard a space shuttle and crashed into a multimillion dollar space station, nearly snuffing out several of their brightest astronauts in the process. He refused to take the blame for the whole affair, saying only, "Slartibartfast" in his defence. The NASA head flight director, and everyone else in the entire state of Florida, were perplexed to the point of their major intestines leaping up their spines and throttling their brains until their chads dangled. This lead to a horrific chain of events, which in turn lead to the last set of dingos' kidneys outside of Australasia being sold at a Manchester auction to a Masonic lodge using a Burger King as a front for their largely innocuous activities.
[edit] Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy
The HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. It is probably the most remarkable - certainly the most successful - book to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor Beta. It even beat out the 234th edition of Alien Sex for the Not Terribly Bright, which was the first edition with color illustrations, and Practical Plumbing for the Desperate Housewife, both of which were bestsellers on a scale so mindbogglingly vast you could not imagine it even if you tried for a prolonged period of time, so save yourself the time and effort and don't even bother trying. You won't succeed.
[edit] Success
There is an art to success, or rather a knack for it. The knack is that for producing something and having it not fail. For that to happen, one must first publish something and not mind that it will fail very badly, then distract everyone else from how much it will fail. Sometimes the very act will not be enough, mango trees have been producing mangoes very successfully for centuries yet they receive little recognition. The commercial success of mangoes has been equally unsuccessful in bringing the mighty tree into the limelight. Mango trees are good.
The moment of distraction can be quite easy for the general public (some pron will do the trick), but seasoned critics have the most notoriously difficult moment of distraction. This has led to "not" and "fail" being oxymorons if used together.
Douglas Adams avoided failing because of these three reasons:
[edit] The Three Reasons
- The story already had fans who were listening to it on the radio, which meant that there would be a lot of commotion and distraction over the publication.
- It was a funny satire, which left Uncyclopedia contributors confused. This is most likely the greatest distraction of all. You see, the Vogons were a futuristic representation of the human race if bureaucracy was the ruling form of government, and they were really stupid and brutish and... well you get the point.
- The book was published by Sirius, which meant cheap manufacturing of the product while still being high quality binding. Whether or not the public or Adams himself knew about Sirius doesn't matter, it all worked out well in the end, except for Sirius which ended up first against the wall when the revolution came.
- It mentioned the Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which had the words "Don't Panic" inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.
- It was a five-part trilogy.
[edit] Five Books is NOT a Trilogy
Douglas wrote two more books to complete the trilogy, and then did another two books for the sake of all sufferers of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Interestingly, the very person who fired Douglas from his job was also afflicted with OCD, and would send hate mail every week to Douglas about the "increasingly improbable five-book trilogy" issue. The hate mail only stopped when Douglas shipped a parcel of fine china, four rubber Super Balls, and one Improbably materialized bomb to his old boss.
Adams also wrote two mystery novels based on and dedicated to the incompetent foreign fool he once hired to find out where the city council plans were to demolish his house. The detective in the story is a strange man who is assigned to important cases. He has been known, when lost, to follow someone who seems to know where he or she is going, and is at war with his maid. The book was more of a lofty comedy than his other books, which had more words in the main title than this one. Gently garnered only two books before Adams died. Since his death left Adams unable to kill off the bumbling Gently persona, and although the novel is left open for a sequel, it never did make it to completion. The real-life detective to whom the book is dedicated, Jacques, was not the least bit offended by the novel, possibly because he couldn't understand it, the stupid turlingdrome.
Adams was to add a further 37 books to his trilogy, to achieve a total of 42. Unfortunately, due to an accident involving an unstoppable force, an immovable object, and a particle accelerator these books were lost in the fire at the Library in Alexandria. It was a total buzzkill when Satan realised this just as he was getting the fire going.
[edit] Death & Legacy
Douglas Adams died May 11, 2001 at the age of 42 inside his personal gym, due to a faulty suspension cord and spontaneous total existence failiure. He had his towel with him.
He is survived by his wife Jane Emmerson and their daughter Polly Pocket Adams, along with their dog, Zem.
Adams' life was short, but his quirky works and books have left a permanent ink stain on the shirt pocket of the media. His works with Monty Python and other novels created by him are still selling strong as ever, and the book was developed into a full-feature movie after spending decades in development hell. Towel Day was dedicated to him, and is celebrated every May 25th by undertaking various everyday tasks with a towel, as well as offering protection from stupid extraterrestrial animals. There are also many hidden references to Adams' book scattered over the sidewalks of movies, TV shows, songs, books and games. They are notoriously hard to spot, but are easiest seen with a Sub-etha scope under 100x magnification.
He was also known for his eccentric perspective on things and his charismatic demeanor, often bounding into the studios during recordings with new ideas to talk about. He also has a number of quotes covering a broad area of topics. Quoting Douglas Adams is harder to pick up, because lines from his books are much easier to quote upon.
[edit] Quotes
“I would always be astounded at people and their fascination for these big dumb objects, gaping in awe at a statue or something which for the sole purpose of its existence was to be looked at. As well as providing roosts and toilets for the birds.”
~ Douglas Adams on Big Dumb Objects
“I've always thought that there was something fundamentally wrong with the Universe.”
~ Douglas Adams on The Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything
“I love deadlines, I love the whooshing sound they make as they go by.”
~ Douglas Adams on Deadlines
“There are two kinds of people, people who know where their wallet is, and people who know where their towel is.”
~ Douglas Adams on People
“If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”
~ Douglas Adams on The Socratic Method
“Getting a movie made in Hollywood is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it.”
~ Douglas Adams on Development Hell
“What do you mean you don't believe I wrote them?”
~ Douglas Adams on the "Hitchhiker" books
“There were only two decent books in the library and I'd already written both of them.”
~ Douglas Adams on Rubbish hotel libraries
“42.”
~ Douglas Adams on the Answer
[edit] See Also
Categories: Actual content | Oscar Wildeizms | Articles about a person written in the style of that person | Books | Coherent | Culture | Dead people | English | Life | Everything | Monty Python | People | People for whom Quotes are Made up | People taller than Napoleon Bonaparte | Quaint | Writers | People You Wish You Were
