Posted
on March 11, 2015
He
sometimes said that he
was DNA in Cambridge months before scientists Watson and Crick
modeled DNA at Cambridge University...
And that's because Douglas
Adams was born in Cambridge, England, the year before Watson and
Crick's famous announcement.
Adams's
childhood teachers said that Adams as a child really stood out. For
one thing, he was unusually tall. He was six feet tall by the time he
was 12 years old (in comparison, basketball great Michael Jordan was
still under six feet when he was 15 years old), and Adams ended up
being 6'5” tall (just one inch shorter than Jordan's final height).
Another
reason Adams stood out was that he could write really good stories,
even as a kid. He was the only ever awarded 10 out of 10 points for
creative writing by his form master at his secondary (or “prep”)
school.
Apparently the encouragement from that teacher helped him overcome writer's block as an adult!
After
Adams graduated from university with a B.A. in English literature,
he moved to London. He was determined to become a writer for television
and radio. He was able to get a writing credit for Monty Python, and
to make two small appearances in Monty Python—he is only one of two
people outside of the original Python members to get a writing
credit!—but it was really tough to break into the radio and TV
world. Adams had to take a series of odd jobs while he continued to
write and submit sketches.
 |
| Adams was famously bad at meeting deadlines. |
Finally,
Adams was able to get something on the air—The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
appeared first in our galaxy as a radio show (1978). Later, it became
it became a “trilogy” of five books (1979 to 1992), a TV show
(1981), a computer game (1984), a 3-part comic book (1993 to 1996), a
towel design, a movie (2005), a variety of stage shows, and more radio
adaptations.
In
addition to all this Hitchhiker's Guide stuff, Adams wrote five more
novels and three stories for the TV series Doctor
Who.
If
you are a geek, as you knock about in geekdom, you may see HG2G,
HHGTTG, or H2G2. All of those refer to The
Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
For
more on Adams, check out the earlier posts on Towel Day and
Geek Pride Day.
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