The Later Years of Douglas Adams

I met Douglas near the end, at MacWorld SF 2000. He was charming, enormous (though, not in a "fat guy" way, much more in a "way over 6 foot tall" way.) He truly was a monument of a human being. He was vastly more interested in experimenting with a USB microscope camera he'd become associated with than being all "Hey I'm famous," a trait I took to insinuate great humility and confidence. I was almost paralyzed by my inability to say "You, sir, built me from a puddle of bullied goo into a tower of a man, confident in the face of chaos and uncertainty, purely through force of word and logic." Instead, I think I just talked about the microscope. He was amazing.

My favorite book is Douglas Adams’ Last Chance to See. He talks about it here [0] and IIRC he says it was his favorite book to write. Adams took a dark subject - endangered animals and our role in their extinction - and told a story that’s equally hilarious and hopeful.

[0]: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_ZG8HBuDjgc

That was wrenching to read, but it tracks with what I inferred from the books themselves. I am so sorry that Hitchhikers became such a thorn in his side. It was so brilliant and he just didn't want to do any more, and nothing else really worked.

He seemed very unhappy. I'm weirdly glad that the end wasn't a death of despair, just a weird stupid awful freak accident. So I'll choose to believe what the article says.

I met him briefly at SIGGRAPH after an IRC chat at the Softimage booth (This was the year of the Starship Titanic game). He was surprised and amused that one of the few people who showed up for the chat was actually just downstairs. I have to confess that I could have spread the word about the chat a bit further but it was nice to have a more intimate setting. Anyways I told him that HHGTTG was my new testament and he asked the obvious question to which the answer was the Monty Python TV script book. He laughed at this which meant so much to me because he still makes me laugh every day. <3

I liked the Dirk Gently series a lot; it's a shame there weren't more.

I had a working meeting at a Cisco networkers event down the Gold coast. We had a break and somebody said "are you coming to the keynote" and I said "nah, it'll be boring as usual"

They looked at me oddly and went. Then an hour later over lunch I found out who the keynote speaker had been: it wasn't in the working meeting invitation I had...

Adams died the next year. I hope he got to use the honorarium to fund something in conservation, I'm told it was massive.

To be fair, I work in software, so I too am familiar with the whoosh of a deadline as it passes by, unmet.

Although I don’t find it as hard as Douglas did with his writing, but then that level isn’t needed for most software projects.

I was about to say that software, unlike creative writing, can be changed after publishing. But Douglas did that for Hitch Hikers - the radio script, books, and TV show are fairly different stories!

Sometimes I like to imagine the extremely unlikely universe in which Douglas Adams decided to see what would happen if he wrote a Hitch-Hiker's Guide sequel that took place in the same universe, but concerned the humorous misadventures of new characters, who had drives and motivations that were more compatible with actually moving a story forwards than folks like Arthur or Zaphod or Ford who would much rather slouch off to find a nice cup of tea or a party than get involved in saving the world. And then discovered that it was a lot easier, and actually fun, to write stories about characters like that, and went on to write two or three dozen more loosely-connected books of SF-flavored comedy.

Given that every story about the man emphasizes how hard it was to get any writing out of him, this is a universe that could probably only exist as a side-effect of an Infinite Improbability Drive, but it's still fun to imagine. And to wonder if it would have started getting weirdly poignant and serious under the silly surface the way Discworld did about a dozen books after Terry Pratchett gave up trying to find reasons for Rincewind to ever leave his room again.

I've never really understood the problems he had getting the Hitchhiker movie made - all the articles around before it came out talked about having to revise the script to make sense to an American audience (and the eventual movie ended up with a strangely different plot with a villain), but the original radio series is pretty much a road movie, which is almost an American trope.

He wrote and starred in a documentary explaining hypertext which I found interesting: https://vimeo.com/72501076. I found this while reading that htmx book (hypermedia.systems) and getting more curious about the history of hypermedia in general.

Strange how TFA fails to mention The Salmon of Doubt. Published posthumous, it's the earnest testimony of the late Adams and his thoughts on, quite literally, life, the universe and all.

I remember listening to hhgttg on my parent's kitchen radio as a young child. I didnt't get much of the humour but the episodes were still a marvel to me: just bursting and fizzing with ideas and fun.

I bought the book with pocket money in '79 when it came out - I remember the kind of oilslick-pattern cover, and being secretly pleased that no-one I knew had heard of it. I read it until it fell apart. His proof of the non-existence of god was probably my first Mobius loop, at least until I discovered Hofstadter in the library.

Teenage me was unexpectedly charmed by So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish and was perhaps a little hopeful of meeting someone like Fenchurch one day.

So, a part of my nerd hustory I guess - albeit not something I've thought about for a while. Thank you Mr Adams.

This was a difficult frustrating read. One feels that he simply needed a good financial planner and he could have lived his life how he wanted and not been forced to be locked in rooms and write mediocre novels he didn’t want to.

This paradox of possessing a remarkable gift while simultaneously loathing its use seems like a cosmic jest, reminding us that the universe operates with a wry smile

Such a badly written and dull piece on what should be a very interesting subject to write about (DNA).

I wonder if ppl who are upvoting this submission actually read the whole, verbose piece before upvoting or whether they're just upvoting on seeing Douglas' name in the submission title ?