The Author Speaks!

Last updated: 03/10/2006 - 15:54

The adventures of intergalactic hitchhiker's Ford Prefect, Arthur Dent, Zaphod Beeblebrox and Marvin the Paranoid Android come to life as never before in this brand new version of Douglas Adams’ classic comedy space opera.

The five books read on audio for the first time by their creator comprise the story of Arthur and Ford’s escape from – and eventual return to – the doomed planet Earth. The story begins with The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and continues in: Life, the Universe and Everything, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish, and Mostly Harmless.

Born in Cambridge on 11th March 1952, educated at Brentwood School, Essex and St John's College, Cambridge where, in 1974 he gained a BA (and later an MA) in English literature. Douglas Adams is the creator of all the various manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

Starting life as a BBC Radio 4 series in March 1978 the story has been transformed into a world beating brand, spawning numerous imitators and a continuing series of best-selling novels, a TV series, an album, a computer game and several stage adaptations. It is currently under development as a major Hollywood motion picture.

Phenomenal Success

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's phenomenal success sent the first book straight to number one in the UK bestseller list. In 1984 Douglas Adams became the youngest ever author to be awarded a prestigious Golden Pan award. He won a further two - a rare feat - and was also nominated for the first 'Best of Young British Novelists' awards. Overall the book series has sold a staggering 15 million copies worldwide.

Following huge success on the radio the first two novels in the Hitchhiker series were adapted into a fondly remembered 6 episode television series by the BBC.

This became another immediate hit when it first aired in 1982 and is still sold overseas – and was recently re-issued as an extras packed DVD – to this day. There have been various stage productions, computer games, a lavish illustrated coffee table book, a comic series, an LP, set of lead miniatures and even a bath towel.

Talking Book

This new audio version brings the story to life in yet another altogether unique way – and is a fitting return to the audio medium for which the scripts were originally drafted – as a radio series, itself ostensibly about a talking book!

Douglas’s other publications include Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and its sequel The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul (1988). In 1984 Douglas teamed up with John Lloyd to write The Meaning of Liff and, following its huge success, The Deeper Meaning of Liff in 1990. One of Douglas’s own personal favourites of his work was written in 1990 when he teamed up with zoologist Mark Carwardine and wrote Last Chance to See – an account of a world-wide search for rare and endangered species of animals.

He was a founding director of h2g2 Ltd, formerly known as The Digital Village, a digital media and Internet company with which he created the 1998 CD-ROM Starship Titanic, a Codie Award-winning (1999) and BAFTA-nominated (1998) adventure game. He was patron of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Save the Rhino International.

After nearly a decade of saying in his blurbs that he was “nearly married to a lady barrister”, on November 25 1991 Douglas married Jane Belson – an Oxford graduate and former junior official at HM Treasury - in 1991. They moved to live in Santa Barbara with their daughter – where Douglas carried on writing and developing the film of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, until his sudden death in May 2001.

Despite the author’s death, the long-proposed movie version of the series continues in development, with Jay Roach (Austin Powers) as director and Karey Kirkpatrick (Chicken Run and James and the Giant Peach) as writer. Douglas Adams will be posthumously credited as executive director on the project.

In May 2002 The Salmon of Doubt was published posthumously. It contains Douglas Adams’ last unfinished Dirk Gently novel together with a charming collection of both published and unpublished articles, columns, speeches and stories.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - the complete and unabridged talking book is available now from BBC Audiobooks, as a 5 CD or 10 cassette boxed set.