The information in this section is not very
detailed or searching, because of a desire to respect Douglas
Adams' personal privacy. Also, you might as well get a copy of "Don't Panic" anyway.
Douglas Noel Adams (DNA) was born on March 11th,
1952. After nearly a decade of saying in his blurbs that he was
nearly married to a lady barrister, on November 25th 1991 Douglas
Adams and Jane Belson tied the knot in a quiet ceremony at
Finsbury Town Hall in London (bad luck ladies). They live in
Islington.
Their first child was born on June 22nd 1994.
Her name is Polly Jane Adams, but while she was in the womb she
acquired the nickname 'Rocket'. Douglas describes her as
"long and slim and dark and incomprehensibly
beautiful".
...because of the way he signs his name, at book
signings and so on. As you will see (if you have images turned
on), it's quite distinctive:
And if you've not had any of your Douglas Adams
books signed by the author, why not print out the above image and
s itick it onto the front inside page so that you can pretend that
you have?
Douglas Adams has a close association with
computers. He likes Macintoshes, and at one stage lived with one
in Islington (see the dedications in The Complete Radio
Scripts and Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency).
He says that computers have completely changed the way he writes-
he has gone from avoiding writing by finding food to eat, to
avoiding writing by reconfiguring his Macintosh's operating
system.
He has even written a foreword to "PowerBook,
the Digital Nomad's Guide" (ISBN 0-679-74588-2), saying how
he couldn't see how he ever did without his PowerBook before.
Douglas Adams' current project is a computer
game for PC and eventually Macintosh platforms, with the full
title "Douglas Adams' Starship Titanic". For more
information, see C.1- Starship Titanic.
New information in section B.2.2.4!
With Infocom's Steve Meretzky (who no longer
works for Infocom), Douglas wrote The Hitch Hiker's Guide To
The Galaxy adventure game, as well as Bureaucracy.
The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy computer game can
be purchased as part of the compilation The Lost Treasures of
Infocom, if you can still find it, as well as even rarer
compilations such as The Infocom Sci-Fi Collection. It may
also be found on the Internet, but anyone who's uploaded it to
the 'Net has broken the law, see B.2.2.2.
The latest Activision rehash of the Infocom text adventures,
"Masterpieces of Infocom", does not contain Hitch
Hiker's Guide as the rights have reverted back to Douglas
Adams (nor does it contain "Shogun", created in
association with James Clavell, their only other collaborative
piece).
'Eric S.' generated what he describes as a comprehensive list of sources of the Infocom and Hitch Hiker's games, on his web page here.
One solution for the Hitch Hiker's game could be downloaded from here.
For other solutions to the Infocom games and lots more, you could
try the Interactive
Fiction Archive based in Germany. The specific position of
the Hitch Hiker's solutions is here.
Infocom related discussions are abound in the rec.games.int-fiction
newsgroup. The Lost Treasures compilati sons haven't been made for
quite a while now, and pretty much all stocks of these
compilations have run dry (probably because of all the
r.g.int-fiction folk hunting the last few out!) Although the
smaller Activision compilations are suppossed to replace the Lost
Treasures compilations, certainly in the UK they are near
impossible to find. For people in the UK http://www.reserve.co.uk/ may
possibly have a few copies of LTOI 1 & 2 as it is still in
their on-line catalogue.
You don't need a Mac or a PC to play the games, nor do you
need the right versions of the games for the right machines.
Infocom games were interpreted, and hence the game files
themselves are useable across all platforms with a suitable
Infocom interpreter. The game file itself is still under
copyright, but there are PD versions of suitable interpreters
available for most machines, so it is quite possible to play
HHGTTG on anything from UNIX to an Acorn by porting across a copy
of the data file that you may legally ow(or, admittedly, may
have illegally downloaded), even if your copy of HHGTTG is for a
completely different machine.
A good site for Infocom interpreters is ftp://ftp.gmd.de/if-archive/interpreters-infocom/
or chat to the folk in rec.games.int-fiction
for more information.
Richard Harris of The Digital
Village adds:
- For your information, the Infocom games port very
nicely to the Newton, using the YAZI Z interpreter
written for it. A great way to pass the time on long
flights.
New information in section B.2.2.4!
For the official answer to this question, see http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocom.html.
It seems that the plan is: yes. Originally, they had planned
to include it as a 'game within a game' as part of "Starship
Titanic". Sadly, due to "various strategic and
copyright reasons", this is not going to happen. After ST
ships, though, they plan to publish the game again. Here's a
quote from Tim Browse, of TDV, late last year:
- "However, don't despair - you will see the Hitch
Hiker game published again by TDV in the future...in a
new and interesting form. More than that I can't say, I'm
afraid (mostly cos we're not sure yet and are rather busy
finishing Starship Titanic)."
A more recent message indicated that they were considering
releasing the original version of the game as shareware, but this
hasn't happened yet either.
Most of the above was verified to be what it is: rumors. The game is now on Douglas Adams' website. It can be played online at http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/infocomjava.html or the Z file can be downloaded from http://www.douglasadams.com/creations/hhgg.z5, but you will need to find a Z interpreter for that.
Another rumour is that there will be an all-new Hitch Hiker's
game to go along with the supposedly upcoming movie, though. It
may be a console game, which probably means Nintendo, Sega,
Playstation and the like.
New information in section B.2.2.4!
There will be some sites on the Internet where
it is possible to download the Hitch Hiker's computer
game, and possibly even Bureaucracy as well. However, this
is illegal, on the part of both anyone who uploads the
game to the 'Net, and anyone who willingly downloads it from the
'Net afterwards.
TDV may well take action against such
distribution (including, but not limited to, closing of web
sites, lawsuits, concrete shoes, calling in the Vogons, etc.) It
would be best if you avoided posting web addresses for the game
to the group, as it may upset the respective webmasters when they
find their site being closed.
Look, it's simple (but people are still
getting it wrong). Do not post the game on your web site. Do
not post the address of any site (yours or otherwise) where
the game supposedly has been posted. Do not post requests
for the game or offers to send it. And most of all do not
post the game itself to the group- it's not a binaries
group. Unauthorized distribution of the game remains illegal.
Take this advice with a large boulder of salt. Since the game can be freely downloaded from DNA's website, I doubt the will do much to you any more... just don't try to sell bootleg copies of the game.
This might be in reference to an
as-yet-incomplete fan written game being worked on that is based
on the Hitch Hiker's Guide story. For legal reasons
progress of this game is currently halted (and foreseeably this
could put a permanent axe through the game's proceedings) and the
author's name should probably not be mentioned, but then maybe
that's just a demonstration of paranoia...
Read the bit above about it being on DNA's website. It was on the comic relief site, and it may still be, but it should be permanent on Mr. Adams' web site.
Douglas Adams and Steve Meretzky went on to
write a second game called Bureaucracy, with the same
format as Hitch Hiker's Guide.... Bureaucracy was credited
to "Douglas Adams and The Staff of Infocom" since there
were lots of Infocom people involved (Jeff O'Neill, Dave Lebling,
Fred Morgan and others). It was said, even at the time of Bureaucracy's
release, that Douglas Adams simply provided the anecdote upon
which the entire game was based, but wasn't involved in the rest
of the game's production (Andrew Williams: "He probably had
to duck out for a bath...")
Bureaucracy is one of the games included
in The Lost Treasures of Infocom II (not to be confused
with the first volume with Hitch Hiker's Guide... on it),
and The Infocom Comedy Collection. It now also appears on
Activision's newest collection of old Infocom games, called Masterpieces
of Infocom, just released on their "Essential
Collection" budget label. This collection is very
inexpensive (around £10, maybe about $10), runs on PC or Mac,
and includes 30 or so other old Infocom text adventure games.
The playing requirements, sources for solutions
etc. are the same as for the Hitch Hiker's
Guide To The Galaxy game.
The end sequence to the adventure game Hitch
Hiker's Guide mentions a second game called The Restaurant
at the End of the Universe, but this game doesn't exist.
Douglas Adams started to write it, but because Bureaucracy
had poor sales, Adams and Infocom dropped the project. Infocom
tried to revive the project later, but the virtual death of
Infocom in 1990 brought this idea to an end.
Another reason given for the fact Restaurant...
was never made was that Douglas Adams was too busy and asked
another person (unknown) to help, but that person couldn't grasp
the concept of "interactive fiction" and so it died the
death.
If you are trying to contact Douglas with a
question, you should first make sure that there isn't another way
to find the answer to your question, because due to the large
number of people on the Internet who don't quite comprehend how
many people there actually are on the Internet, Douglas has to
pick and choose which messages to respond to, and is only likely
to respond to the questions that he hasn't heard a million
times before (if at all).
Check out A.2- Where can I
find more information about Douglas Adams? and the suggested
sources thoroughly before going any further.
If you don't get any response by the following methods, don't
pester- he probably just doesn't want to hear about it. Do not be
disappointed or surprised if you do not receive a reply, however,
because the e-mail address is inevitably flooded with sycophantic
and curious fans who ask him inane questions that they can't be
bothered to look themselves, or who want to know something
tediously sad about the number 42, or ask him questions about
some of his characters' sex lives (sad sad sad sad sad).
Douglas makes no secret that his personal
e-mail address is dna@tdv.com. Notice that this is not
hypertext linked because it is extremely likely that you should not
not NOT use this address, which is
for his own personal and business correspondence alone.
Instead you should e-mail askdna@tdv.com (subject to the above
conditions). Douglas employs somebody to perform the tedious task
of ignoring his mail from him. In the past, mail that Douglas
considers 'worthwhile' has received a response from the
man himself, but don't bet on it.
This should be done through The Digital Village office:
See C.2.2. Where's
Douglas Adams' web site?, which is more or less the same
question and it saves having to update it in two different
places...
Basically, no, although he used to. He never
posts here any more, and it is hardly surprising; he explained
many of his reasons for abandoning the newsgroup on his (now 404) homepage (URL preserved for posterity). Many
people believed it was him, but some did not, and those who
didn't made a fuss about the fact they believe he was 'false',
even though everybody else tried to tell them they were wrong.
"Another case of the few spoiling it for the majority."
That said, Douglas Adams has been known to post occasionally
even since he gave up reading the newsgroup on a regular basis.
At the time of writing, for example, his most recent post was to
dismiss the rumours about Jim Carrey being in the Hitch
Hiker's Guide movie.
Douglas Adams wrote three scripts for Doctor
Who, and was also Doctor Who script editor for a year,
during the late 1970s. All of the released videos of these three
Adams-penned Who stories have since been deleted, so
here's what you've missed.
Shada was never completed due to a strike
at the BBC, and has since been released with a copy of the
original script and Tom Baker's voiceovers to fill in the missing
sections. This has now been deleted, but the order number was
BBC48142 (VHS). It contains a number of plot elements which later
turned up in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. A
Professor Chronitis, a time machine which is an office in a
University, a certain joke, etc. The similarities are so great
that for copyright reasons a novel of Shada could never be
published.
Dirk Gently... also contains plot elements
from The City of Death, which Douglas also wrote. That
story is credited to "David Agnew", which is a
pseudonym used on BBC programmes where the writer's real name is
not used for contractual reasons. The script was originally
started by David Fisher, who couldn't finish it for personal
reasons.
The Pirate Planet was only very recently
deleted on video- there are several similarities between it and Hitch
Hiker's Guide... but nothing so great that Douglas might want
to sue himself... Again, this was released by BBC video and has
recently been deleted- the order number was BBCV5608.
Douglas also wrote a treatment (plot synopsis) for
a film called Dr Who and the Krikketmen. It was never
expanded to become a complete script, but most of the pertinent
plot points reappeared in Life, the Universe and Everything.
This is only a very brief overview of the Douglas
Adams bibliography, which has now been given its own page- see section Y. The increasingly inaccurately named Hitch
Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy:
- The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish
Mostly Harmless
The Dirk Gently novels:
- Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
With Mark Carwardine:
The Liff books, with John Lloyd:
- The Meaning of Liff
The Deeper Meaning of Liff
Doctor Who stories:
- Shada
City of Death (as David Agnew)
The Pirate Planet
Short stories:
- Young Zaphod Plays It Safe
The Private Life of Genghis Kahn
A Christmas Fairly Story
This list is not definitive. Please note that Douglas Adams
has not yet written The Salmon of Doubt...
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