BIOGRAPHY Unlike the pound or Watney's Ale, British humor travels the Atlantic well. American audiences have long been fans of the English comic muses from Henry Fielding to Monty Python. Latest in this parade of writers to reach the colonies is Douglas Adams, whose fourth volume in the "Hitchhiker Trilogy" will soon reach bookstores, to the delight of his countless fans. The son of a post-graduate theology student and a nurse, Douglas Noel Adams was born i n Cambridge, England, in 1952. He was schooled at Brentwood in Essex, then entered St. John's College at Cambridge University in 1970. Cambridge during the '70s was a fertile bed of comic genuis that spawned such stars as Dudley Moore, John Cleese, Peter Cook and Graham Chapman. Adam's antic notions fit the school's extracurricular style, and he soon joined The Footlights Club, famous for its comic and satirical productions. He began collaborating with many of the writers who would later create Th e Monty Python Show and Not The Nine O'Clock News. It was on a semester break at Cambridge that the idea for his first major effort came to him. He had been traveling around the continent, using The Hitchhiker's Guide To Europe as a reference. It was a starry night in Innsbruck, and Adams lay on his back, slightly drunk, contemplating the universe. The thought came to him that someone should write The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, combining the Gee- Whiz! fun of science fiction with timely soci al satire. It took six years for the idea to come to fruition, but it has provided his passport to considerable fame and modest fortune. Graduating Cambridge in 1974, Adams "went down" to London and tried his hand at TV writing, penning a number of episodes for the Dr. Who series, which is aired in this country on PBS. Two years later, he was broke and accepted a job as bodyguard for a royal Arabian family. His job, he says, was to stand outside the door, bow occasionally, and run if anyone showe d up with a hand grenade. During his off-hours, he began writing The Hitchhiker's Guide. His Innsbruck fantasy first took form as a radio serial, which he sold to the BBC. The show began to build a cult following--people who, it seemed, couldn't wait to start their own adventures travelling around the galaxy. The series became so popular in Britain, that it was aired four times, and ultimately sparked, a television series, two records, a stage show and an interactive fiction game. Americans discovered The Hitchhiker's Guide during the 1980's and the radio version has been broadcast several times on National Public Radio member stations, PBS has aired the television version, and the books have sold in the hundreds of thousands. Now that the book has been optioned for a film, Adams has become a modern version of Renaissance Man, though his view of man's foibles places his somewhere between Swift and Dickens. In addition to The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, Adams has now completed three mo re volumes in the "trilogy:" The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe; Life, The Universe And Everything, and So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish. He recently co-authored a book with British satirist John Lloyd called The Meaning Of Liff (sic). It's a small dictionary of place names adapted to describe situations and experiences which have other name designation. Thus, "epping" describes the little futile finger movements you use to get a barman's attention, and "Kalami" is the ancient Eastern art of being able to fold road maps properly. After seven months in Los Angeles, California, working on the screenplay for The Hitchhiker's Guide, Adams has given up on America and now resides once more in England, where he practices the first rule of galactic hitchhiking: "Don't Panic." X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X Another file downloaded from: NIRVANAnet(tm) & the Temple of the Screaming Electron Jeff Hunter 510-935-5845 Rat Head Ratsnatcher 510-524-3649 Burn This Flag Zardoz 408-363-9766 realitycheck Poindexter Fortran 415-567-7043 Lies Unlimited Mick Freen 415-583-4102 Specializing in conversations, obscure information, high explosives, arcane knowledge, political extremism, diversive sexuality, insane speculation, and wild rumours. ALL-TEXT BBS SYSTEMS. Full access for first-time callers. We don't want to know who you are, where you live, or what your phone number is. We are not Big Brother. "Raw Data for Raw Nerves" X-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-X