The Hitchhiker
Douglas Noel Adams was born in 1952 in Cambridge, England. He was a self-described "strange child" who did not learn to speak until he was four. At first, he wanted to be a nuclear physicist, but ended up attending Cambridge to study English. "When he was eighteen, drunk in a field in Innsbruck, hitchhiking across Europe, he looked up at the sky filled with stars and thought, 'Somebody ought to write the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.' Then he went to sleep and almost, but not quite, forgot all about it." Years later, in 1977, BBC radio producer Simon Brett commissioned Adams to write a science fiction comedy for BBC Radio Four. Douglas originally imagined a series of six half-hour comedies called "The Ends of the Earth"-funny stories which, at the end of each, the world would end. In the first episode, for example, the Earth would be destroyed to make was for a cosmic freeway. But Douglas soon realized, if you are going to destroy Earth, you need someone to whom it matters in the story as well. He then created his two main characters: Ford Prefect and Arthur Dent. His humorous writing about science fiction became a success, and soon after, Pan Books approached him about doing a book based on the radio series. Do
uglas wrote the manuscript for "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" and the book became a surprise best seller, as did, less surprisingly, its four sequels. Curiously enough, with all his resources and research, Ford was not able to relieve any of Arthur's confusion or to avoid getting the two of them into more intergalactic misadventures than most people could mentally handle. Ford and Arthur do manage to hold up surprisingly well under the harrowing circumstances in which they escape from the Vogon ship. Arthur believes this is due to the unconquerable will of the human spirit. Ford trusts in dumb luck and good karma. The star of the Adams' first novel is a man named Arthur Dent. Arthur spends a considerable large amount of time being confused, misunderstood, misplaced, lost, and homesick. Who can blame him? Who wouldn't feel like that if, on Thursday, his planet was destroyed by huge, ugly, yellow Vogon starships? No suppose that the Vogons destroyed his planet to make way for a new hyperspace bypass and, coincidentally, the same Thursday his house had just been demolished to make way for a new automobile bypass. Assuming that, like Arthur, he survived his planet's destruction, wouldn't the ironic unfairness of it all cause a person to feel a bit confuses? Earth's ob
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Approximate Word count = 873
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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