42: THE WILDLY IMPROBABLE IDEAS OF DOUGLAS ADAMS

‘Douglas was something that we don’t have a word for yet –a futurologist or an explainer. One day we will realise that the most important job out there is someone that can explain the world to itself in ways the world won’t forget’

Neil Gaiman

‘It’s dreadful to think that you never pinched and zoomed on a smartphone or tablet, never engaged with an AI chatbot… Of course, you wouldn’t have been surprised by a single one of these developments, the intrusions on our lives that have so transformed the world since you so precipitately left it. You saw them all coming’ Stephen Fry, in a letter to Douglas Adams

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.

From his school days through Cambridge, Footlights and life as a struggling writer, to his early collaborations with Graham Chapman, his work on Doctor Who and the development of The Hitchhiker’s Guide and Dirk Gently, Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination.

But Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time. Though Douglas would not live to see many of his predictions come to life, his archives offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

Douglas’s fertile imagination for science fiction was evident during school and university. He wanted to write for the BBC’s long-running science fiction series Doctor Who. In the mid-1970s, after years of dreaming, he was invited to contribute four episodes to the series – and even to apply for a job on the team.

Early Ideas

As far back as prep school at Brentford, Douglas had written stories about Daleks being powered by Rice Krispies, for himself and his friends to perform on a tape recorder. Later, in 1972, while on holiday with friends from university, he was still dabbling with ideas for the series. HIs notebook from the holiday provides a permanent record of some of the notions he dreamed up (below), as well as his doodles of the Tardis.

Dr Who

–Travel forward.

Caught in ‘time pocket’

Land again on Earth.

Everything – slow motion – (20 yard area round Tardis

Find barrier – where? London?

Home spherical – mirror – force field.

– beings inside turn out to be projections of each observer – i.e.

Doctor Who 114 whoever looks at them simply sees images of himself – Why?

[margin] Communicate telepathically

Because humans are a race of individuals – self-centred. These people Zolons are a community – each individual is a cell and sees each other cell as an image of the community.

[margin] Attempt to show image of community – mindblowing!

Come from a different space-time continuum to study this life form which seems only to exist in this particular STC.

Having for the Pirate populations,