Douglas Adams was born March 11, 1952, the son of Christopher Douglas, a management consultant, and Jane Donovan, a nurse. Adams was a recipient of an honors degree in English Literature from St. Johns College, Cambridge, in 1974. He began his writing career as a scriptwriter for radio and television comedies. For a time, he supported himself with odd jobs ranging from cleaning chicken houses to guarding the royal family of Qatar. I was lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck and gazing up at the stars, he says of the inspiration for his most famous story. It occurred to me that somebody ought to write a hitchhikers guide to the galaxy. His idea, first conceived as a radio series, was developed for the British Broadcasting Company. The 1978 series gradually won an enthusiastic following. Pan Books approached Adams to novelize his scripts. The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy sold one hundred thousand copies the first month and eventually sold two million copies in England alone. Across the Atlantic Ocean, similar success followed with a radio series on National Public Radio and a television version of the book. ...