An audiocassette recording

An audiobook is a recording of a text being read. It is not necessarily an exact audio version of a book or magazine.

Spoken audio has been available in schools and public libraries and to a lesser extent in music shops since the 1930s. Many spoken word albums were made prior to the age of videocassettes, DVDs, and compact discs, often of plays rather than books. It was not until the 1980s that the medium began to attract book retailers, and then book retailers started displaying audiobooks on bookshelves rather than in separate displays.

History[link]

United States[link]

Many spoken word recordings of stories were sold on cylinder in the early 1900s.^[1]

In 1931, Congress established the talking-book program, which was intended to help blind adults who couldn’t read print. This program was called "Books for the Adult Blind Project." The American Foundation for the Blind developed the first talking books in 1932. One year later the first reproduction machine began the process of mass publishing. In 1933 anthropologist J.P. Harrington drove the length of North America to record oral histories of Native American tribes on aluminum discs using a car battery-powered turntable. Audiobooks preserve the oral tradition of storytelling that J.P. Harrington pursued many years ago.^[2] By 1935, after Congress approved free mailings of audio books to blind citizens, Books for the Adult Blind Project was in full operation. In 1992 the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Challenged (NLS) network circulated millions of recorded books to more than 700,000 Physically challenged listeners. All NLS recordings were created by professionals.

Though spoken recordings were popular in 33-1/3 vinyl record format for schools and libraries into the early 1970s, the beginning of the trade acceptance of this medium can be traced to the introduction of the audio cassette and, most importantly, to the prevalence of these cassette players as standard equipment (rather than as options which older drivers did not choose) in imported (Japanese) automobiles, which became very popular during the 1979 energy crisis. Thereafter, consumers and authors slowly accepted the medium. Into the early 1980s there were still many authors who refused to have their books created as audiobooks, so a good many of the audiobooks were original productions not based upon printed books.

With the development of portable cassette recorders, audiotapes had become very popular and by the late 1960s libraries became a source of free audiobooks, primarily on vinyl records but also on cassettes. Instructional and educational recordings came first, followed by self-help tapes and then by literature. In 1975, Olympic gold medalist, Duvall Hecht founded Books on Tape, Inc. as a direct to consumer mail order rental service for unabridged audiobooks and expanded their services selling their products to libraries and audiobooks gaining popularity with commuters and travelers. By the middle of 1980s the audio publishing business grew to several billion dollars a year in retail value.

Caedmon was the first to work with integrated production teams and professional actors, while Nightingale Conant featured business and self-help authors reading their own works first on vinyl records and then on cassettes.^[3]

The Audio Publishers Association was established in 1986 by six competitive companies who joined together to promote the consumer awareness of spoken word audio. In 1996 the Audio Publishers Association established the Audie Awards for audio books, which is equivalent to the Oscar for the talking books industry. The nominees are announced each year in January. The winners are announced at a gala banquet in the spring, usually in conjunction with BookExpo America.^[4]

While most music fans rapidly accepted CDs, audiobook listeners were slower. One reason may have been that a cassette tape by nature retains its position when the player is turned off, but many early CD players did not retain the playing position of CDs when turned off.^{[citation needed]} Also, it was not until cassette players were replaced by CD players in most automobiles that this format eventually took hold.

With the advent of the Internet, broadband technologies, new compressed audio formats and portable media players, the popularity of audiobooks has increased significantly. This growth was reflected with the advent of audiobook download subscription services.

Germany[link]

The evolution and use of audiobooks in Germany closely parallels that of the US. A special example of its use is the West German Audio Book Library for the Blind, founded in 1955. Actors from the municipal theater in Münster recorded the first audio books for the visually impaired in an improvised studio lined with egg cartons. Because trams rattled past, these first productions took place at night. Later, texts were recorded by trained speakers in professional studios and distributed to users by mail. Until the 1970s recordings were on tape reels, then later cassettes. Since 2004, the offerings have been recorded in the DAISY Digital Talking Book MP3 standard, which provides additional features for visually impaired users to both listen and navigate written material aurally.^[5]

Production[link]

Producing an audiobook consists of a narrator sitting in a recording booth reading the text, while a studio engineer and a director record and direct the performance.^[6] If a mistake is made the recording is stopped and the narrator reads it again.^[6]

Narrators are usually paid on a finished recorded hour basis, meaning if it took 20 hours to produce a 5 hour book, the narrator is paid for 5 hours, thus providing an incentive not to make mistakes.^[6] Depending on the narrator they are paid US$150 per finished hour to US$400 (as of 2011^[update]).^[6] The overall cost to produce an audiobook is US$5,000 at the minimum to many tens of thousands, depending on the length of the book and the narrator (as of 2011^[update]).^[6]

Formats[link]

Audiobooks are distributed on CDs, cassette tapes, MP3-formatted audio CDs (MP3CDs), downloadable digital formats (e.g., MP3 (.mp3), Windows Media Audio (.wma), Advanced Audio Coding (.aac)) and preloaded digital in which the audio content is preloaded and sold together with a hardware device.

In 1955 a German inventor introduced the Sound Book cassette system where instead of a magnetic tape the words and sounds were recorded on a continuous loop grooved tape similar to the old 8-track tape only it was picked back up like the old vinyl record stylus system. One Sound Book could hold eight hours of recordings. It never became widespread in use.^[7]

In 2005, cassette tape sales were 16% of the audiobook market,^[8] with CD sales accounting for 74% of the market and downloadable audio books accounting for approximately 9%. In the United States, a sales survey (performed by the Audio Publishers' Association in the summer of 2006 for the year 2005) estimated the industry to be worth 871 million US dollars.

A small number of books are recorded for radio broadcast, (radio programs serializing books), usually in abridged form and sometimes serialized, notably by the BBC. The advent of the Internet has introduced powerful means of delivery for audiobooks; many titles are now available on-line (for download on to computers, tablets, and phones, or one may listen to website audio streams without having to download anything).

Audiobooks may come as fully dramatized versions of the printed book, sometimes calling upon a complete cast, music, and sound effects. A dramatized audio adaptation of a book is effectively an audio drama.

Sometimes audiobook format is available simultaneously with book publication.

Distribution and popularity[link]

Recent technology has encouraged the proliferation of free audiobooks that take works from the public domain and enlist volunteers to read them. Audiobooks also can be created with text to speech computer software, although the quality of synthesized speech may suffer by comparison to recordings by a human voice. On the other hand, computer-voiced reading enables the proliferation of more works faster through automation, than if read by humans.

Audiobooks in the private domain are also distributed online by for-profit companies. Until recently, major audiobook publishers required that their works be protected by Digital Rights Management (DRM), when sold as downloads, but this is no longer the case. Companies such as Apple Inc. have licensed their proprietary FairPlay DRM system (for DRM protection of iPod files in the .aa file format) to only one company.^[9] Because of the long-standing major publishers' insistence on DRM, this effectively created a monopoly in the sale of the works of major publishers to iPod users, who make up the majority of the portable audio market.^[10]

Audiobooks on cassette or CD are typically more expensive than hardcovers because of the added expense of recording and the lack of the economy of scale in high "print" runs that are available in the publishing of printed books. Downloadable audiobooks tend to cost slightly less than hardcovers but more than their paperback equivalents. Market penetration of audiobooks is substantially lower than for their printed counterparts despite the high market penetration of the hardware (MP3 and WMA players) and despite the massive market penetration achieved by audio music products.

However, there are certain economies of scale that favor downloadable audiobooks. Downloadable audiobooks do not carry mass production costs, do not require storage of a large inventory, do not require physical packaging or transportation and even if "returned" do not require a cost of physical return or destruction/disposal. If such economies were passed on to customers, unit profit margins would be reduced but sales volumes would increase. It is not known what effect this would have on book sales in other formats.

Use[link]

Audiobooks have been used to teach children to read and to increase reading comprehension. They are also useful for the blind. The National Library of Congress in the U.S. and the CNIB Library in Canada provide free audiobook library services to the visually impaired; requested books are mailed out (at no cost) to clients. Founded in 1996, Assistive Media of Ann Arbor, Michigan was the first organization to produce and deliver spoken-word recordings of written journalistic and literary works via the Internet to serve people with visual impairments.

About forty percent of all audiobook consumption occurs through public libraries, with the remainder served primarily through retail book stores. Library download programs are currently experiencing rapid growth (more than 5,000 public libraries offer free downloadable audio books). Libraries are also popular places to check out audio books in the CD format.^[11] According to the National Endowment for the Arts' recent study, "Reading at Risk", audio book listening is one of very few "types" of reading that is increasing general literacy.

Listening practices[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Audio books are considered a valuable learning tool because of their format. Unlike traditional books or a video program, one can learn from an audiobook while doing other tasks, although it should be noted that this can detract from the primary task, assuming the learning is not the main activity. Such multitasking is feasible when doing mechanical tasks that do not require much thought and have only little or no chance of an emergency arising. Such tasks include doing the laundry and exercising indoors, among others. The most popular general use of audiobooks by adults is when driving an automobile or traveling with public transport, as an alternative to radio. Many people listen as well just to relax or as they drift off into sleep.

Common practices include:

• Replaying: Depending upon one's degree of attention and interest, it is often necessary to listen to segments of an audio book more than once to allow the material to be understood and retained satisfactorily. Replaying may be done immediately or after extended periods of time.
• Learning: People may listen to an audio book (usually an unabridged one) while following along in an actual book. This helps them to learn words that they may not learn correctly if they were only to read the book. This can also be a very effective way to learn a new language.

Audiobook charities in the UK[link]

Listening Books is an audiobook charity in the UK providing an internet streaming and postal service to anyone who has a disability or illness which makes it difficult to hold a book, turn its pages, or read in the usual way. They have audiobooks for both leisure and learning and a library of over 4,000 titles which are recorded in their own digital studios or commercially sourced.

The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB) is a UK charity which offers a Talking Books library service. The audio books are provided in DAISY format and delivered to the reader's house by post. There are over 18,000 audio books available to borrow, paid for by annual subscription. RNIB subsidises the Talking Books service by around £4 million a year.^[12]

Example of an audio studio of professional readings.

See also[link]

• Children's gramophone records
• Educational software
• LibriVox
• Playaway
• Radio drama
• Learning Ally
• Text-to-speech
• Voice acting
• Wikibooks
• Wikisource
• Books for the Blind
• National Audio Theatre Festival, a national audio arts organization and workshop, which includes training for aspiring audiobook artists/producers.

References[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Audiobooks

Douglas Adams
Born	(1952-03-11)11 March 1952 Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
Died	11 May 2001(2001-05-11) (aged 49) Santa Barbara, California, United States
Resting place	Highgate Cemetery, London, England
Occupation	Writer
Alma mater	St John's College, Cambridge
Genres	Science fiction, comedy, satire
Influences Monty Python, Robert Sheckley, Kurt Vonnegut, P. G. Wodehouse, Richard Dawkins
Influenced Richard Dawkins, Eoin Colfer, Neil Gaiman
douglasadams.com

Douglas Noel Adams (11 March 1952 – 11 May 2001) was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television series, several stage plays, comics, a computer game, and in 2005 a feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.^[1]

Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), Last Chance to See (1990), and three stories for the television series Doctor Who. A posthumous collection of his work, including an unfinished novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.

Adams became known as an advocate for environmental and conservation causes, and also as a lover of fast cars, cameras, and the Apple Macintosh. He was a staunch atheist, famously imagining a sentient puddle who wakes up one morning and thinks, "This is an interesting world I find myself in—an interesting hole I find myself in—fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!"^[2] Biologist Richard Dawkins dedicated his book, The God Delusion (2006), to Adams, writing on his death that, "Science has lost a friend, literature has lost a luminary, the mountain gorilla and the black rhino have lost a gallant defender."^[3]

Early life[link]

Adams was born on 11 March 1952 to Janet (née Donovan) and Christopher Douglas Adams in Cambridge, England.^[4] The following year Watson and Crick famously first modelled DNA at Cambridge University, leading Adams to later quip he was DNA in Cambridge months earlier. The family moved to East London a few months after his birth where his sister, Susan, was born three years later.^[5] His parents divorced in 1957; Douglas, Susan, and their mother moved to an RSPCA animal shelter in Brentwood, Essex, run by his maternal grandparents.^[6]

Adams's father married Mary Judith Stewart (born Judith Robertson) in July 1960, a marriage that produced a half-sister, Heather; his mother's 1964 remarriage to veterinarian Ron Thrift provided two more half-siblings, Jane and James Thrift.^{[citation needed]}

Education[link]

Adams attended Primrose Hill Primary School in Brentwood. At nine, he passed the entrance exam for Brentwood School, an independent school whose alumni include Robin Day, Jack Straw, Noel Edmonds, and David Irving. Griff Rhys Jones was a year below him, and he was in the same class as Stuckist artist Charles Thomson. He attended the prep school from 1959 to 1964, then the main school until December 1970. His form master, Frank Halford, said of him: "Hundreds of boys have passed through the school but Douglas Adams really stood out from the crowd—literally. He was unnecessarily tall and in his short trousers he looked a trifle self-conscious. "The form-master wouldn't say 'Meet under the clock tower,' or 'Meet under the war memorial'," he joked, "but 'Meet under Adams'."^[7][8] Yet it was his ability to write first-class stories that really made him shine."^[9] Adams was six feet tall (1.83 m) by age 12 and finally stopped growing at 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m): He became the only student ever to be awarded a ten out of ten by Halford for creative writing, something he remembered for the rest of his life, particularly when facing writer's block.^[10]

Some of his earliest writing was published at the school, such as a report on its photography club in The Brentwoodian in 1962, or spoof reviews in the school magazine Broadsheet, edited by Paul Neil Milne Johnstone, who later became a character in The Hitchhiker's Guide. He also designed the cover of one issue of the Broadsheet, and had a letter and short story published nationally in The Eagle, the boys' comic, in 1965. On the strength of a bravura essay on religious poetry that discussed The Beatles and William Blake, he was awarded a place at St John's College, Cambridge to read English, going up in 1971, though in fact the reason he applied to Cambridge was to join the Footlights, an invitation-only student comedy club that has acted as a hothouse for some of the most notable comic talent in England. He was not elected immediately as he had hoped, and started to write and perform in revues with Will Adams (no relation) and Martin Smith, forming a group called "Adams-Smith-Adams," but through sheer doggedness managed to become a member of the Footlights by 1973.^[11] Despite doing very little work—he recalled having completed three essays in three years—he graduated in 1974 with a B.A. in English literature.^[4]

Career[link]

Writing[link]

After leaving university Adams moved back to London, determined to break into TV and radio as a writer. An edited version of the Footlights Revue appeared on BBC2 television in 1974. A version of the Revue performed live in London's West End led to Adams being discovered by Monty Python's Graham Chapman. The two formed a brief writing partnership, earning Adams a writing credit in episode 45 of Monty Python for a sketch called "Patient Abuse". He is one of only two people outside the original Python members to get a writing credit (the other being Neil Innes).^[12] The sketch plays on the idea of mind-boggling paper work in an emergency, a joke later incorporated into the Vogons' obsession with paperwork. Adams also contributed to a sketch on the album for Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

Adams had two brief appearances in the fourth series of Monty Python's Flying Circus. At the beginning of episode 42, "The Light Entertainment War", Adams is in a surgeon's mask (as Dr. Emile Koning, according to on-screen captions), pulling on gloves, while Michael Palin narrates a sketch that introduces one person after another but never actually gets started. At the beginning of episode 44, "Mr. Neutron", Adams is dressed in a "pepperpot" outfit and loads a missile on to a cart driven by Terry Jones, who is calling for scrap metal ("Any old iron..."). The two episodes were broadcast in November 1974. Adams and Chapman also attempted non-Python projects, including Out of the Trees.

At this point Adams's career stalled; his writing style was unsuited to the current style of radio and TV comedy.^[4] To make ends meet he took a series of odd jobs, including as a hospital porter, barn builder, and chicken shed cleaner. He was employed as a bodyguard by a Qatari family, who had made their fortune in oil. Anecdotes about the job included that the family had once ordered one of everything from a hotel's menu, tried all the dishes, and sent out for hamburgers. Another story had to do with a prostitute sent to the floor Adams was guarding one evening. They acknowledged each other as she entered, and an hour later, when she left, she is said to have remarked, "At least you can read while you're on the job."^[13]

During this time Adams continued to write and submit sketches, though few were accepted. In 1976 his career had a brief improvement when he wrote and performed, to good review, Unpleasantness at Brodie's Close at the Edinburgh Fringe festival. But by Christmas work had dried up again, and a depressed Adams moved to live with his mother.^[4] The lack of writing work hit him hard and a low confidence would become a feature of Adams's life; "I have terrible periods of lack of confidence [..] I briefly did therapy, but after a while I realised it was like a farmer complaining about the weather. You can't fix the weather – you just have to get on with it".^[14]

Some of Adams's early radio work included sketches for The Burkiss Way in 1977 and The News Huddlines. He also wrote, again with Graham Chapman, the 20 February 1977 episode of Doctor on the Go, a sequel to the Doctor in the House television comedy series. After the first radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide became successful, Adams was made a BBC radio producer, working on Week Ending and a pantomime called Black Cinderella Two Goes East. He left the position after six months to become the script editor for Doctor Who.

In 1979 Adams and John Lloyd wrote scripts for two half-hour episodes of Doctor Snuggles: "The Remarkable Fidgety River" and "The Great Disappearing Mystery" (episodes seven and twelve). John Lloyd was also co-author of two episodes from the original Hitchhiker radio series ("Fit the Fifth" and "Fit the Sixth", also known as "Episode Five" and "Episode Six"), as well as The Meaning of Liff and The Deeper Meaning of Liff. Lloyd and Adams also collaborated on an SF movie comedy project based on The Guinness Book of World Records, which would have starred John Cleese as the UN Secretary General, and had a race of aliens beating humans in athletic competitions, but the humans winning in all of the "absurd" record categories. The latter never proceeded past a treatment.

[edit] The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a concept for a science-fiction comedy radio series pitched by Adams and radio producer Simon Brett to BBC Radio 4 in 1977. Adams came up with an outline for a pilot episode, as well as a few other stories (reprinted in Neil Gaiman's book Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion) that could potentially be used in the series.

Towel Day 2005 in Innsbruck, Austria, where Adams first had the idea of The Hitchhiker's Guide. Several of the novels' ideas have become iconic, including that of a towel being the most useful thing a space traveller can have. The annual Towel Day (25 May) was first celebrated in 2001, two weeks after Adams's death.

According to Adams, the idea for the title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy occurred to him while he lay drunk in a field in Innsbruck, Austria, gazing at the stars, though he joked that the BBC would instead claim it was Spain "probably because it's easier to spell".^[15] He had been wandering the countryside while carrying a book called the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe when he ran into a town where everyone was either "deaf" and "dumb" or only spoke languages he could not understand. After wandering around and drinking for a while, he went to sleep in the middle of a field and was inspired by his inability to communicate with the townspeople. He later said that due to his constantly retelling this story of inspiration, he no longer had any memory of the moment of inspiration itself, and only remembered his retelling of that moment.

Despite the original outline, Adams was said to make up the stories as he wrote. He turned to John Lloyd for help with the final two episodes of the first series. Lloyd contributed bits from an unpublished science fiction book of his own, called GiGax.^[16] Very little of Lloyd's material survived in later adaptations of Hitchhiker's, such as the novels and the TV series. The TV series itself was based on the first six radio episodes, but sections contributed by Lloyd were largely re-written.

BBC Radio 4 broadcast the first radio series weekly in the UK in March and April 1978. Following the success of the first series, another episode was recorded and broadcast, which was commonly known as the Christmas Episode. A second series of five episodes was broadcast one per night, during the week of 21–25 January 1980.

While working on the radio series (and with simultaneous projects such as The Pirate Planet) Adams developed problems keeping to writing deadlines that only got worse as he published novels. Adams was never a prolific writer and usually had to be forced by others to do any writing. This included being locked in a hotel suite with his editor for three weeks to ensure that So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish was completed.^[17] He was quoted as saying, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by."^[18] Despite the difficulty with deadlines, Adams wrote five novels in the series, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984, and 1992.

The books formed the basis for other adaptations, such as three-part comic book adaptations for each of the first three books, an interactive text-adventure computer game, and a photo-illustrated edition, published in 1994. This latter edition featured a 42 Puzzle designed by Adams, which was later incorporated into paperback covers of the first four Hitchhiker's novels (the paperback for the fifth re-used the artwork from the hardback edition).^[19]

In 1980 Adams also began attempts to turn the first Hitchhiker's novel into a movie, making several trips to Los Angeles, and working with a number of Hollywood studios and potential producers. The next year, 1981, the radio series became the basis for a BBC television mini-series^[20] broadcast in six parts. When he died in 2001 in California, he had been trying again to get the movie project started with Disney, which had bought the rights in 1998. The screenplay finally got a posthumous re-write by Karey Kirkpatrick, was green-lit in September 2003, and the resulting movie was released in 2005.

Radio producer Dirk Maggs had consulted with Adams, first in 1993, and later in 1997 and 2000 about creating a third radio series, based on the third novel in the Hitchhiker's series.^[21] They also vaguely discussed the possibilities of radio adaptations of the final two novels in the five-book "trilogy". As with the movie, this project was only realised after Adams's death. The third series, The Tertiary Phase, was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in September 2004 and was subsequently released on audio CD. With the aid of a recording of his reading of Life, the Universe and Everything and editing, Adams can be heard playing the part of Agrajag posthumously. So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish and Mostly Harmless made up the fourth and fifth radio series, respectively (on radio they were titled The Quandary Phase and The Quintessential Phase) and these were broadcast in May and June 2005, and also subsequently released on Audio CD. The last episode in the last series (with a new, "more upbeat" ending) concluded with, "The very final episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is affectionately dedicated to its author."^[22]

[edit] Dirk Gently series

Douglas Adams in March 2000

In between Adams's first trip to Madagascar with Mark Carwardine in 1985, and their series of travels that formed the basis for the radio series and non-fiction book Last Chance to See, Adams wrote two other novels with a new cast of characters. Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was first published in 1987, and was described by its author as "a kind of ghost-horror-detective-time-travel-romantic-comedy-epic, mainly concerned with mud, music and quantum mechanics."^[23]

A sequel novel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, was published a year later. This was an entirely original work, Adams's first since So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. After the book tour, Adams set off on his round-the-world excursion which supplied him with the material for Last Chance to See.

[edit] Doctor Who

Adams sent the script for the HHGG pilot radio programme to the Doctor Who production office in 1978, and was commissioned to write The Pirate Planet (see below). He had also previously attempted to submit a potential movie script, called "Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen," which later became his novel Life, the Universe and Everything (which in turn became the third Hitchhiker's Guide radio series). Adams then went on to serve as script editor on the show for its seventeenth season in 1979. Altogether, he wrote three Doctor Who serials starring Tom Baker as the Doctor:

• The Pirate Planet (the second serial in the "Key To Time" arc, in Season 16)
• City of Death (with producer Graham Williams, from an original storyline by writer David Fisher. It was transmitted under the pseudonym "David Agnew")
• Shada (only partially filmed and not broadcast due to industrial disputes)

The episodes authored by Adams are some of the few that have not been novelised as Adams would not allow anyone else to write them, and asked for a higher price than the publishers were willing to pay.^[24]

Adams was also known to allow in-jokes from The Hitchhiker's Guide to appear in the Doctor Who stories he wrote and other stories on which he served as Script Editor. Subsequent writers have also inserted Hitchhiker's references, even as recently as 2007. Conversely, at least one reference to Doctor Who was worked into a Hitchhiker's novel. In Life, the Universe and Everything, two characters travel in time and land on the pitch at Lord's Cricket Ground. The reaction of the radio commentators to their sudden appearance is very similar to the reactions of commentators in a scene in the eighth episode of the 1965–66 story The Daleks' Master Plan, which has the Doctor's TARDIS materialise on the pitch at Lord's.

Elements of Shada and City of Death were reused in Adams's later novel Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, in particular the character of Professor Chronotis. Big Finish Productions eventually remade Shada as an audio play starring Paul McGann as the Doctor. Accompanied by partially animated illustrations, it was webcast on the BBC website in 2003, and subsequently released as a two-CD set later that year. An omnibus edition of this version was broadcast on the digital radio station BBC7 on 10 December 2005.

Adams is credited with introducing a fan and later friend of his, the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, to Dawkins's future wife, Lalla Ward, who had played the part of Romana in Doctor Who. Dawkins confirmed this in his eulogy of Adams.^[25]

When he was at school he wrote and performed a play called Doctor Which.^[26]

Music[link]

Adams played the guitar left-handed and had a collection of twenty-four left-handed guitars when he died in 2001 (having received his first guitar in 1964). He also studied piano in the 1960s with the same teacher as Paul Wickens, the pianist who plays in Paul McCartney's band (and composed the music for the 2004–2005 editions of the Hitchhiker's Guide radio series).^[27] The Beatles, Pink Floyd and Procol Harum all had important influence on Adams's work.

Pink Floyd[link]

Adams included a direct reference to Pink Floyd in the original radio version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which he describes the main characters surveying the landscape of an alien planet while Marvin, their android companion, hums Pink Floyd's "Shine on You Crazy Diamond". This was cut out of the CD version. Adams also compared the various noises that the kakapo makes to "Pink Floyd studio out-takes" in his nonfiction book on endangered species, Last Chance to See.

Adams's official biography shares its name with the song "Wish You Were Here" by Pink Floyd. Adams was friends with Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour and, on the occasion of Adams's 42nd birthday (the number 42 having special significance, being the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything and also Adams's age when his daughter Polly was born), he was invited to make a guest appearance at Pink Floyd's 28 October 1994 concert at Earls Court in London, playing guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse". Adams chose the name for Pink Floyd's 1994 album, The Division Bell, by picking the words from the lyrics to one of its tracks, namely "High Hopes". Gilmour also performed at Adams's memorial service following his death in 2001, and what would have been Adams' 60th birthday party in 2012.

Procol Harum[link]

Douglas Adams was a friend of Gary Brooker, the lead singer, pianist and songwriter of the progressive rock band Procol Harum. Adams is known to have invited Brooker to one of the many parties that Adams held at his house. On one such occasion Gary Brooker performed the full (4 verse) version of his hit song "A Whiter Shade of Pale". Brooker also performed at Adams's memorial service.

Adams also appeared on stage with Brooker to perform "In Held Twas in I" at Redhill when the band's lyricist Keith Reid was not available. On several other occasions he had been known to introduce Procol Harum at their gigs.

Adams also let it be known that while writing he would listen to music, and this would occasionally influence his work. On one occasion the title track from the Procol Harum album Grand Hotel was playing when...

Suddenly in the middle of the song there was this huge orchestral climax that came out of nowhere and did not seem to be about anything. I kept wondering what was this huge thing happening in the background? And I eventually thought ... it sounds as if there ought to be some sort of floorshow going on. Something huge and extraordinary, like, well, like the end of the universe. And so that was where the idea for The Restaurant at the End of the Universe came from.

— Douglas Adams, Procol Harum at The Barbican^[28]

Computer games and projects[link]

Douglas Adams created an interactive fiction version of HHGG together with Steve Meretzky from Infocom in 1984. In 1986 he participated in a week-long brainstorming session with the Lucasfilm Games team for the game Labyrinth. Later he was also involved in creating Bureaucracy (also by Infocom, but not based on any book; Adams wrote it as a parody of events in his own life). Adams was also responsible for the computer game Starship Titanic, which was published in 1998 by Simon and Schuster. Terry Jones wrote the accompanying book, entitled Douglas Adams’s Starship Titanic, since Adams was too busy with the computer game to do both. In April 1999, Adams initiated the h2g2 collaborative writing project, an experimental attempt at making The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy a reality, and at harnessing the collective brainpower of the internet community.

In 1990 Adams wrote and presented a television documentary programme Hyperland^[29] which featured Tom Baker as a "software agent" (similar to the "Assistants" used in several versions of Microsoft Office, derived from their failed "Bob" program), and interviews with Ted Nelson, which was essentially about the use of hypertext. Although Adams did not invent hypertext, he was an early adopter and advocate of it. This was the same year that Tim Berners-Lee used the idea of hypertext in his HTML.

Personal beliefs and activism[link]

Atheism and views on religion[link]

Adams described himself as a "radical atheist", adding radical for emphasis so he would not be asked if he meant agnostic. He told American Atheists that this made things easier, but most importantly it conveyed the fact that he really meant it. "I am convinced that there is not a god," he said. Despite this, he remained fascinated by religion because of its effect on human affairs. "I love to keep poking and prodding at it. I’ve thought about it so much over the years that that fascination is bound to spill over into my writing."^[30]

The evolutionary biologist and atheist Richard Dawkins in The God Delusion uses Adams's influence throughout to exemplify arguments for non-belief; Dawkins jokingly states that Adams is "possibly [my] only convert" to atheism.^[31] The book is dedicated to Adams, quoting him, "Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?"

Environmental activism[link]

Adams was also an environmental activist who campaigned on behalf of a number of endangered species. This activism included the production of the non-fiction radio series Last Chance to See, in which he and naturalist Mark Carwardine visited rare species such as the Kakapo and Baiji, and the publication of a tie-in book of the same name. In 1992 this was made into a CD-ROM combination of audio book, e-book and picture slide show.

Adams and Mark Carwardine contributed the 'Meeting a Gorilla' passage from Last Chance to See to the book The Great Ape Project.^[32] This book, edited by Paola Cavalieri and Peter Singer launched a wider-scale project in 1993, which calls for the extension of moral equality to include all great apes, human and non-human.

In 1994 he participated in a climb of Mount Kilimanjaro while wearing a rhino suit for the British charity organisation Save the Rhino. Many different people participated in the same climb and took turns wearing the rhino suit; Adams wore the suit while travelling to the mountain before the climb proper began. About £100,000 were raised through that event, benefiting schools in Kenya and a Black Rhinoceros preservation programme in Tanzania. Adams was also an active supporter of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. Since 2003, Save the Rhino has held an annual Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture around the time of his birthday to raise money for environmental campaigns.^[33] The lectures in the series are:

• 2003 Richard Dawkins – Queerer than we can suppose: the strangeness of science
• 2004 Robert Swan – Mission Antarctica
• 2005 Mark Carwardine – Last Chance to See... Just a bit more
• 2006 Robert Winston – Is the Human an Endangered Species?
• 2007 Richard Leakey – Wildlife Management in East Africa – Is there a future?
• 2008 Steven Pinker – The Stuff of Thought, Language as a Window into Human Nature
• 2009 Benedict Allen – Unbreakable
• 2010 Marcus du Sautoy – 42: the answer to life, the universe and prime numbers
• 2011 Brian Cox – The Universe and Why We Should Explore It

Technology[link]

Adams was a serious fan of technology. Though he did not buy his first word processor until 1982, he had considered one as early as 1979. He was quoted as saying that until 1982, he had difficulties with "the impenetrable barrier of jargon. Words were flying backwards and forwards without concepts riding on their backs." In 1982 his first purchase was a 'Nexus'. In 1983, when he and Jane Belson went out to Los Angeles, he bought a DEC Rainbow. Upon their return to England, Adams bought an Apricot, then a BBC Micro and a Tandy 1000.^[34] In Last Chance to See Adams mentions his Cambridge Z88, which he had taken to Zaire on a quest to find the Northern White Rhinoceros.^[35]

Adams's posthumously published work, The Salmon of Doubt, features multiple articles by him on the subject of technology, including reprints of articles that originally ran in MacUser magazine, and in The Independent on Sunday newspaper. In these Adams claims that one of the first computers he ever saw was a Commodore PET, and that his love affair with the Apple Macintosh first began after seeing one at Infocom's headquarters in Massachusetts in 1983.^[36]

As he wrote himself:^[37]

"I adore my Macintosh, or rather my family of however many Macintoshes it is that I've recklessly accumulated over the years. I've adored it since I first saw one at Infocom's offices in Boston in 1983."

Adams was a Macintosh user from the time they first came out in 1984 until his death in 2001. He was the first person to buy a Mac in Europe (the second being Stephen Fry – though some accounts differ on this, saying Fry bought his Mac first. Fry himself claims he was second to Adams^[38]). Adams was also an "Apple Master", one of several celebrities whom Apple made into spokespeople for its products (other Apple Masters included John Cleese and Gregory Hines). Adams's contributions included a rock video that he created using the first version of iMovie with footage featuring his daughter Polly. The video was available on Adams's .Mac homepage. Adams even installed and started using the first release of Mac OS X in the weeks leading up to his death. His very last post to his own forum was in praise of Mac OS X and the possibilities of its Cocoa programming framework. He said it was "awesome...", which was also the last word he wrote on his site.^[39] Adams can also be seen in the Omnibus tribute included with the Region One/NTSC DVD release of the TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide using Mac OS X on his PowerBook G3.

Adams used e-mail extensively from the technology's infancy, adopting a very early version of e-mail to correspond with Steve Meretzky during the pair's collaboration on Infocom's version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.^[40] While living in New Mexico in 1993 he set up another e-mail address and began posting to his own USENET newsgroup, alt.fan.douglas-adams, and occasionally, when his computer was acting up, to the comp.sys.mac hierarchy.^[41] Many of his posts are now archived through Google. Challenges to the authenticity of his messages later led Adams to set up a message forum on his own website to avoid the issue. Adams was also a keynote speaker for the April 2001 Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, one of the major technical conferences on embedded system engineering. In his keynote speech, he shared his vision of technology and how it should contribute in everyday – and every man's – life.^[42]

Personal life[link]

Adams moved to Upper Street, Islington, in 1981^[43] and to Duncan Terrace in Islington in the late 1980s.^[43]

In the early 1980s Adams had an affair with novelist Sally Emerson, who was separated from her husband at that time. Adams later dedicated his book Life, the Universe and Everything to Emerson. In 1981 Emerson returned to her husband, Peter Stothard, a contemporary of Adams's at Brentwood School, and later editor of The Times. Adams was soon introduced by friends to Jane Belson, with whom he later became romantically involved. Belson was the "lady barrister" mentioned in the jacket-flap biography printed in his books during the mid-1980s ("He [Adams] lives in Islington with a lady barrister and an Apple Macintosh"). The two lived in Los Angeles together during 1983 while Adams worked on an early screenplay adaptation of Hitchhiker's. When the deal fell through, they moved to London, and after several separations ("He is currently not certain where he lives, or with whom"^[44]) and an aborted engagement, they married on 25 November 1991. Adams and Belson had one daughter together, Polly Jane Rocket Adams, born on 22 June 1994, shortly after Adams turned 42. In 1999 the family moved from London to Santa Barbara, California, where they lived until his death. Following the funeral, Jane Belson and Polly Adams returned to London.^[45] Jane died on 7 September 2011.^[46]

Death[link]

Douglas Adams's gravestone, Highgate Cemetery, North London

Adams died of a heart attack on 11 May 2001, aged 49, after resting from his regular workout at a private gym in Montecito, California. He had unknowingly suffered a gradual narrowing of the coronary arteries, which led at that moment to a myocardial infarction and a fatal cardiac arrhythmia. Adams had been due to deliver the commencement address at Harvey Mudd College on 13 May.^[47] His funeral was held on 16 May in Santa Barbara, California. His remains were subsequently cremated and the ashes placed in Highgate Cemetery in north London in June 2002.^[48]

A memorial service was held on 17 September 2001 at St. Martin-in-the-Fields Church, Trafalgar Square, London. This became the first church service of any kind broadcast live on the web by the BBC.^[49] Video clips of the service are still available on the BBC's website for download.^[50]

One of his last public appearances was a talk given at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Parrots, the universe and everything, recorded days before his death.^[51] A full transcript of the talk is also available.^[52]

In May 2002 The Salmon of Doubt was published, containing many short stories, essays, and letters, as well as eulogies from Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry (in the UK edition), Christopher Cerf (in the U.S. edition), and Terry Jones (in the U.S. paperback edition). It also includes eleven chapters of his long-awaited but unfinished novel, The Salmon of Doubt, which was originally intended to become a new Dirk Gently novel, but might have later become the sixth Hitchhiker novel.^[53][54]

Other events after Adams's death included a webcast production of Shada, allowing the complete story to be told, radio dramatisations of the final three books in the Hitchhiker's series, and the completion of the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The film, released in 2005, posthumously credits Adams as a producer, and several art design elements – most notably a head-shaped planet seen near the end of the film – incorporated Adams's features.

A 12-part radio series based on the Dirk Gently novels was announced in 2007, with annual transmissions starting in October of that year.^[55]

BBC Radio 4 also commissioned a third Dirk Gently radio series based on the incomplete chapters of The Salmon of Doubt, and written by Kim Fuller;^[56] however, this has now been dropped in favour of a BBC TV series based on the two completed novels.^[57] A sixth Hitchhiker novel, And Another Thing..., by Artemis Fowl author Eoin Colfer, was released on 12 October 2009 (the 30th anniversary of the first book), published with the full support of Adams's estate. A BBC Radio 4 Book at Bedtime adaptation and an audio book soon followed.

In 2011, over 3000 people took part in a public vote to choose the subjects of People's Plaques in Islington.^[43] As a result, it was decided to erect a plaque in Adams's honour, on a date yet to be announced.^[43] Adams received 489 votes.^[43]

Works[link]

Works about[link]

Articles[link]

• Herbert, R. (1980). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Book Review). Library Journal, 105(16), 1882.
• Adams, J., & Brown, R. (1981). The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Book Review). School Library Journal, 27(5), 74.
• Nickerson, S. L. (1982). The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Book). Library Journal, 107(4), 476.
• Nickerson, S. L. (1982). Life, the Universe, and Everything (Book). Library Journal, 107(18), 2007.
• Morner, C. (1982). The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Book Review). School Library Journal, 28(8), 87.
• Morner, C. (1983). Life, the Universe and Everything (Book Review). School Library Journal, 29(6), 93.
• Shorb, B. (1985). So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (Book). School Library Journal, 31(6), 90.
• The Long Dark Tea-Time Of The Soul (Book). (1989). Atlantic (02769077), 263(4), 99.
• Hoffert, B., & Quinn, J. (1990). Last Chance To See (Book). Library Journal, 115(16), 77.
• Reed, S. S., & Cook, I. I. (1991). Dances with kakapos. People, 35(19), 79.
• Last Chance to See (Book). (1991). Science News, 139(8), 126.
• Field, M. M., & Steinberg, S. S. (1991). Douglas Adams. Publishers Weekly, 238(6), 62.
• Dieter, W. (1991). Last Chance to See (Book). Smithsonian, 22(3), 140.
• Dykhuis, R. (1991). Last Chance To See (Book). Library Journal, 116(1), 140.
• Beatty, J. (1991). Good Show (Book). Atlantic (02769077), 267(3), 131.
• A guide to the future. (1992). Maclean's, 106(44), 51.
• Zinsser, J. (1993). Audio reviews: Fiction. Publishers Weekly, 240(9), 24.
• Taylor, B., & Annichiarico, M. (1993). Audio reviews. Library Journal, 118(2), 132.
• Good reads. (1995). NetGuide, 2(4), 109.
• Stone, B. (1998). The unsinkable starship. Newsweek, 131(15), 78.
• Gaslin, G. (2001). Galaxy Quest. Entertainment Weekly, (599), 79.
• So long, and thanks for all the fish. (2001). Economist, 359(8222), 79.
• Geier, T., & Raftery, B. M. (2001). Legacy. Entertainment Weekly, (597), 11.
• Passages. (2001). Maclean's, 114(21), 13.
• Don't panic! Douglas Adams to keynote Embedded show. (2001). Embedded Systems Programming, 14(3), 10.
• Ehrenman, G. (2001). World Wide Weird. InternetWeek, (862), 15.
• Zaleski, J. (2002). The Salmon of Doubt (Book). Publishers Weekly, 249(15), 43.
• Mort, J. (2002). The Salmon of Doubt (Book). Booklist, 98(16), 1386.
• Lewis, D. L. (2002). Last Time Round The Galaxy. Quadrant Magazine, 46(9), 84.
• Burns, A. (2002). The Salmon of Doubt (Book). Library Journal, 127(15), 111.
• Burns, A., & Rhodes, B. (2002). The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (Book). Library Journal, 127(19), 118.
• Kaveney, R. (2002). A cheerful whale. TLS, (5173), 23.
• Pearl, N., & Welch, R. (2003). The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy (Book). Library Journal, 128(11), 124.
• Preying on composite materials. (2003). R&D Magazine, 45(6), 44.
• Webb, N. (2003). The Berkeley Hotel hostage. Bookseller, (5069), 25.
• The author who toured the universe. (2003). Bookseller, (5060), 35.
• Osmond, A. (2005). Only human. Sight & Sound, 15(5), 12-15.
• Culture vulture. (2005). Times Educational Supplement, (4640), 19.
• Maughan, S. (2005). Audio Bestsellers/Fiction. Publishers Weekly, 252(30), 17.
• Hitchhiker At The Science Museum. (2005). In Britain, 14(10), 9.
• Rea, A. (2005). The Adams asteroids. New Scientist, 185(2488), 31.
• Most Improbable Adventure. (2005). Popular Mechanics, 182(5), 32.
• The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy: The Tertiary Phase. (2005). Publishers Weekly, 252(14), 21.
• Bartelt, K. R. (2005). Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams. Library Journal, 130(4), 86.
• Larsen, D. (2005). I was a teenage android. New Zealand Listener, 198(3390), 37-38.
• Tanner, J. C. (2005). Simplicity: it's hard. Telecom Asia, 16(6), 6.
• Nielsen Bookscan Charts. (2005). Bookseller, (5175), 18-21.
• Buena Vista launches regional site to push Hitchhiker's movie. (2005). New Media Age, 9.
• Shynola bring Beckland to life. (2005). Creative Review, 25(3), 24-26.
• Carwardine, M. (2007, September 15). The baiji: So long and thanks for all the fish. New Scientist. pp. 50–53.
• Czarniawska, B. (2008). Accounting and gender across times and places: An excursion into fiction. Accounting, Organizations & Society, 33(1), 33-47.
• Pope, M. (2008). Life, the Universe, Religion and Science. Issues, (82), 31-34.
• Bearne, S. (2008). BBC builds site to trail Last Chance To See TV series. New Media Age, 08.
• Arrow to reissue Adams. (2008). Bookseller, (5352), 14.
• Page, B. (2008). Colfer is new Hitchhiker. Bookseller, (5350), 7.
• I've got a perfect puzzle for you. (2009). Bookseller, (5404), 42.
• Mostly Harmless…. (2009). Bookseller, (5374), 46.
• Penguin and PanMac hitch a ride together. (2009). Bookseller, (5373), 6.
• Adams, Douglas. Britannica Biographies [serial online]. October 2010;:1
• Douglas (Noël) Adams (1952–2001). Hutchinson's Biography Database [serial online]. July 2011;:1
• My life in books. (2011). Times Educational Supplement, (4940), 27.

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Hitchhiker's portal

• Towel Day is celebrated by Douglas Adams's fans annually on 25 May

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Adams, Douglas (1998). Is there an Artificial God?, speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, England, September 1998.
• Adams, Douglas (2002). The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time, Macmillan. ISBN 0-333-76657-1
• Dawkins, Richard (2001). Lament for Douglas Adams, The Guardian, 14 May 2001.
• Dawkins, Richard (2003). "Eulogy for Douglas Adams," in A devil's chaplain: reflections on hope, lies, science, and love. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.
• Felch, Laura (2004). Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Neil Gaiman, May 2004
• Ray, Mohit K (2007). Atlantic Companion to Literature in English, Atlantic Publishers and Distributors. ISBN 81-269-0832-7
• Simpson, M. J. (2003). Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams, Justin, Charles and Co. ISBN 1-932112-17-0
• Webb, Nick (2005a). Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams. Ballantine Books. ISBN 0-345-47650-6
• Webb, Nick (2005b). "Adams, Douglas Noël (1952–2001)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, January 2005, accessed 25 October 2005.

Further reading[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Douglas Adams

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Douglas Adams

Listen to this article (2 parts) · (info)

Part 1 • Part 2

This audio file was created from a revision of the "Douglas Adams" article dated 2006-02-11, and does not reflect subsequent edits to the article. (Audio help)

More spoken articles

• Adams's official web site, established by him, and still operated by The Digital Village
• Adams's .mac homepage
• Douglas Adams Quotes
• Douglas Adams at TED Conferences
• Douglas Adams speech at Digital Biota 2 (1998) (The audio of the speech)
• Guardian Books "Author Page", with profile and links to further articles.
• Works by or about Douglas Adams in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Douglas Adams & his Computer article about his Mac IIfx
• BBC2 "Omnibus" tribute to Adams, presented by Kirsty Wark, 4 August 2001
• Mueller, Rick and Greengrass, Joel (2002).Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams, documentary.
• Simpson, M.J. (2001). The Pocket Essential Hitchhiker's Guide. ISBN 1-903047-40-4. Updated April 2005 ISBN 1-904048-46-3
• Parrots, the Universe and Everything, 90 min talk at University of California Santa Barbara, 2001

External links[link]

• Douglas Adams at Find a Grave
• Towel Day, May 25

v t e The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy By Douglas Adams Books Main series The Hitchhiker'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 Related works Young Zaphod Plays It Safe The Original Radio Scripts The Salmon of Doubt by Dirk Maggs The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Scripts: The Tertiary, Quandary, and Quintessential Phases by Terry Jones Starship Titanic by Eoin Colfer And Another Thing... Media Radio series Phases 1 & 2 Phases 3, 4 & 5 TV series Film Timeline of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy versions Cast lists Games The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (with Steve Meretzky) Starship Titanic Companion media Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams Douglas Adams's Guide to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Characters Arthur Dent Ford Prefect Zaphod Beeblebrox Marvin the Paranoid Android Trillian Slartibartfast The Guide Minor characters Races and species Vogons Miscellanea Phrases Places Technology Somebody Else's Problem Encyclopedia Galactica In culture h2g2 Hitchcon International phenomenon Towel Day "Journey of the Sorcerer" 18610 Arthurdent 25924 Douglasadams The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Portal

Max Brooks
Max Brooks at Wizard World 2008.
Born	Maximillian Michael Brooks (1972-05-22) May 22, 1972 (age 40) New York City
Occupation	Author, Writer, Screenwriter
Nationality	United States
Genres	Humor, Horror
Spouse(s)	Michelle Kholos (2003)
Children	Henry Michael Brooks (b.2005)

Maximillian Michael "Max" Brooks (born May 22, 1972) is an American author and screenwriter, with a particular interest in zombies. Brooks is also a television and voice-over actor.

Biography[link]

Early life and education[link]

Max Brooks with father Mel Brooks in April 2010

Brooks was born in New York City, the son of the Jewish American director, producer, writer, and actor Mel Brooks and Italian American actress Anne Bancroft.^[1]

He is a graduate of Pitzer College, majoring in history,^[2] and delivered the commencement speech for the class of 2011.^[3][4]

Writing[link]

From 2001 to 2003, Brooks was a member of the writing team at Saturday Night Live.

Brooks is the author of The Zombie Survival Guide. The book touches on what it describes as pop cultural myths about zombies. The book was later followed up in 2009 by The Zombie Survival Guide: Recorded Attacks, a graphic novel depicting several of the events detailed in the book's latter section.

Brooks' book World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War, which deals with the war between the human race and zombies, was released on September 12, 2006. Paramount Pictures has acquired the movie rights; Brad Pitt's production company Plan B Entertainment will produce the film. In the October 2006 issue of Fangoria Magazine, Brooks stated that he will not be writing the screenplay for the motion picture, as he feels he is not an accomplished enough screenwriter to "do it right" (J. Michael Straczynski is writing the screenplay).^[5]

Brooks wrote the introduction for the hardcover collected edition of Dynamite Entertainment's zombie miniseries Raise the Dead released in 2007.^[6]

The New Dead, a 2010 anthology of previously unpublished zombie stories edited by Christopher Golden, contains an additional World War Z story titled "Closure, LTD."

In 2010, Brooks wrote the IDW comic book mini-series G.I. Joe: Hearts & Minds.^[7]

In 2011, Brooks wrote the foreword for Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Zombies, a 300 page nonfiction book written by zombie expert Matt Mogk.

Acting and voice-over work[link]

Brooks has a number of other creative credits.^[8] As an actor, he has been seen in Roseanne, To Be or Not to Be, Pacific Blue, and 7th Heaven.^[8] He also has a career voicing animation; his voice has been featured in the animated shows Batman Beyond, Buzz Lightyear of Star Command, Justice League and All Dogs Go to Heaven: The Series.^[8] During the start of the 3rd season of Lost Tapes, he was cast as himself in the zombie episode, telling the audience about how zombies come to be. He also appeared on Spike TV series "Deadliest Warrior", in which he represented the zombie team in the "Vampires vs Zombies" episode, as one of the Zombie experts along with Matt Mogk the Founder of the Zombie Research Society.^[9] He also appeared on the Discovery Channel"s "Sons of Guns" in a zombie gun build off (Civilian Vs. Military).

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website
• Max Brooks at the Internet Movie Database
• Max Brooks at the Grand Comics Database
• Max Brooks at the Comic Book DB
• Max Brooks at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Max Brooks at the Internet Book List