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25 October 2013

Douglas Adams Google Doodle: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe

Douglas Adams Google Doodle

Douglas Adams Google Doodle

Click to view the fully Animated Doodle

On March 11th 2013 Google celebrated the sixty first birthday of author Douglas Adams, with a Douglas Adams Google Doodle which pays tribute to his most famous literary outing: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe. The interactive Google Doodle included a few special treats to mark the occasion. When users placed their cursors over the elevator button on the far left hand side of the doodle, Marvin the Paranoid Android made famous for his pessimism in Hitchhiker’s appeared from the elevator. When user’s clicked on the tablet-like device on the desk of the Douglas Adams Google Doodle, a number of famous catch-phrases and quotes from Hitchhiker’s such as, “Mostly harmless” and “Don’t panic” would appear.

Also featured within the tables animations was an appearance from the series’ famous babel fish and a reference to the number 42.

Douglas Adams Google Doodle – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Radio Show

Douglas Adams was born in England in 1952, and began writing during secondary school. Post graduating from St. John’s College at Cambridge he moved to London, aiming to forge a career in radio and television. His early success included catching the attention of Monty Python’s Graham Chapman, which lead to a brief stint collaborating with the Monty Python team.

Douglas Adams Google Doodle Radio Show

However his beginners luck didn’t last. In the middle of the seventies, he struggled to find continuous work. Having to work odd jobs to make ends meet, while still trying to break into television.

This didn’t happen until the end of the decade; when The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the universe, appeared on radio as a spoken word series through the BBC.

Following the international success of the radio series, Adams penned an accompanying range of books, published in 1979, 1980, 1982, 1984 and 1992. The book series became immensely popular, and due this success there have been a variety of adaptations across a wide scope of mediums including a TV series, a computer game, an animated comic series, several stage renditions and the 2005 movie.

Adams also had a reasonable level of success as a script editor and writer. Although obtaining limited success in this sphere he did write an episode for Doctor Who in 1979. Adams other literary contributions include Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency published in 1987, due to the phenomenal success a follow up publication was produced in the next year, in the form of The Long Dark tea-time of the Soul.

Adams was a talented contributor to the sci-fi genre, both in terms of his literary skill and his boundless imagination. Unfortunately his career was cut short when he died of a heart attack in 2011, aged just 49.