Douglas Adams

In 1992 when I was running my charity HOPE and making programmes for Hospital Radio, I met Douglas Adams, writer of the Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. I only had approximately 20 minutes with him but my goodness did he give me a gem of an interview! I discovered he was very ahead of his time in being well in to Artifical Intelligence (A.I.), scientific exploration and ecology.

This is a transcription of the interview which you can also listen to in the Spoken Interview menu. Enjoy!

VW Douglas Adams welcome to HOPE you've written another excellent book called 'Mostly Helpless'.

DA Yes I've written another book, if you think it is excellent, I'm delighted its not for me to say (laughter) thank you very much.

VW It took you a long time to do this one though didn't it?

DA It did, it got very interrupted though by a number of things while writing the book. One of which was making a programme about writing the book for Melvin Braggs Show, which took several months out of my working schedule, and I also got married!

VW Congratulations.

When I did my interview with Douglas Adams way back in 1992 to talk about all his books he'd written to date and not just The Hitchkikers Guide to the Galaxy trilogy I discovered a man who was way ahead of his time. He was concerned and fascinated by how Man was treating the world and all it's inhabitants and how he would treat aliens from another planet. His interest in artificial intelligence (A.I.) was quite profound and as a scifi/fantasy writer he found the perfect genre to put forward his thoughts and feelings. Hear just how avant guard he was.