42 facts about Douglas Adams (+video)

31. Adams remains were cremated, along with his towel. His ashes reside at Highgate Cemetary in North London.

32. In 1979, "The Hitchhiker's Guide" became only radio show ever to be nominated for a Hugo Award, one of the most prestigious science fiction awards. It lost out to the movie "Superman," in the category "Best Dramatic Presentation."

33. On his 42nd birthday, Adams was invited to perform on stage with Pink Floyd in a concert at Earls Court in London. He played guitar on the songs "Brain Damage" and "Eclipse."

34. One of his biggest peeves was the proliferation of what he called "little dongly things," that is, non interchangeable power adapters. A number of smart-phone makers have since agreed to a standard, with the exception of Adams's beloved Apple.  

35. At the age of 31, Adams became the youngest writer every to receive a Golden Pan award, after "Hitchhiker's" sold more than 1 million copies. He would subsequently win the award twice more. 

36. Adams was a very early adopter of e-mail, having is own e-mail address as early as 1983.

37. In the 2004 remake of the Hitchhiker's radioplay, Adams posthumously portrayed Agrajag, a reincarnated being that by coincidence gets killed by Arthur Dent hundreds of times. Adams recorded the parts prior to his death.

38. The Alien Telescope Array, a joint project by the SETI Institute and the Radio Astronomy Laboratory at the University of California, Berkeley, which searches for electromagnetic signs of extraterrestrial intelligence, has 42 antennas, an homage to Douglas Adams.

39. A sixth book in the inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy was written by Irish novelist Eoin Colfer, with the permission of Adams's widow. It picks up where "Mostly Harmless" ended.

40. You can rearrange the letters in "Douglas Noel Adams" to get "Saloon Muddle Saga." 

41. Adams's daughter, Polly Jane Rocket Adams, runs a Tumblr called  #culturecoach, where she posts a film, a book, and an album suggested by one of three "Culture Coaches." One of her coaches is the author Neil Gaiman.

42. He chose the number 42 as the answer to the question of Life, the Universe, and Everything, because he wanted it to be an ordinary, smallish number, "the sort of number that you could without any fear introduce to your parents." (We wouldn't have minded if he'd picked a smaller number.) 

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