At Cambridge, Adams was a member of the Footlights revue group. Following in the tradition of previous members who had to gone on to develop such shows as
Beyond the Fringe and
Monty Python's Flying Circus, Adams eventually formed his own revue group, Adam Smith Adams, for which he wrote, performed, and sometimes directed shows produced in London and Cambridge and at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Adams's work belongs to a peculiarly English (and particularly Oxford and Cambridge) tradition of student comedy. Like "Oxbridge" satire--which has been criticized for focusing on parody, pastiche, and self-conscious cleverness while rarely entering into the realm of politics--Adams's comic novels are indebted to satirical sketch writing and undergraduate humor, while often avoiding any direct treatment of political controversy.
On graduating from Cambridge in 1974, Adams began to write for radio and television. In 1978-1980 he was script editor for the science-fiction series Doctor Who and wrote several episodes of the show, which then had (and continues to have) a cult following. Traces of its influence may be found in Adams's fiction. Like Adams's Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who addresses, in a futuristic setting, anxieties about contemporary science, technology, and culture. Like the scripts of Doctor Who, The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series plays with abstruse scientific language and flirts with the dangers of technology, opposing the ordinariness of daily life against the extraordinary possibilities of technology.
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