Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG). Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Piers Anthony Dillingham Jacob is an American author in the science fiction and fantasy genres, publishing under the name Piers Anthony. He is best known for his long-running novel series set in the fictional realm of Xanth.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a 1978 radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4, it was later adapted to other formats, including novels, stage shows, comic books, a 1981 TV series, a 1984 text adventure game, and 2005 feature film.
David Adam Javerbaum is an American comedy writer and lyricist. Javerbaum has won 13 Emmy Awards in his career, 11 of them for his work on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He runs the popular Twitter account @TheTweetOfGod, which at its peak had 6.2 million followers. The account was the basis for his play An Act of God, which opened on Broadway in the spring of 2015 starring Jim Parsons, and again in the spring of 2016 starring Sean Hayes. The play has gone on to receive over 100 productions in 20 countries and 11 languages.
Peter Szymon Serafinowicz is an English comedian, actor, director, and screenwriter. His film roles include the voice of Darth Maul in Star Wars: Episode I – The Phantom Menace (1999), Pete in Shaun of the Dead (2004), Garthan Saal in Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), the voice of Big Daddy in Sing (2016) and Sing 2 (2021), and The Sommelier in John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017).
Geoff Thompson is a BAFTA-winning writer, film-maker, spiritual teacher, and martial artist. He has written prolifically in a wide range of genres, including books on spirituality, self-help, self defence, and martial arts, and scripts for film and stage.
Courttia Newland is a British writer of Jamaican and Barbadian heritage.
Gareth John Pritchard Roberts is a British television screenwriter, novelist and columnist best known for his work related to the science-fiction television series Doctor Who. He has also worked on various comedy series and soap operas.
Jeff Rovin is an American magazine editor, freelance writer, columnist, and author, who has appeared on The New York Times Best Seller list.
Graham Masterton is a British author known primarily for horror fiction. Originally editor of Mayfair and the British edition of Penthouse, his debut novel, The Manitou, was published in 1976. This novel was adapted in 1978 for the film The Manitou. His 1978 novel Charnel House and 1983 novel Tengu garnered positive critical reception, the former receiving a Special Edgar Award by the Mystery Writers of America and the latter being awarded with a silver medal by the West Coast Review of Books. Masterton was also the editor of Scare Care, a horror anthology published for the benefit of abused children in Europe and the United States.
Show, don't tell is a narrative technique used in various kinds of texts to allow the reader to experience the story through actions, words, subtext, thoughts, senses, and feelings rather than through the author's exposition, summarization, and description. It avoids adjectives describing the author's analysis and instead describes the scene in such a way that readers can draw their own conclusions. The technique applies equally to nonfiction and all forms of fiction, literature including haiku and Imagist poetry in particular, speech, movie making, and playwriting.
Mark Clapham is a British author, best known for writing fiction and reference books for television series, in particular relating to Doctor Who and Warhammer 40,000.
Martin Day is a screenwriter and novelist best known for his work on various spin-offs related to the BBC Television series Doctor Who, and many episodes of the soaps Fair City, Doctors and Family Affairs. Having worked previously at Bath Spa University, he is now visiting lecturer in creative writing at the University of Winchester and the Wessex regional representative of the Writers' Guild of Great Britain.
William James Smith is an English stand-up comedian, screenwriter, novelist, actor and producer.
Tyne O'Connell is a British author and historian of Irish descent who lives and works in Mayfair, London. Mayfair serves as a backdrop for much of her contemporary women's fiction, including Making The A list and Sex with the Ex. She has written for publications such as Ms., Elle UK and Journal. Her short stories appear in Girls' Night Out and Kid's Night In. She is a contributor to Holiday Goddess. O'Connell was The Eccentric Club's "Most Eccentric Thinker of the Year" 2015.
Ian James Forrester Mortimer is a British historian and writer of historical fiction. He is best known for his book The Time Traveller's Guide to Medieval England, which became a Sunday Times bestseller in paperback in 2010.
Matt Whyman is a British novelist, also known for his work as an advice columnist for numerous teenage magazines.
Ed West is a British author, journalist and blogger. He was previously the deputy editor of UnHerd, deputy editor of The Catholic Herald and a columnist for The Daily Telegraph and The Spectator. He began his career with the lads’ mag Nuts Magazine, and has also written for the Evening Standard, The Guardian, The i, The Week, and Spiked.
Robert Mayer is a New York Times-bestselling author and the CEO of Cool Gus Publishing. He is a West Point graduate and former Green Beret. Mayer has authored over 60 novels in multiple genres, selling more than 4 million books, including the #1 series Area 51, Atlantis, and The Green Berets. He has written under the pen names Joe Dalton, Robert Doherty, Greg Donegan, and Bob McGuire. He holds the distinction of being the only male author on the Romance Writers of America Honor Roll.
"The Riddle of the Sphinx" is the third episode of the third series of the British dark comedy anthology television programme Inside No. 9. It first aired, on BBC Two, on 28 February 2017. The episode was written by the programme's creators, Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith, and directed by Guillem Morales. "The Riddle of the Sphinx", which is set in Cambridge, stars Alexandra Roach as Nina, a young woman seeking answers to the Varsity cryptic crossword, Pemberton as Professor Nigel Squires, who pseudonymously sets the crossword using the name Sphinx, and Shearsmith as Dr Jacob Tyler, another Cambridge academic. The story begins with Nina surreptitiously entering Squires's rooms on a stormy night and being discovered; this leads to Squires teaching her how to decipher clues in cryptic crosswords.
