I can't bear it that Douglas isn't still here.

The loss, not just to science fiction or the world of literature or anything like that, but undoubtedly to the world of science as well, is just unquantifiable. It is so depressing. You can't say of all that many people, that the world is deprived when they leave it, and when they leave it so ludicrously young one just feels furious, it's fate's rotten trick to do things like that.

I think Douglas was a real one-off. He was so clever and so intelligent and so well read in real science that he could make science fiction work as well as it did. And just such fun to have around, he was just such a lovely man.

Douglas introduced me to my husband, at his fortieth birthday party, so I have that to thank him for. I really got to know him better after that in a way than I had before, although I'd known him for a very long time and Richard knew him because they both shared a passion for Apple computers. As did I, which is probably why I got on as well as I did with Richard.

So we saw a lot of him and it was dreadful when he died, absolutely dreadful. I can't forget Richard coming up on a Sunday morning rather early, when I hadn't got up saying, 'Something awful has happened.' He said 'Well someone has died,' and I said 'Well tell me, what? Who?' and he said 'Douglas Adams,' and I just thought he was joking.

He'd had an email that morning, very very early, from a mutual friend in Germany. It takes a long time for that sort of thing to sink in, especially when it's somebody so young. You just think 'God, lousy rotten miserable business'. I think the only thing that might conceivably have made Douglas laugh was the thought that some of us now have an excuse never to set foot in a b****y gym ever again, because that's where he died.