He wrote five-and-a-half books in the Hitchhiker series, wrote for Doctor Who and Monty Python, wrote an additional two novels, two nonfiction comedy works, and a book on environmental activism, programmed several video games, launched a web site that was a precursor to Wikipedia, got to play with Paul McCartney, and wrote a whole ton of tech columns. That is not an unfulfilled life. That is a man who worked himself to the bone and lived happily.
Sorry, but I'm really pissed off that Hitchhikers fans will so frequently worship Adams without knowing a thing about the man. He wasn't a brilliant writer; he was good, fairly dextrous, but nothing special. HGTTG was probably the worst thing he ever wrote. What makes him incredible was that he was obsessed with learning things, and that at his best he could make you want to learn things along with him, be it atheism or environmentalism or Macintoshes, and he could make you laugh at the same time as you were learning. But no, that's been thrown out the window for teens and twentysomethings who quote him in spurious British accents, and who insist that writing five books in a series is at all not enough, or that his five books are somehow canon. It's the same frustration I get at people who quote Monty Python but haven't heard of Fawlty Towers.
Anyway, not Hacker News, carry on and ignore the deranged ranter.