Adams, Scott
Entry updated 14 January 2026. Tagged: Author.
(1957-2026) US author and cartoonist best known for the Dilbert strip published from 1989, which when at its best superbly (in terms of concept and accuracy of Satire rather than quality of drawing) satirized contemporary office life and corporate incompetence. As with most ambitious modern comic strips, it segues frequently into sf and fantasy tropes – such as Robot office workers, wish-fulfilling Ray Guns and metaphorical Timeslips – for the sake of incidental Humour, but it is not a strip which depends on the fantastic in any fundamental way. Adams's prose fiction has been restricted to the Avatar series beginning with God's Debris: A Thought Experiment (2001) in which a young man is confronted by a mysterious (and mysteriously talkative) figure able to explain everything about the Near Future world in which the tale takes place; a sequel, The Religion War (2004), is also simultaneously populist and searching in its examination of Religion through an attempt on the part of an omnicompetent protagonist, an elderly man called Avatar, to stop a subacute but deadly and unending War between Christians and Muslims. [JC]
Scott Raymond Adams
born Windham, New York: 8 June 1957
died Pleasanton, California: 13 January 2026
works (highly selected)
Dilbert collections, of which there are many, are not included.
series
Avatar
- God's Debris: A Thought Experiment (Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2001) [Avatar: hb/photographic]
- The Religion War (Kansas City, Missouri: Andrews McMeel Publishing, 2004) [Avatar: hb/Tim Lynch]
links
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