Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by neil gaiman

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I love love love love love "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" so I was bound to read this sooner or later. I'm not quite sure how to describe this book. It's... breezy, I guess. It's linear. It's a brief and tidy little biography of Douglas Adams and a pretty rapid summary of how "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" came to be. Very factual, but Gaiman's writing is lively enough to keep it from being too dry. It focuses a lot on the radio show, which is less interesting to me as I far prefer the novel. A pretty good read for an airplane or bus trip, as it's hardly heavy lifting. Hoopy froods who already know where their towels are will find it worth reading through at least once. Non-fans should go read "The Guide" and the other five books in the trilogy first and then read this one after they become fans (as they inevitably will, of course).

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Amiable_Raven

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Mostly boring.
I glanced and saw it had so many positive reviews and, for Pete's sake, Neil Gaiman wrote it, it talks about Doctor Who and obviously, the HGTHG, how could I not like it?
I didn't.
Parts were kinda sorta occasionally rarely interesting. But it read like research report, without the fancy graphs and complete with long dry quotations.
Gaiman has such a knack for story telling, he could have easily collected all the information and then retold the stories in his own voice.

Really, the only thing I found interesting was that Douglas Adams invented Wikipedia. Seriously. It's not called that. But the description is very specific and is exactly how Wiki works.

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periwinnkle

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I'm a bit surprised that it took me this long to pick up this book. Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the book that turned me into an audiobook listener and I have read almost all of his work (ok, Last Chance to See, still doesn't grab me). He was the first author death that I really felt and was sad about--and all that was before I even started enjoying Neil Gaiman. A biography of Douglas Adams by Neil Gaiman should have been a book I read a long time ago and well, since "time is an illusion, lunchtime doubly so," I finally got around to listening to this and I am overall, happy with what I heard. It's not a particularly deep biography but Gaiman does bring a share of insights and connections about Adams' work that I enjoyed. Starting with his early life in school and then into his high school and college experiences, Gaiman relies on the standards of documentation, interviews with Douglas, and people in his life to draw out his challenges to find his niche as a radio and textual writer (among eventually other media) whose creative, observations, and humor were translated into two particular series that are still loved by readers decades later. Although the original biography was published in the 1980s, this updated version covers up to 2009--which is interesting to consider since so much of Douglas's work continued to be made between original publication and 2009. In fact, the book ends just as talk of the final book to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series was a book--authored by Eoin Colfer, Salmon of a Doubt--to be published soon. But what makes that fun and interesting is that because there have been several editions and reworkings of Don't Panic, it actually mimics the evolution of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy almost perfectly (A theme throughout Don't Panic is how The Hitchhiker's Guide is intentionally changed or augmented in different media to work within the media--ideally--and that Douglas constantly said he was done with it, only to keep coming back to it time and again. In general, this is a book for the fandom--to get to feel closer to the author whom they love and squeeze just a bit more knowledge and experience out of their engagement with Adams' work; in many ways, we're all Ford Prefects trying to expand our entry--even if it's just adding one more word to our understanding of the series. Still, those looking for some deeper and more meaningful exploration of Adams' life and work may feel this misses the mark.

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dawnblk

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Excellent read, and almost as funny as the subject matter. Why didn't they get Gaiman to write the final book?

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PersonaSimon

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

My only quibble is that the letters of the title on the cover are not large and friendly enough.

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Beardface69420

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

A companion to Douglas Adams' career, this book covers everything from the initial idea of "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" through to the radio series, novels, game, TV series and eventual movie. It also covers Adams' work on Dirk Gently, Doctor Who and his non fiction writings.

As it is mostly written by a young Neil Gaiman it definitely carries the same irreverent voice as Adams' own work, although there are sections added subsequently that are informative but slightly less "Neil Gaiman" in tone.

That being said I did find the later chapters pretty interesting as I'm a big fan of the radio series that were produced after Adams' death.

A lot of this may be well known to fans of Douglas Adams, but a lot of it was new to me, so I suspect would be the case for any slightly more than casual fan of his work.

While I would usually listen to the audiobook of this kind, as soon as I saw that it was narrated by Simon Jones, the original incarnation of Arthur Dent from "The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy" radio and TV series, I bought it without question.

And it's worth it just to hear him read the following:

"Certainly 'So Long and Thanks For All The Fish' is a widely different book to its predecessor. Gone are the big heroics and wild invention to be replaced by... a love story. We had to somehow marry off Arthur, something that was pretty hard to imagine."
Indeed as much as we all adore Simon Jones' portrayal of the hapless Arthur Dent, he's hardly the obvious romantic lead.

His voice is so reassuring, so familiar that as soon as I heard his voice it took me back to my teen years listening to the original radio series on cassette, yes I'm old.

My biggest criticism is that the book doesn't translate that well to audio, somewhat ironically. There are a lot of sections where it's confusing who is actually spaeking, whether its Neil Gaiman (as he occasionally makes comments in the first person) or it's a quote from someone interviewed for the book. Often it won't be until the end of the paragraph where a "...said Geoffrey Perkins" is added that I can figure it out.

Aside from that I enjoyed it, learned a bunch of things I didn't know and have decided to re-listen to the radio series once again.

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DargoKarr

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

This book is good because Douglas Adams is good, and because his story is interesting and sparkles with humor and wit as he did.

But I put this book on hold from the library before the Neil Gaiman scandal broke widely in the US, so by the time it arrived hearing his voice read the introduction and knowing that this book is yet another example of how he promotes himself by affixing his star to the brightest in his field really, really grated on me.

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