I didn't.

(I brought my towel and a bottle of something.)

Need A Knowledge of British Comedy Deeper Than Monty

Very British. Drank so much tea reading this book that I spent more time in the loo than with the family.

I believe I was introduced to HHGG via the NPR broadcast in the early 80's. I went on to read the five-part trilogy and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, and enjoyed Adams' satire.

Like I said, it helps, in reading this book, to have a deeper understanding of the British comedy world than Monty Python or you're consistently looking up names.

“Douglas just doesn’t go away. The years since his passing have been packed with celebration and reinvention, some of it great, some of it less so, but that’s fine, that’s how these things work. There has been much he would have been immensely proud to see (and hear), and one cannot help but be saddened by the fact that he is unable to. Ultimately, though, he has achieved the only immortality he would have wished for and we must count ourselves lucky to have enjoyed his company, even for too brief a time, and still enjoy his legacy. So long Douglas and thanks for all the words.”

This book by Gaiman is a delight to Douglas Adams and H2G2 fans. Written much like behind the scenes making of a popular movie, this book covers the making of Douglas Adams (and H2G2, Dirk Gently and Last Chance to see) as one of the icons of humor writing and the subsequent evolution of the franchise.

When I read H2G2 first way back in 2001-02 - I was blown over. I laughed till tears rolled down my cheek and literally fell off the chair laughing. By the time I finished the 4th book - I was feeling the worry of being let down and by the 5th book - though I was clearly a fan of Mr.Adams, I was defensive about why the book didn't work. In the process, I discovered the story of the series and found out why it was a trilogy in five parts.

Over the years, I made sure to finish everything Mr.Adams wrote (I had a book of favorite quotes), heard the radio show online (Loved it!), watched the movies (Hated it!) and contributed a couple of articles on H2G2. The book made me relive the entire love and adoration as it talked about the evolution of the series and the personality of Douglas Adams.

The man made the writing process seem like a pain and we find out he was completely dismissive of the concept of deadlines. He was possessive of his creation and the people involved in bringing his idea to life across the mediums had not-so-fond memories. It is not because of, but despite, all the chaotic efforts this cult classic lives on.

A very toned down proper Gaiman makes himself invisible in this book and hence it remains a celebration of Douglas Adams. Was fun to revisit the book through the appendix chapters.

For Douglas Adams fans.

A chronicle of the work of Douglas Adams.

A wonderful collection of interviews, information and humorous additions on the life and work of Author Douglas Adams. Compiled by 'friend of the author' Neil Gaiman, this work is a comprehensive overview of his career. His work on the Hitchhiker's Guide in this many, many forms, Dr. Who and various other works done by him.

If you are a fan of either the Author or his work than this could be a nice companion piece. The added real-world backgrounds make of an interesting read.

Written much in the style and humor of the author it honors, Neil Gaiman’s "Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" is a wonderful treat for fans of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and its author. The book contains supporting material from Douglas Adams himself, as well as his own words as compiled from Gaiman’s interviews with him, as well as a tireless search of the media.

Adams early aspirations were toward the stage. He saw John Cleese perform while at Cambridge and thought to himself, “I can do that… I’m as tall as he is” (page 7). Gaiman connects for the reader Adams early work with the work that would become The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While working with Graham Chapman after the days on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Adams amassed ideas he thought either too good to discard or too interesting to forget and they would make up elements of his later masterpiece. The Adams that Gaiman outlines for us very much worked on instinct and inspiration. Douglas said that he “Didn’t so much like writing as having written (Page 7).

"Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" is a fanboy love letter to an author known and admired. There is, after all, a reason a day is dedicated to this internally best-selling author. “Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is a wonderful reference for any fan of Douglas Adams and gives us a true insight into his process, his insecurities, his challenges and ultimately his success. Written in the light and thought-provoking style of its subject, I am now inspired to go out and snap up everything Nail Gaiman has ever written.

On Page 59, Gaiman lists three opinions of why "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" was so successful. The consensus seems to be that it’s because it’s not like nothing the reading public had ever seen before. As someone who first read Adams as a teenager and has been searching for like authors for the better part of my life, I believe this perfect style of brilliance and madness is so hard to produce that we’ll see it infrequently as time goes on. Adams is lost to us now. Jasper Fforde remains, and up and coming authors like Ford Forkum as well, but catching the magic in the bottle that was Adams is elusive. "Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" was a sheer delight to read and to remember the man that was Douglas Adams.

If you aren't familiar with Douglas Adams and his Hitchhiker Trilogy, my opinion is that reading or listening to these comments and facts about Adams by Neil Gaiman won't encourage you to read anything by Douglas Adams. It is definately best to just go ahead and read or listen to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Only after you find out if you like Adams style and imagination would you be ready to find out more about the series and Douglas Adams in general.

However, if your a fan of the Hitchhikers Guide, this is a great reminder of what you enjoyed and why you couldn't wait for the next book in the series. Gaiman uses many quotes from the Hitchhiker's Trilogy and Dirk Gently series (read in this audio edition by Simon Jones, the original “Arthur Dent,”) The humor and the fantastical happenings are abundant and Gaiman used them as examples of some of Adams unusual character traits and pattern of behavior. It is the ultimate story behind the story and in my opion way too long and repetitive.

I was reminded that when Bob Dylan was asked what does some line in a song mean, he admitted... "I don’t know what it means, either. But it sounds good. And you want your songs to sound good." Adams certainly didn't pretend to know 'what it all means'! He just had to write and as he wrote he needed to write more to try to answer all the questions readers asked. Gaiman tried to explain all this but it begins to take the joy out of reading Science Fiction. Don’t Panic is the definitive chronicle of all things Hitchhiker and his admiration for Douglas Adams is obvious regardless of his chaotic life.

Tiresome and uninteresting - which I found shocking.

One of my favorite authors, writing about another of my favorite authors, regarding a series of books I've loved since I was in middle school. Maybe I already know the material too well? This is fine; its tone is suitably dry and witty, the scope sufficiently broad, it gives us a little insight into Douglas as a human and his thought process regarding the stories, themes and characters that brought him fame and fortune. But, in a weird way, it's like an all-star quarterback trying his hand at rugby. While there's some commonality, Gaiman is a very different sort of writer than Adams, and watching him wear that hat for twenty chapters just doesn't feel right. Granted, this was an early work in his career, a far cry from the Neil Gaiman we know today, but I'm not entirely convinced that the better-seasoned model would fare a whole lot better. It just isn't what he does best.

first off it is misleading to say this is a guide to Hitchhikers Guide... it is a lot more. It is part celebration of Douglas Adams - a short biography and introduction to his body of work. Its part review of his publications with details on yes the Hitchhikers Guide books but also his Dirk Gently books and other books, and finally it is a guide to the series itself with a closer look at characters places and events - all in the style you would come to expect from Douglas Adams, although it is written by Neil Gaiman (who you can tell not only respects the man but also the work he has produced). All in all a fascinating and entertaining (with some real flashes of great humour) read celebrating Douglas Adams and his work. And what is more it was published before his death so I hope Mr Adams got to appreciate what he has given to the world.

Chapters 1 - 23 by Neil Gaiman - 5 ⭐s.
Chapters 24- 26 by David K. Dickson - 4 ⭐s.
Chapters 27 -30 by MJ Simpson - 3.5⭐s.
Chapters 31- 37 by Guy Adams - 2.5 ⭐s.

Average - 3.75⭐s.

Snarky biography. Last few chapters are colored too much by opinion presented as fact.

This originally appeared at The Irresponsible Reader.
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The idea in question bubbled into Douglas Adams’s mind quite spontaneously, in a field in Innsbruck. He later denied any personal memory of it having happened. But it's the story he told, and, if there can be such a thing, it's the beginning. If you have to take a flag reading THE STORY STARTS HERE and stick it into the story, then there is no other place to put it.

It was 1971, and the eighteen year-old Douglas Adams was hitch-hiking his way across Europe with a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Europethat he had stolen (he hadn’t bothered 'borrowing' a copy of Europe on $5 a Day, he didn't have that kind of money).

He was drunk. He was poverty-stricken. He was too poor to afford a room at a youth hostel (the entire story is told at length in his introduction to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: A Trilogy in Four Parts in England, and The Hitchhiker's Trilogy in the US) and he wound up, at the end of a harrowing day, flat on his back in a field in Innsbruck, staring up at the stars. "Somebody," he thought, "somebody really ought to write a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy."

He forgot about the idea shortly thereafter.

Five years later, while he was struggling to think of a legitimate reason for an alien to visit Earth, the phrase returned to him. The rest is history, and will be told in this book.

I distinctly remember purchasing the first edition of Don't Panic from BookPeople of Moscow in the fall of 1991 -- I remember being blown away by the idea that someone would write a book about Douglas Adams' work. I had no idea who this Neil Gaiman fellow was, but I enjoyed his writing and loved the book he wrote -- and read it several times. It was a long time (over 2 decades) before I thought of him as anything but "that guy who wrote the Hitchhiker's book." The Hitchhiker's Trilogy had been a favorite of mine for years by that point, and getting to look behind the scenes of it was like catnip.

This is the third edition, and as is noted by Gaiman in the Forward, it "has been updated and expanded twice." The completist in me would like to find a second edition to read the original 3 chapters added by David K. Dickson in 1993, but the important change was in 2002, when "MJ Simpson wrote chapters 27-30, and overhauled the entire text." If you ask me, Gaiman's name should be in the smaller print and Simpson's should be the tall letters on the cover -- but no publisher is that stupid, if you get the chance to claim that Neil Gaiman wrote a book, you run with it. Overhauled is a kind way of putting it -- there's little of the original book that I recognize (I'm going by memory only, not a side by side comparison). This is not a complaint, because Simpson's version of the book is just as good as the original, it's just not the original.

This is a little more than the story of The Hitchhiker's Trilogy, but it's certainly not a biography of Adams -- maybe you could call it a professional biography. Or a biography of Adams the creator, which only touches upon the rest of his life as needed. Yes there are brief looks at his childhood, schooling, etc. But it primarily focuses on his writing, acting, producing and whatnot as the things that led to that revolutionary BBC Radio series and what happened afterward. Maybe you could think of it as the story of a man's lifelong battle to meet a deadline and the lengths those around him would go to help him not miss it too much.

Once we get to the Radio series, it follows the The Hitchhiker's Trilogy through each incarnation and expansion -- talking about the problems getting it produced (in whatever medium we're talking about -- books, TV show, movie, stage show) and the content. Then the book discusses other Adams projects -- Dirk Gently books, The Last Chance to See, his computer work, and other things like that.

It's told with a lot of cheek, humor, and snark -- some of the best footnotes and appendices ever. It's not the work of a slavish fanboy (or team of them) -- there are critical moments talking about problems with some of the books (some of the critiques are valid, others might be valid, but I demur). But it's never not told with affection for the man or his work.

Don't Panic is a must for die-hard fans -- and can be read for a lot of pleasure by casual fans of the author or his work. I can almost promise that whatever your level of devotion to or appreciation of Adams/his work, it'll increase after reading this. Any edition of this book should do -- but this third edition is an achievement all to itself. Imagine someone being able to say, "I improved on Gaiman's final draft."

I loved it, I will return to this to read as well as to consult for future things I write about Adams, and recommend it without hesitation.


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Definitivamente divertido e interesante para amantes de H2G2 y de toda la obra de Adams. Aprendí mucho sobre sus inicios en la escritura, sus pesares y cómo atravesó por radio, televisión, teatro, literatura, cine, etc.

Asimismo ver los retos que hubo detrás de cada producción es interesante y Gaiman le da un ritmo ágil y segmenta muy bien cada etapa de la vida de DNA usando su obra como eje.

No lo recomendaría a quienes no conocen y disfrutan de aunque sea una parte de la obra de Adams.