A labor of love honoring the late sci-fi humor writer Douglas Adams. Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion takes us through all the multimedia adventures in getting the adventures of Arthur Dent to the screen, publishing house, radio, and computer. It does make me want to re-read the Adams books.

Another book about Douglas Adams that made me cry at the end... The other one was written by Dawkins.

Very enjoyable for Douglas Adams fans. A bit dated at this point (written in '88) but the history on Adams' life and works is still relevant. Plus having one of my faves write about another is just too fun. I miss Douglas, his death in 2001 at age 49 was just a huge loss.

As a fan of both Adams’s and Gaiman’s writing I expected this to be an automatic 5 star. I was very disappointed. I almost DNFed this. While it has some amusing anecdotes sprinkled here and there and it has its moments that I enjoyed I found it an arduous read. A long list of Names, Dates and Places that was a chore for me to get through. If those are the kinds of details that you enjoy than this may be the book for you…I found it very dull. Sadly, It was not for me

This is non fiction book pulling together the complete story of how Douglas Adams wrote the various incantations of 'The Hitchhikers Guide to The Galaxy'. Neil Gaiman had access to a lot of Douglas's notes, source material and interviewed a lot of people to put together this book. It's a fascinating tale and explains a lot of differences between the story in each version. Basically, Adams rewrote a lot to make it work for different mediums. For example, some scenes in the original radio would have been prohibitively expensive, or impossible, on TV or film.

An interesting read for all fans of The Hitchhikers Guide universe. For me, some of the original scripts and drafts in the appendices were a bit of overkill, but otherwise entertaining.

This was, oddly, the very first Neil Gaiman book I read. It was in the Hazen High School Library and it said “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” on the cover, and that was good enough for me.

The connection between H2G2 and Doctor Who is no surprise, and yet it’s really quite surprising. The third book in the five part trilogy? Had its genesis as a Doctor Who script. (95). The actress who played Trillian in the television show was married to “Peter Davison, the fifth and blandest Dr Who. He played the Dish of the Day, a bovine creature which implores diners to eat it.” (80). Ford Prefect – Ford Prefect! was “a reaction against Dr Who, because Dr Who is always rusing about saving people and planets and generally doing good works, so to speak; and I thought the keynote of the character of Ford Prefect was that given the choice between getting involved and saving the world from some disaster on the one hand, and on the other hand going to the part, he’d go to the party every time, assuming that the world, if it were worth anything, would take care of itself.” 162.

A poignant reread, ten years after we lost DNA.

This is actually one of my favorite things that Gaiman has done. It feels more authentic than most of his prose. His enthusiasm for Adams is palpable, and I've always suspected that Gaiman is an avid reader and a fan of writers, and he worked hard to become a writer in order to accommodate those two passions. If that's the case, then this is about as close as we can get to "true Gaiman."

If you're in love with British humor - this book is highly recommended, in case you are HG2G affectionate - I'm not so sure, as a thorough look behind the scene surely explains some things (e.g. how the Restaurant at the end of the Universe feels unfinished), at other parts might blow away a piece of magic

You know how sometimes you read a book and you fall absolutely, madly in love? It feels like the author is reaching across time and space to speak directly to you. That was how I felt when I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. To this day, I still consider it one of the most clever books I've ever read. It also wasn't surprising, given the humor, that Adams was influenced by Wodehouse. I'm a big fan of Jeeves and Wooster.

Perhaps, it occurs to me now, at the end of the day, one of the most magical things about Douglas’s writing, as with that of his literary hero P. G. Wodehouse, was that you knew the person writing was on your side, that he was not laughing at you, but that you were in on the joke.

"...science fiction readers had long been in need of something that was actually funny..."

I randomly came across Don't Panic! and my eyes bugged out when I saw that NEIL GAIMAN (!!!) had written a book about Douglas Adams. I couldn't believe it. Since I loved Hitchhiker's so much and Neil Gaiman is a genius, and I didn't know much about Adams, it seemed like a perfect book.

I'm giving this book five stars, but with a caveat. It was brilliantly written (NEIL GAIMAN!) and researched, but.....it just wasn't really for me.

Before I read this book I had no idea that Hitchhiker's started as a radio show. No clue. I didn't know about the TV show, the video games, or anything besides the book. And honestly, that's all I really cared about. I did find the stories about Douglas Adams and his nature show interesting, but that was really it. The other 75% of this book just meant nothing to me. That's why it took me a year to read. I kept having to recheck it out from the library, I'd read about 5-10% and then let it lapse and start the process over again. I finally decided I just had to finish it.

There were a few other anecdotes I loved. I really enjoyed the story about him being a bodyguard and how much employers loved hamburgers.

Douglas answered a classified ad in the Evening Standard and found himself a bodyguard to an oil-rich Arabian family—a job which involved sitting outside hotel rooms for twelve hours a night, wearing a suit, and running away if anybody turned up waving a gun or grenade.

“I remember one group of family members had gone down to the restaurant in the Dorchester. The waiter had brought the menu and they said, ‘We’ll have it.’ It took a while for the penny to drop that they actually meant the whole lot, the a la carte, which is over a thousand pounds’ worth of food. So the waiters brought it, the family tried a little bit of all of it, then went back up to their room. Then they sent out one of their servants to bring back a sackful of hamburgers, which is what their real obsession was.”

It was also fun to learn that Douglas wrote some episodes for Doctor Who. (As has Neil Gaiman!) I've never been a fan of the old episodes, but I'm obsessed with the newer episodes. (Writing this review as I watch the Doctor save Nikola Tesla from an alien orb. :p) I could definitely appreciate this sentiment:

What is the point of Doctor Who? A: The whole point of Doctor Who is that, if you take the second letter of each of the fifty-ninth words of all the episodes over the last twenty years of broadcast and run them together backwards, the original location of the lost city of Atlantis is revealed. I hope this answers your question.

I love the TV show, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. It's a lot of fun. I didn't even realize it was a book, let alone written by Adams, until I was nearly done watching it. This book was written before the TV show, but I would've loved to get Gaiman's take on it. As it is, I agree with his description of the story.

From the original outline of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, it was obviously a detective novel, an occult-ghost story, a dissertation on quantum physics, and a great deal of fun.

Another fun coincidence was the matter of the asteroid. It seemed a fitting memorial to such a great author who still continues to bring a lot of people, a lot of happiness.

Douglas’s name was submitted and the list of asteroids awaiting final designation was consulted. 224 million miles from the sun, part of the main asteroid belt that lies between Mars and Jupiter, there lay a lump of space rock with the preliminary designation 2001 DA42. The fact that the classification—no more than a catalogue number—referenced the year of Douglas’s death, his initials and the answer to the Ultimate Question of life, the universe and everything was duly noted and heartily “wowed” about.

So, even though a lot of the bits weren't that interesting to me, I'm glad I read this book. I'm glad Gaiman was the one to record the life of such a creative man.


Favorite Quotes

Audiences in the US (through no fault of their own) are treated as complete idiots by the people who make programmes.

Sometimes what you see is less exciting than what you envisage.

The documentary was narrated by some guy called Neil Gaiman and was sold directly to consumers on VHS.

Somehow a book about a writer missing deadlines and failing to get a movie made is both engaging and funny.

This book is almost entirely about Douglas Adams' business dealing and creative process. His personal life is discussed only to describe how it affected his work on "Hitchhikers". This could be incredibly dry stuff, but Gaiman's writing saves it.

When it comes to authors, I am a notorious fan-boy! My kids will relate stories when I become totally tongue-tied in the presence of people like Christopher Moore. I can't help it! So, it's great to read about authors, to find out that they really are just like me (I can relate to Adams' regards to deadlines: “I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by”). Gaiman (another of my favorites!) does a great job relating the writing life of this man who was taken from us much too soon... Of course, maybe we didn't need two or three or more sequels to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I'll let you be the judge of that.

If you’re a Hitchhiker’s fan than this should be right up your alley, some of the writing even matches the tone of Douglas Adams’ great series.