I'm so glad I finally got a copy of this book (thanks, Mom!). I love h2g2, and this book is a great look at how all its various incarnations came to be. It also gives a good glimpse of Douglas Adams as a person and an author, which I appreciate since I'll never get a chance to meet him.

And Gaiman's writing is excellent--a perfect blend of reverent and realistic. It's clear Gaiman appreciates Adams' work as an author, but the book doesn't shy away from pointing out how he was probably frustrating to work with at times not only because of his infamous inability to stick to deadlines but because of the somewhat frantic and scattered way in which he worked. There are interviews with a whole array of people Adams worked with, covering both successful and unsuccessful collaborations, and everyone interviewed--including Adams--seems to just be honest about everything. So I feel this book, instead of just trying to paint Adams in an idealistic way, points out both his strong points and his flaws, and that's one of the best things about the book.

I read the 2003 version of the book, so there are extra chapters dealing with Adams' sudden passing and other things. I still remember the day he died--I still have the obituary from my local paper stuck in the front cover of my copy of h2g2. So reading that chapter in particular brought tears to my eyes because his passing was so sudden, and his influence so broad.

As an aspiring writer myself (although not a comedy writer--I don't have the knack for it), this also made me feel better. I read a lot of authors who say they outline everything in great detail before sitting down to work, and Adams was nothing like that. I'm not quite so disorganized, but it's nice to know one can be like that and still manage to write books that people love.

This is a rather dull book, and I find it hard to really recommend it to anyone. If you are not a major fan of Douglas Adams and his work, the material here will not be of interest to you; if you are (as you should be), you will likely know the good bits.

The book is titled "Douglas Adams & the Hitchhiker's Guide" but it's really focused, at least in its structure, on the latter. It is a blow by blow account of each work by Adams more or less as it came out-- how the project was initiated, developed, who the characters were, etc. One does get plenty of quotes from Adams and a sense of his writing process and attitude toward his works, but nothing particularly engaging or surprising. And there is a ton of detail that is just...not interesting, and will not ring a bell if you haven't heard, seen or read all iterations of Hitchhiker.

Then there is the rather strange structure. The text is interspliced with quotes from Adams, snippets from scripts, and little "asides" that all fit awkwardly on the page. This isn't a huge problem and I suppose serious fans might enjoy those bits of unaired dialogue but I found it distracting.

Most importantly, and surprisingly for a book by such an accomplished author (and friend of Adams'), it just isn't very entertainingly written. Gaiman has some requisite Adamsian asides here and there but most of it is just...dull. There is no real emotion, no sense of excitement, and overall it feels like a job done in the most straightforward way possible.

I haven't read the other biographical work on Adams or hitchhiker but I can't imagine it isn't better than this. The book is not without its charms and insights, simply because it deals with Adams who was full of them, and that's why it's a two-star review. But I'm sure you can do better.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast at 22.30 on a Wednesday evening in 1978 where the BBC almost hoped that no one would hear it. Radio programmes in those days almost never got reviews either, so there was a collective dropping of jaws when it turned out that there were two in the papers that weekend praising the show. Word of mouth recommendations meant that this obscure comedy sci-fi series grew to have a cult following very soon and it was to permeate the national culture in ways that Douglas Adams could never have conceived when he had the idea in a field in Innsbruck in 1971.

Don't Panic…

So began a much-loved trilogy that just happened to spread itself across five books. But Douglas Adams created far more things than just this. Born in Cambridge in 1952 he moved to London a little while later and after his parents divorced ended up in Essex. He stood out at school, mostly because he was very tall, 6 foot at the age of 12 and finally reached 6' 5", but was also known for his stories that were published in the school paper. University beckoned and he ended up at Cambridge where he tried and failed to join Footlights. He had written material that Footlights wanted to use, but they still didn't want him in it! Post university, the desire to get into TV or radio as a writer. He was fortunate to have his Revue shown on the BBC and this lead to a brief sketch writing with Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame. Then nothing, so a series of odd jobs ensued; was his brief writing career over before it started? Thankfully no, he kept plugging away and suddenly the thing that he had desired the most was happening. The rest is history; or is it the future.

I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

Neil Gaiman in this fondly written biography of Adams, has written a fitting tribute to the man, who was taken from us far too early. whose work has seeped into the British psyche; even my children knew the answer to everything is 42, but they didn't know where it had originated from. This has been corrected now and a second-hand set of the books was acquired and pointed out to them on the shelf and they were strongly advised to read them. The book is crammed full of facts and details such as the asteroid named in his honour was 2001 DA42. It is enough to warm the transistors in the heart of a depressed robot. A touching tribute to an author with an amazing imagination and has one of the most amusing dedications written that I have read in a while. Great stuff.

Best reading experience in a long while! In a nice compact format Gaiman manages to convey a good biography of Adams as well as a great primer to all of his writing. Worth reading in it's own right and even if you haven't read HHGTTG or Dirk Gently. Or, so I think anyway. Really, how would I know? I read all of them an absurd number of times...

Anyway, made me feel like a re-read and more than that, it made me feel like playing the notoriously hard Text Adventure again (and that's an accomplishment, because this game didn't only kill you off all the time - it did so always with an insult).

If anyone wants to experience it or revisit, it's available in an online version here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/arti...
Don't say I didn't warn you though, drink plenty of fluids and get some sleep once in a a while.