The #1 New York Times–bestselling author’s “hilarious . . . idiosyncratic . . . delightful” and definitive companion to a global phenomenon (Publishers Weekly). Douglas Adams’s “six-part trilogy,” The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy grew from a blip of a notion into an ever-expanding multimedia universe that amassed an unprecedented cult of followers and became an international sensation. As a … became an international sensation. As a young journalist, Neil Gaiman was given complete access to Adams’s life, times, gossip, unpublished outtakes, and files (and became privy to his writing process, insecurities, disillusionments, challenges, and triumphs). The resulting volume illuminates the unique, funny, dramatic, and improbable chronicle of an idea, an incredibly tall man, and a mind-boggling success story.
In Don’t Panic, Gaiman celebrates everything Hitchhiker: the original radio play, the books, comics, video and computer games, films, television series, record albums, stage musicals, one-man shows, the Great One himself, and towels. And as Douglas Adams himself attested: “It’s all absolutely devastatingly true—except the bits that are lies.”
Updated several times in the thirty years since its original publication, Don’t Panic is available for the first time in digital form. Part biography, part tell-all parody, part pop-culture history, part guide to a guide, Don’t Panic “deserves as much cult success as the Hitchhiker’s books themselves” (Time Out).
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In 1981, I recorded the first US broadcast of the first episode off the radio, having no idea what it was (it followed a radio serialization of Star Wars which I was recording, and I just plopped in another tape and let it go while I went to bed). The next morning, I put it in the cassette player in my car (!) and nearly drove off the road laughing on the way to work.
The Star Wars tapes are long gone, but I still have my original tapes of the first 12 episodes, they are treasures.
Having been a fan for that long, I enjoyed this book very much. Good interview quotes, and a nice sense of flow, really a delight for fans of all the ways this franchise has been presented.
Enjoy!
If you ever wanted to know the story behind it all, then this is a must read. If you want to find out about a Kamikaze pilot after multiple missions, it’s a must read. One of the funniest things I’ve ever read in my life, but that’s only a little bit. This is the story of how it all came to be and includes basically everything before the the release of the movie. Douglas Adams, he will be forever missed.
the definitive guide to Douglas Adams life and works
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is one of those things that won’t fade away. In large part, the future bestseller Neil Gaiman suggests in this work first published in the mid-1980s that Hitchhikers status in popular culture is because of its creator: the late, much-missed Douglas Adams. Charting the course of Adams’s life, career, and legacy, Gaiman (along with eventual updaters David K. Dickson, M.J. Simpson, and Guy Adams) takes readers on a journey. One that charts how an aspiring and thinking he had washed-out comedy writer/performer created and expanded across multiple media the Hitchhikers series. More than that, Don’t Panic covers everything from Adams’s script work on Doctor Who to Dirk Gently and the non-fiction Last Chance to See, to name but a few of the projects covered. Even more remarkable for a book written by four writers across nearly three decades, it comes across pretty much seamless, not to mention in a pastiche style of its subject’s writing style.
The result is a first-class read for fans of Adams’s work, offering plenty of insights into his books and scripts, not to mention the man himself.
If you love The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, this is everything you ever wanted to know about how Douglas Adams came to create this generation-spanning work. Co-written by the famed Neil Gaiman, you’ll not be dissatisfied, and will learn new things about Adams’s life through candid recounting from close friends and relatives. Fantastic and fun, as Adams would’ve wanted.
Great book for fans of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Others might not like it.
It’s not anyone’s fault that I didn’t enjoy this book any more than I did; it’s actually to the credit of Mr. Gaiman and everyone else involved that I enjoyed it even this much. You see, I don’t like non-fiction and, as a general rule, don’t read it. For me, non-fiction gets way too bogged down in facts and too quickly forgets what makes anything worth reading in the first place; ie: a narrative thread to hang onto and someone relatable to root for. Biographies, of which “Don’t Panic” is sort of one, gives you the second part, the “someone to root for,” but too often gets lost on the path to it’s narrative thread by having to stick to the chronological facts exactly as they happened. I gave “Don’t Panic” a try, however, because A) it’s written about The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,” one of my favorite books and book series and B) it’s written by Neil Gaiman, a certified genius and one of my favorite writers. If Gaiman couldn’t find a way to make the story of one of my all-time favorite stories interesting, then such a thing just wasn’t possible.
Apparently, it’s not possible. Mr. Gaiman does his absolute best here, letting his own sense of humor run free against the landscape Douglas Adams created and he drops in all sorts of deleted bits of Hitchhiker’s dialogue amidst the quotes from friends and collegues, but it seems here that Gaiman is so dedicated to giving Adams’ story (and the stories he wrote) it’s due, that he forgets, or perhaps doesn’t feel he has permission to, delete the parts that are just too dry (read: boring) to keep the narrative interesting. Because make no mistake, this book includes EVERYTHING that has ever happened in the world of making The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy one of the best and funniest radio shows/books/video games/movies, etcetera and soforth and so on in the history of the known universe, and while you will learn much about the vagaries of Adams’ world-famous procrastination and the corporate ins and outs of the BBC and Hollywood, you will also find yourself nodding off in points, or if not nodding off, certainly wishing the current chapter would come to an end and that the next chapter would be about something completely different. Mr. Gaiman has a deep love and appreciation of Douglas Adams and his work and if you share that love to the same extent, you will find much to enjoy in this book. However, as someone who was mainly interested in the rocky road of the Hitchhiker’s Guide with a bit of Dr. Who and Dirk Gently tossed in for good measure, there’s an awful lot about conservation specials and climbing Mount Kilamanjaro in a Rhinocerous suit that was set way beyond my interest level. Don’t get me wrong, Mr. Gaiman has probably written as good and entertaining a book about Douglas Adams as you could possibly want or expect, but the chapters devoted to projects outside the ones the title led me to expect grind the whole thing down to a screeching halt. This is a book for the truly serious Douglas Adams afficianado; the merely curious should find their entertainment (and their towels) elsewhere.
Nice to get the behind the scenes look at the history of a classic
Everything Neil Gaiman writes is a good read but this was a non-fiction account of the history of the weirdest fiction ever written ( up to that time) The Hitchhicker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It was written with love and irreverence, which is a difficult balance to maintain. Neil can do anything he wants and does it with panache, verve, and not a little bit of wry humor.
It is Gaiman. ‘Nough said.
Great information on a series and author in a fan of.
Any fan of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy will love this!
It is worth reading it.