Product Description

Douglas Adams will be most fondly remembered for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series and its idiosyncratic humour, but this biography covers his life from his days as a struggling sketch writer to his untimely death at the age of 49 in May 2001. His was an extraordinary life: he started his career as a struggling comedy sketch writer, but then became an overnight success after his "Hitchhiker" series was first aired by the BBC in 1978. Arthur Dent's adventures through space with his friend Ford Prefect became a popular culture phenomenon, spawning bestselling novels by Adams, hit television and stage shows and cult status. As well as a bestselling writer, Adams was an avid ecologist and technophile and this book aims to tell the story of this remarkable life and includes interviews and anecdotes from friends and colleagues.

Product Details

• Published on: 2008-05-29
• Original language: English
• Binding: Library Binding
• 418 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Longtime Douglas Adams devotee Simpson has penned his second book on the subject (he also wrote The Pocket Essential Hitchhikers Guide, released in the U.K. in 2001). An engaging yet straightforward portrait of the phenomenally successful writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and its series of spinoff books and radio plays), the book is informed by interviews with many of Adams's close friends and associates (Adams died in 2001 at age 49). Simpson weaves a tale that meanders from Adams's school days and university nights to his work as a scriptwriter for the BBC, through his years as a frustrated novelist and, later, to what Gaiman, in his foreword, calls his career as "a Futurologist, or an Explainer, or something." Simpson, a cofounder of the British sci-fi magazine SFX, does an able job of pulling out revelatory bits, sketching a portrait of Adams as a genius procrastinator, an inventive guardian of his creative efforts and a restless experimenter, always easily distracted from completing a current project by the promise of projects not yet explored. Among the book's more compelling aspects is Simpson's discovery of a large volume of unexplained exaggerations in Adams's recollection of the events in his life, evidence of both the unreliability of memory and Adams's inability to refrain from spinning good yarns, even when they were about himself. It's both a must-have for serious Adams fans and a neat companion volume to Gaiman's more playful 1987 guide to The Hitchhiker's Guide, Don't Panic.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From The New Yorker
Douglas Adams, the author of the satiric sci-fi classic "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," emerges in this biography as an epic procrastinator who, at the time of his death, in 2001, when he was forty-nine, had been working (or not) on his final novel for nearly a decade. A lover of Apple computers and left-handed guitars, Adams began his career writing radio shows for the BBC, and episodes of his life read like comedy sketches; he once put off work on a novel by producing a script for a documentary about his inability to finish a novel. Simpson scrupulously uncovers Adams's inspirations, from "Doctor Who" to a pretentious college roommate who wrote "awful poetry about swans," and, in homage to his subject, he divides the book into forty-two chapters—a number that "Hitchhiker" devotees will recognize as Adams's answer to the meaning of "life, the universe, and everything."
Copyright © 2005 The New Yorker

From Booklist
*Starred Review* A seemingly typical graduate of the Oxbridge comedian-breeding ground, Adams was clever, funny, and interested in all sorts of things, from endangered animals to the better sorts of champagne. Admiring John Cleese, Adams determined to be a writer-performer in the Monty Python mode but realized primarily the writing part of his aspiration. From sketches and music for the venerable Cambridge Footlights troupe, Adams went to BBC Radio, the wildly popular Dr. Who, and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series featuring the bemused Arthur Dent, some dreadful alien poets, and the android Marvin. A master procrastinator, Adams would postpone by accepting further commissions and going off to research them until he was forced to hole up and write furiously under the vigilant eyes of publisher, agent, or wife. He had an ever-ready stack of ripping yarns about his life and work, but Simpson, though a huge admirer, firmly points out discrepancies between Adams' versions and actual events, allowing fans glimpses into Adams' life that the intensely private writer wouldn't. In his brief life, Adams managed to work or party with everyone he admired, from Pink Floyd to Paul McCartney; remained friends with those whose deadlines he blithely ignored; and succeeded in almost every medium he tackled. A biography that will entertain die-hard fans and those who've never cracked a Hitchhiker book alike. Roberta Johnson
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Mostly Harmless, but also Barely Adequate
It's clear that M. J. Simpson knows a lot about the bare facts of Douglas Adams' life, but there is little heart or deep understanding in this biography. Because Douglas Adams is an intrinsically interesting character, the book is still enjoyable enough to read for the anecdotes as well as for its descriptions of Douglas' projects. I found it interesting to read about the many failures or quasi failures that followed the publication of the Hitchiker's books. It just goes to show that talent is often not enough and that success is relative. The author seems to have a strangely forensic delight in finding inconsistencies in different versions of some of the anecdotes surrounding Douglas' life... Which I suppose may be of interest to some, but for me that wasn't really something I was terribly interested in anyway. Amazingly, even John Lloyd's forward is a bit critical: He writes, "The initial conditions in which Douglas was saddled were rather more trying, I suspect, than the author of this book has been able either to discern or to put in print."

John Lloyd's forward is really quite wonderful, and I would gladly read more material from his hand about "The Big Man." As for this book, I'd say if you enjoy Mr. Adams' books and you're looking for some moderately enjoyable bed-time reading, this isn't such a bad choice.

Astonishingly Complete
What's most impressive about this volume is how often it is forced to go against conventional wisdom. Through astonishingly complete research, Simpson manages to root out dozens of stories Adams told about his work and then provide the true story behind Adams' half-truths. In all, a wonderfully assembled timeline of an interesting person.

Tall on tales, short on insight
How ironic that a writer whose Achilles Heel was character development should have a biography that suffers from the same malaise. I don't think I've ever finished such a long biography with so little insight into the inner workings of the subject. This book is remarkably shallow, spending page after page discussing Adams' projects but precious little space analyzing who Douglas Adams was and what made him tick. Even non sci fi fans are familiar with the chatty, insecure, name-dropping public persona Adams portrayed, but I was hoping this book would look far beyond that. Sadly, it does not, and thus showcases a man who is as one-dimensional and underdeveloped as the characters who inhabit his novels.