Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams [Hardcover]

M. J. Simpson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 14, 2003

Don't panic, Pack your towel, pour yourself a pangalactic gargle blaster, and take off on a wild, no-holds-barred tour of the life and career of Douglas Adams, creator of the phenomenally successful Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Editorial Reviews

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 --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 382 pages
• Publisher: Justin, Charles & Co. (October 14, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1932112170
• ISBN-13: 978-1932112177
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.7 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,658,795 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mostly Harmless, but also Barely Adequate, April 27, 2005

By 

Vladimir Levin (Calgary, AB, Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hitchhiker (Paperback)

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.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Astonishingly Complete, November 11, 2004

By 

Joshua G. Patterson "JGDP" (USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams (Hardcover)

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.

7 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Tall on tales, short on insight, August 30, 2004

By 

Owen Fenby (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams (Hardcover)

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.