Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams (Hardcover)

by M.J. Simpson (Author) "DOUGLAS ADAMS TOUCHED THE LIVES of many people, not just through his work but as a person and as a personality..." (more)
Key Phrases: Hitchhiker's Guide, Douglas Adams, John Lloyd (more...)

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. (November 25, 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: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,412,269 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 6 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: A Biography of Douglas Adams (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.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Based on a negative agenda and utterly lacking in insight, April 11, 2007

By	Chris Federico (Albuquerque, NM) - See all my reviews

Simpson says at the beginning of this book and towards the end that he doesn't think Douglas Adams was a liar. But the vast bulk of the book doesn't support this qualification. Perhaps Adams refused to grant Simpson an interview at some point. Perhaps Simpson just didn't like him, or felt envious that he was an accomplished writer. But why bother writing a biography in that case? I suppose having a petty score to settle would be one reason.

(Since posting my original review, I've learned that Simpson was disgruntled about not having any of his little sci-fi conventions attended by Douglas. This is a good reason for a nasty book? I think not.)

Trying to provide a balanced account and not taking everything one's subject has said as gospel is one thing. But going to great lengths, using wholly faulty logic, quotes from people barely on the fringes of the subject's life, and constant correlation without causation to make quotes look like contradictions in spite of the fact that they can actually happily coexist (and even often support each other, even though Simpson does all he can to explain why they might be at odds), is quite another. And believing the hazy memories of someone tangential rather than words from the horse's mouth doesn't reveal much sympathy for the subject.

Basically, Simpson makes Adams look like, depending on the page, a complete liar or a bumbling idiot (neither of which he was) -- throughout the entire book. It reeks of some kind of childish revenge, which would explain why Simpson waited until after Adams' death to write it; and tedious trivia and statistics are spewed to this end without any insight into the man or his life whatsoever, as other reviewers have pointed out.

Simpson also makes snide remarks about Douglas at every possible opportunity, such as "It wasn't an interview. It was a Douglas Adams monologue, and not a terribly interesting one." Someone reading the biography of an author would in fact be extremely interested in hearing an account of how one of that author's novels got published. Why the haughtiness? Simpson's thesis near the end is the heinous and unqualified opinion that Adams didn't write good books unless an editor or coauthor helped him.

Simpson even invents some new and intriguing words, such as "themself."

Don't waste your money on this. Don't Panic and Wish You Were Here are much, much, much, much, much better.

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)

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.