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The story of a wholly remarkable book - and how it all came about in the first place.

Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Neil Gaiman and MJ Simpson.

This is the story of that wholly remarkable book the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and of the ape-descended primitive - Douglas Adams - who, in a field somewhere near Innsbruck while hitchhiking in 1971, had an idea. What - he reasoned - if my well-thumbed hitchhiking Europe book was actually a guide to hitchhiking through the stars? Who would research and write such a volume? And what sort of adventures might the researchers get involved in?

This companion book then, is the story of what that gem of an idea became. Of the original radio series, the sequel and records it spawned. Of the novel and four sequels that followed, of the BBC television series that brought the material to an even wider audience and the name it made internationally for the man behind it all.

Revision

A revision of the hard to find Don’t Panic: The Official Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Companion – which sold over 35,000 copies in various editions – the book takes the story right up to Douglas Adam’s untimely – and absurdly early - death in May of 2001.

This edition of the book has been much updated since it's original release - firstly by David R. Dickson in 1993 and now with additional material by MJ Simpson, himself the author of a forthcoming biography of Adams. The book picks up where the earlier edition left off, including material covering Adam’s later works, as well as his posthumous publications. The two Dirk Gently books are covered, as is Last Chance to See, Adam’s non-fiction ecology work on vanishing species from across the globe.

Throughout the book Adams himself comes across in an engaging, humorous manner in lengthy interview quotes. He talks about his early work; his association with radio, his time in Cambridge, his work for BBC television – he script edited Doctor Who during the Tom Baker era and gave ex-Python John Cleese a cameo part - his endless struggle with deadlines and his well-known passion for technology.

With 21 pages of brand new material, which includes information on the new collection The Salmon of Doubt and various attempts to make a feature film based on the books, this really is essential reading for any fan of the book, radio or television versions.

Hitchhiker Bonanza

All Five Hitchhiker books were re-issued earlier this year, as was a special DVD collection of the BBC television serial, complete with documentary and assorted extras.

The complete five-part trilogy has been released as a set of unabridged talking books, read by Douglas Adams himself. The BBC Radio Collection issue the original radio series on CD and a video biography entitled Life, The Universe and Douglas Adams, narrated by Neil Gaiman is due to be released sometime this year.

Last Chance to See is published by Ballantine Books. Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul are both available from Pocket Books.

The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt, the posthumous volume of previously unpublished work by Douglas Adams includes writings recovered from the hard drive of Adams’s computer. These include short stories, essays, lectures, and articles - many published for the first time – and ten chapters of Adams’s long-time work-in-progress, The Salmon of Doubt, from which the collection takes its name. The book is introduced by Douglas’s close friend, satirist and actor Stephen Fry, and includes the short story The Private Life of Genghis Khan. Subtitled Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time , this moving, marvellous mix of newspaper columns, witterings, magazine articles (often unpublished ones to boot) etc...is published by Macmillan.

Author Neil Gaiman is the award winning writer of cult comic book Sandman, as well as the book – and BBC television series – Neverwhere and the novel American Gods. His next project is a screenplay based upon his own script for the comic book Death: The High Cost of Living, which he also plans to direct.

Co-author of this revised third edition, MJ Simpson is also the author of Pocket Essentials Completely and Utterly Unauthorised Guide to Hitchhiker's Guide and research archivist for the official Hitchhiker's appreciation society, ZZ9 Plural Z Alpha. His latest work - Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams - is due out from Hodder and Stoughton in 2003.

Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, by Neil Gaiman and MJ Simpson is in the shops now, published by Titan Books.

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