Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

by Neil Gaiman

Perhaps, it occurs to me now, at the end of the day, one of the most magical things about Douglas’s writing, as with that of his literary hero P. G. Wodehouse, was that you knew the person writing was on your side, that he was not laughing at you, but that you were in on the joke.

(When I have children I’ll do as much to encourage them to read as possible. You know, like hit them if they don’t.)

All of my life I’ve been attracted by the idea of being a writer, but like all writers I don’t so much like writing as having written.

Hitchhiker’s has…] the sort of effect that a Monty Python programme actually has, of making everything that appears immediately after it on radio or television or whatever, seem absolutely ludicrous. It does have that marvellous cleansing thing about it.”

Overall I think Life, the Universe and Everything has some of the best and some of the worst Hitchhiker’s writing in it.”

“But the problem of the third book is that I have a plot which actually signifies something, and there are momentous events afoot, but I’d created such a feckless bunch of characters that before writing each scene I’d think, ‘Well, OK, who’s involved here?’ and I’d mentally go around each of the characters in my mind explaining to them what was going on, and they would all say, ‘Yeah? Well so what? I don’t want to get involved.’

You see, all the characters are essentially character parts. I had a lot of supporting roles and no main character.”

All writers, or most, say they find writing difficult, but most writers I know are surprised at how difficult I find it.

Adams enjoyed putting together and writing the computer game more than any other aspect of Hitchhiker’s.

“What I want to do with this, and am in the process of getting, is a tightly organised plot with a lot of ideas packed in it, and then write by that plot and allow it to be funny when it wants to be, but not force it to be funny, which was the problem with Hitchhiker’s.