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

by Neil Gaiman

By the time you’ve read the opposite page (cast and credits) you’ll probably be feeling restive and wondering when the show will start. Well, it should start at the exact moment that you read the first word of the next sentence. If it hasn’t started yet, you’re reading too fast. If it still hasn’t started, you’re reading much too fast, and we can recommend our own book ‘How To Impair Your Reading Ability’, written and published by Adams-Smith-Adams. With the aid of this slim volume, you will find that your reading powers shrink to practically nothing within a very short space of time. The more you read, the slower you get. Theoretically, you will never get to the end, which makes it the best value book you will ever have bought!

Geoffrey himself had no idea how to go about producing Hitchhiker’s, but was relieved to discover, over a meal with Douglas before the second show, that neither of them knew what they were doing. This made things much easier.

“I just wanted to do stuff I thought was funny. But on the other hand, whatever I find funny is going to be conditioned by what I think about, what my concerns or preoccupations are. You may not set out to make a point, but points probably come across because they tend to be the things that preoccupy you, and therefore find a way into your writing.

“You map out a plot, and you write the first scene, and inevitably the first scene isn’t funny and you have to do something else, and you finally get the scene to be funny but it’s no longer about what it was meant to be about, so you have to jack in the plot you had in mind and do a new one…

“Writing comes easy. All you have to do is stare at a blank piece of paper until your forehead bleeds.

Of one of the many deaths of Arthur Dent… Your serious allergic reaction to protein loss from matter transference beams becomes a cause célèbre among various holistic pressure groups in the Galaxy and leads to a total ban on dematerialisation. Within fifty years, space travel is replaced by a keen interest in old furniture restoration and market gardening. In this new, quieter Galaxy, the art of telepathy flourishes as never before, creating a new universal harmony which brings all life together, converts all matter into thought and brings about the rebirth of the entire Universe on a higher and better plane of existence. However, none of this affects you, because you are dead.

when interviewed about Interactive Literature, “You can’t compare IL with literature. If you do, you can very easily make a fool of yourself. When Leo Fender first invented an electric guitar one could have said: ‘But to what extent is this real music?’ To which the answer is: ‘All right, we’re not going to play Beethoven on it, but at least let’s see what we can do.’ What matters is whether it’s interesting and exciting.

“However, with the recession in the American computer industry, all that came to nothing, largely because the people who wanted to do it with me discovered they didn’t have cars or money or jobs.”

9) What is your main message in Life, the Universe and Everything? No message. If I’d wanted to write a message I’d have written a message. I wrote a book.