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

by Neil Gaiman

His name is Douglas Adams, he is six foot five inches tall, and he is about to have an idea.

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.

“It’s really impossible to say how much involvement I had in the story. We used to have meetings and talk grand designs—abortive plots which never quite worked out. It’s a blur of lunches. I changed gerbils to mice because Douglas’s ex-girlfriend kept gerbils…”

The BBC were unsure what they had on their hands: a comedy, without a studio audience, to be broadcast in stereo; the first radio science fiction serial since Journey into Space in the 1950s; half an hour of semantic and philosophical jokes about the meaning of life and ear-inserted fish? They did the only decent thing and put it out at 10.30 on Wednesday evenings, when they hoped nobody would be listening, with no pre-publicity, and expected it to uphold Radio 4’s reputation for obscurity. They were undoubtedly surprised when it didn’t. After the first episode was broadcast, Douglas went into the BBC to look at the reviews. It was pointed out to him that radio almost never got reviews, and that an unpublicised science fiction comedy series was less likely to get reviews than the shipping forecast. That Sunday, two national newspapers carried favourable reviews of the first show, to the amazement of everybody except Douglas and the listeners. The series rapidly began to pick up a following, accumulating an enormous audience chiefly by word of mouth—people who liked it told their friends. Science fiction fans liked it because it was science fiction*; humour fans liked it because it was funny; radio fans got off on the quality of the stereo production; Radiophonics Workshop fans doubtless had a great time**; and most people liked it because it was accessible, fast, and funny. By

This is a great marketing lesson

addition to its other awards, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was placed second in the 1979 Hugo Awards for best dramatic presentation, losing to Superman. The awards were made at the World Science Fiction Convention, held that year in Brighton, England. When the awards announcements were read, the crowd hissed the winner and cheered Hitchhiker’s. Christopher Reeve, collecting the trophy, suggested that the awards had been fixed, whereupon a roar of agreement went up in the hall. It is a safe bet that if a few more Americans had heard of the show then it would have won.

I think it is the first time i am highlighting a footnote .

“The Hitchhiker’s television series was not a happy production. There was a personality clash between myself and the director. And between the cast and the director. And between the tea lady and the director…” — Douglas Adams, 1983.

It should be noted that most of the really important pieces of casting in Hitchhiker’s seem to have been done by secretaries. Whether this phenomenon is unique to Hitchhiker’s, or whether it is extant throughout the entertainment industry has not been adequately investigated, at least, not by me.

“Although Hitchhiker’s does not have any real political significance, there is a theme there of the ubiquity of bureaucracy and paranoia rampant throughout the universe.

“In terms of sales these days, it is more popular in America than England (it sells twice as many books to four times as many people, so it’s either twice as popular, or half as popular). I think too much is made of the difference between US and UK humour. I don’t think there’s a difference in the way those audiences are treated. Audiences in the US (through no fault of their own) are treated as complete idiots by the people who make programmes. And when you’ve been treated as an idiot for so long you tend to respond that way. But when given something with a bit more substance they tend to breathe a deep sigh of relief and say ‘Thank God for that!’

“In the end, Slartibartfast had to become the character who had to get them all to get a move on, and that really wasn’t in his nature either. 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.

At the end of Life, the Universe and Everything Arthur Dent was told where to find God’s Final Message to His Creation, only he can’t remember where it was. He tries everything he can to jog his memory, meditation, mind reading, hitting himself about the head with blunt objects—he even tries to combine them all by playing mixed doubles tennis—but none of it works.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has, in what we laughingly call the past, had a great deal to say on the subject of parallel universes. Very little of this is, however, at all comprehensible to anyone below the level of Advanced God, and since it is now well-established that all known gods came into existence a good three millionths of a second after the Universe began rather than, as they usually claimed, the previous week, they already have a great deal of explaining to do as it is, and are therefore not available for comment on matters of deep physics at this time. — Mostly Harmless.

The Grebulons, who set out to wreak havoc or something, met with a slight accident courtesy of a meteor storm on the way and have since entirely forgotten what it was that they were supposed to do when they got wherever it was they were meant to be going. So they watch TV instead.

Elsewhere, Ford is having huge problems with the new owners of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, InfiniDim Enterprises. They are not only no fun to be with at parties, but are also, horror upon horror, in the process of replacing the Guide with the Guide Mark II, which comes in a box on which is printed, in large, unfriendly letters, the word PANIC.