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.

I broke my own nose on my knee. It’s quite a trick, especially standing up.

Sounds like something I would do...

“They could never work out at school whether I was terribly clever or terribly stupid. I always had to understand everything fully before I was prepared to say anything.”

“I didn’t read as much as, looking back, I wish I had done. And not the right things, either. (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.)

So although people like to suggest that Carroll was a big influence—using the number 42 and all that—he really was not.”

Just goes to show! I wonder how many times this has been done to authors?

And the odd thing is, I was talking to someone who was a kid in the same class, and apparently they were all grumbling about how Mr Halford never gave out decent marks for stories. And he told them, ‘I did once. The only person I ever gave ten out of ten to was Douglas Adams.’ He remembers as well.

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.

“I used to spend a lot of time in front of a typewriter wondering what to write, tearing up pieces of paper and never actually writing anything.” This not-writing quality was to become a hallmark of Douglas’s later work.

I was surprised and delighted to find a lot of letters from people in the early days would say, ‘I was terribly depressed and upset until I sat down and read your book. It’s really shown me the way up again.’ I wrote it to do this for myself, and it’s seemed to have the same effect on a lot of other people. I can’t explain it. Perhaps I’ve inadvertently written a self-help book.”

One thing that everyone involved in the creation of Hitchhiker’s is clear on is how definite Douglas Adams was on what kind of show it was he wanted: how it would sound, what it would be. (Another thing they are clear on is that he had no idea where it was all going.)

But first he had to write it. This was not to prove as easy as it may sound.

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.

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.

The thing about Hitchhiker’s is the wonderful bittersweet quality he gets in. The thing is terribly sad at certain points, it really means something.

Footnote for Americans, who may not understand how a pantomime can be performed on radio: this is one of those problems you’re just going to have to learn to live with.

My aim was to create apparently bizarre situations and then pursue the logic so much that it became real. So on the one hand, someone behaves in an interesting, and apparently outrageous way, and you think at first that it’s funny. Then you realise that they mean it, and that, at least to my mind, begins to make it more gripping and terrifying. “The trouble is that as soon as you produce scripts with some humour in them, there is a temptation on the part of the people making the show to say, ‘This is a funny bit. Let’s pull out the stops, have fun, and be silly.’ One always knows as soon as someone says that that they are going to spoil it.

As with everything Douglas had done, the book was late. Apocryphal stories have grown up about Douglas Adams’s almost superhuman ability to miss deadlines. Upon close inspection, they all appear to be true.

I can only assume that you have all been giving away pound notes with every copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or possibly even sending press gangs out into the streets, because I have just been officially notified that the sales have now passed the point of being merely absurd and have now moved into the realms of the ludicrous. Whatever you have been doing to get rid of them, thank you very much.

Douglas really was as surprised by its success as anyone—he had no idea whether it was any good or not. He used to sit around going, ‘Is this good? Is this funny? What do you think of this script?’ He really didn’t know. But you can’t explain it. And because you can’t, you can’t write another book like it. And that’s what makes it a work of genius.”

“Television people tend to think that radio people don’t know anything, which has an element of truth in it, but they tend to know more about scripts than people in TV ever do. And the TV people tended to think that Douglas didn’t know what he was talking about.

one. They’d do it for a star, but not for a writer.)”

Figures

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.

I have no idea, because I’m the one person who can’t look at it from outside.

Many people were surprised that something as essentially British as Hitchhiker’s took off in America. Not Douglas Adams.

“The most commonly heard plea from American audiences is ‘Don’t let them Americanise it! We get all sorts of pabulum over here…!’

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!’

The trick is to write about people. If you write about situations that people recognise then people will respond to it.

There’s nothing wrong with my sense of reality. I have it thoroughly serviced every fortnight.

“What is amazing is that the third book ever got written at all, that it got into existence and was as good as it was. But it is patchy, simply because it was written in circumstances I wouldn’t want to build a bookcase under, let alone write a book.

That’s the real problem: you can sort of hear the tyres screech around a few corners.

“I think I must be a very weird person.

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.’ Either they didn’t want to get involved or they didn’t understand.

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

So quite a lot of troubles tend to get worked out in the books. It’s usually below the surface. It doesn’t appear to tackle problems at a personal level, but it does, implicitly, even if not explicitly.

“I’m not a wit. A wit says something funny on the spot. A comedy writer says something very funny two minutes later. Or in my case, two weeks later.

“After I wrote the second Hitchhiker’s book, I swore on the souls of my ancestors that I would not write a third. Having written the third, I can swear on the souls of the souls of my ancestors there will not be another”,

But it was not long before the souls of the souls of Douglas’s ancestors were revolving in the graves of their graves.

I suddenly realised that the only reason I was going ahead with it was the money. And that, as the sole reason, was not good enough (although I had to get rather drunk in order to believe that). I was quite pleased with myself for not doing it, in the end.

“I’m sometimes accused of only being in it for the money. I always knew there was a lot of money to be made out of the film, but when that was the whole thing prompting me to do it, when the only benefit was the money, I didn’t want to do it. People should remember that.”

FORD: Zaphod, last time I knew you, you were one of the richest men in the Galaxy. What do you want money for? ZAPHOD: Oh, I lost it all. FORD: All of it? What did you do, gamble it away? ZAPHOD: No, I left it in a taxi. FORD: Stylish.

Ha why'd they cut this

Well, I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I’m afraid where you begin to suspect that if there’s any real truth, it’s that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs. And if it comes to a choice between spending another ten million years finding that out, and on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.

Like, for instance, standing in the kitchen wondering what you went in there for. Everybody does it, but because there isn’t—or wasn’t—a word for it, everybody thinks it’s something that only they do and that they are therefore more stupid than other people. It is reassuring to realise that everybody else is as stupid as you are and that all we are doing when we are standing in the kitchen wondering what we came in here for is ‘Woking’.

I said, ‘Yes!’ I can’t stand doing things on my own, which is one reason why I’m a producer and not a writer.”

What matters is whether it’s interesting and exciting.

I try to keep a little bit of distance because I believe the most dangerous thing a person can do is believe their own publicity.

“Once you’ve decided to find parallels you can find them all the time: you can add up numbers, you can compare images… you can pick up any two books and if you wished to prove they were parallel, you could do it.

“Hardback publishers on the other hand are completely geared to the fact that writers are always late and always difficult.

Only in the sense that a serious accident on the motorway might be popular—everyone slows down to have a good look, but no one will get too close to the flames.

It’s a Douglas Adams novel, where the rules aren’t quite the same.