ALawston's Full Review: Neil Gaiman - Don't Panic: Douglas Adams & the Hit...
I'm a bit of a fan of Douglas Adams, creator of Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Dirk Gently, a man who can turn a Cambridge professor's study into a time machine, and the game of cricket into a race memory ritual describing an intergalactic war. He twice implied that tea held the key to faster than light travel, and the best way to prepare for a teleport is to pop down the pub for some beer and nuts.
He was probably as close to being the quintessential English writer as it's possible to get without descending into self-parody. Just when you think he can't get any more English, you find out he was possibly the greatest Doctor Who writer and script editor, and even worked on Monty Python.
The writer's blend of speculative science-fiction and dry wit made his Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy a worldwide phenomenon. Apparently it's even incredibly popular in America, which is a little ironic given that the radio series has an unerring habit of giving all the stupid characters American accents as a signal to the audience that they're dim...
In any case, it was with great interest that I approached Don't Panic, which is an odd combination of a potted biography of the author and a critical overview of his work.
It's written by Neil Gaiman (although later editions have been revised by another writer), who is probably still best known for the apparently seminal Sandman graphic novels, as well as his Terry Pratchett collaboration Good Omens. The fact that Gaiman, a massively respected writer in his own right, agreed to do the book is a measure of the importance of Douglas Adams to Literature, the Universe and Everything.
The book moves roughly chronologically through Adams's life and career, from his childhood as a Doctor Who fan, an adolescence tempered by dreams of rock stardom and beyond. The story doesn't stop with the ridiculous sums of money generated by the Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy phenomenon, and chapters are also devoted to the man's later passion for conservation of endangered species and for the development of computer technologies.
Gaiman's style is always incredibly readable, and pains have been taken to keep the book accessible to those who might not be familiar with most, or indeed all, of Adams's work. Amazingly the book even has time to cram in a bit of information on his collaborative work with David Lloyd - The Meaning of Liff, that odd little book that takes strange English placenames and assigns amusing meanings to them. For something that was so obviously written in the pub to be given such reverent treatment is a bit surreal, but never mind...
The best aspect for me was the way in which several myths about the man were debunked. The most obvious is his reputation as the 'forgotten Python'. Various blurbs and biographies in circulation credit Douglas Adams as more or less taking over from John Cleese in the final season of Monty Python, but Gaiman sets the record straight by pointing out that he only in fact wrote half a sketch and appeared as a waiter, or something.
The Doctor Who years are given a great deal of attention, which was nice for a fanboy like myself. The Douglas Adams serials are controversial for many Doctor Who fans, with the laidback wit of City of Death and the bizarre imagery of The Pirate Planet gaining roughly equal camps of love and loathing. Gaiman doesn't hold back on giving his own opinions on each bit of work Adams did, and while this is refreshing to begin with, it wears a bit thin later on...
Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy was a surprise hit radio show that spawned a TV series (which was actually really good but gets a lot of stick over Zaphod Beeblebrox's lame prosthetic head), computer game and five novels before culminating in the (in my opinion) disastrous film last year.
Gaiman takes us through every incarnation of the phenomenon, revealing bits that were edited out, glimpses of the writer's creative process and, again, his own opinions. Much is made of the writer's famous ill discipline. He frequently had to be locked in a hotel room by publishers in order to get manuscripts finished, and thankfully this is one myth that turns out to be entirely true.
And this is where the book starts to fall down slightly. Gaiman notes that Adams was starting to get a bit annoyed at the success of Hitch-Hiker's Guide, with the clear implication that he started to feel he should be doing something new. And to anyone who knows anything about Conan Doyle's attitude to Sherlock Holmes, or Radiohead's attitude to Creep, this comes as no real shock.
This irritation unquestionably began to surface in the novels, most notably So Long, and Thanks For All the Fish, where Adams famously invites all his readers who aren't interested in Arthur Dent's highly-crafted characterisation to skip to the last chapter 'which is a good bit and has Marvin in it.'
Gaiman clearly has a problem with this attitude, and complains about it at some length. And around this time he also starts complaining about the later books not living up to the brilliance of the earlier series.
And this is fine, it's his opinion. The problem is that this is (so far as I'm aware) just about the only mass market guide to Adams's work and this opinion is likely to be taken as gospel by a thousand lazy researchers, which is particularly disappointing because I think most people would agree that the later novels such as Mostly Harmless and So Long... are in fact much more accomplished and mature works. It's an opinion that paints Adams as something of a one hit wonder, and it sits at odds with much of the rest of the book, where he's portrayed as a restless man of a thousand talents, the writer who really wanted to be Hendrix. One element that is at least given a lot of time though is the emphasis on sound in the original radio series. Because it was 'just' a radio drama, we forget that it was ridiculously expensive to achieve just for its universe-crunching sound effects!
The story of Douglas Adams is a pretty compelling one, it tells the story of a man who made his fortune by being dazzlingly brilliant. In a world where we're assulted constantly by the success of utterly untalented people, Adams was a breath of fresh air. With unseen excerpts from his work and details of projects that never saw the light of day, there's something of interest even for those who think they know everything there is to know about the man, but I can't see many people reading it more than once.
The cover design is quite... unfortunate, as well. The photo of Adams is nice enough, but that's about it - author's photo and a massive title. It looks like a cheap self-published work, that sits uncomfortably alongside the attractive packaging of every other Douglas Adams book ever.
Can I recommend it? Yes. It's a detailed study of an important figure in 20th Century literature, written by an equally important figure and full of intensely interesting stuff. Well worth a read.
Having said that, if you have a choice between getting it from the library or paying seven quid, well...
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