Hitchhiker - Hardcover

Simpson, M. J.

3.66

382 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0340824883 ISBN 13: 9780340824887

Publisher: Justin Charles & Co, 2003

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Douglas Adams will be most fondly remembered for the "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series and its idiosyncratic humour, but this biography covers his life from his days as a struggling sketch writer to his untimely death at the age of 49 in May 2001. His was an extraordinary life: he started his career as a struggling comedy sketch writer, but then became an overnight success after his "Hitchhiker" series was first aired by the BBC in 1978. Arthur Dent's adventures through space with his friend Ford Prefect became a popular culture phenomenon, spawning bestselling novels by Adams, hit television and stage shows and cult status. As well as a bestselling writer, Adams was an avid ecologist and technophile and this book aims to tell the story of this remarkable life and includes interviews and anecdotes from friends and colleagues.

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About the Author:

MJ Simpson is acknowledged as the world's leading authority on the life and career of Douglas Adams, having collected information and material on him for twenty years. When Adams' personal assistant required information on her boss' career, it was Simpson that she phoned. He has been interviewed about Douglas Adams on Channel 4's 'Top Ten TV: Sci-Fi' series and BBC2's 'Reading the Decades', and on many radio stations. He has interviewed Adams several times, edited the world's only 'Hitchhiker's Guide' magazine and co-founded Britain's bestselling science fiction magazine SFX.

From Publishers Weekly:

Longtime Douglas Adams devotee Simpson has penned his second book on the subject (he also wrote The Pocket Essential Hitchhikers Guide, released in the U.K. in 2001). An engaging yet straightforward portrait of the phenomenally successful writer of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (and its series of spinoff books and radio plays), the book is informed by interviews with many of Adams's close friends and associates (Adams died in 2001 at age 49). Simpson weaves a tale that meanders from Adams's school days and university nights to his work as a scriptwriter for the BBC, through his years as a frustrated novelist and, later, to what Gaiman, in his foreword, calls his career as "a Futurologist, or an Explainer, or something." Simpson, a cofounder of the British sci-fi magazine SFX, does an able job of pulling out revelatory bits, sketching a portrait of Adams as a genius procrastinator, an inventive guardian of his creative efforts and a restless experimenter, always easily distracted from completing a current project by the promise of projects not yet explored. Among the book's more compelling aspects is Simpson's discovery of a large volume of unexplained exaggerations in Adams's recollection of the events in his life, evidence of both the unreliability of memory and Adams's inability to refrain from spinning good yarns, even when they were about himself. It's both a must-have for serious Adams fans and a neat companion volume to Gaiman's more playful 1987 guide to The Hitchhiker's Guide, Don't Panic.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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