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    Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
    Audiobook8 hours

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

    Written by Neil Gaiman

    Narrated by Neil Gaiman and Simon Jones

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    About this audiobook

    Now in audiobook for the first time ever! Read by Simon Jones, the original “Arthur Dent,” and written by #1 New York Times bestselling author Neil Gaiman, Don’t Panic is the definitive chronicle of all things Hitchhiker!

    First published in 1986 and updated several times since, Don’t Panic is in an in-depth exploration of Douglas Adams’s cultural phenomenon The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – from its beginnings as a UK radio series, to its expansion into a wildly popular book trilogy, and onto incarnations in various media including stage, records, film, computer games, and even, um, tea towels. Don’t Panic was the first book by internationally bestselling author Neil Gaiman, written early in his writing career when he worked as a freelance journalist in his native England. Voiced by renowned actor Simon Jones – “Arthur Dent” himself – and with a new introduction written and read by Neil Gaiman, Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy audio edition is the ultimate version of this beloved work.

    Supplemental enhancement PDF accompanies the audiobook.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperAudio
    Release dateAug 11, 2020
    ISBN9780062981851
    Author

    Neil Gaiman

    Neil Gaiman is the celebrated author of books, graphic novels, short stories, films, and television for readers of all ages. Some of his most notable titles include the highly lauded #1 New York Times bestseller Norse Mythology; the groundbreaking and award-winning Sandman comic series; The Graveyard Book (the first book ever to win both the Newbery and Carnegie Medals); American Gods, winner of many awards and recently adapted into the Emmy-nominated Starz TV series (the second season slated to air in 2019); The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which was the UK’s National Book Award 2013 Book of the Year. Good Omens, which he wrote with Terry Pratchett a very long time ago (but not quite as long ago as Don’t Panic) and for which Gaiman wrote the screenplay, will air on Amazon and the BBC in 2019. Author photo by Beowulf Sheehan

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    Reviews for Don't Panic

    4/5

    488 ratings13 reviews

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    • 4/5
      It is a real treat for Adam's hardcore fans. Well researched and written. For a person who has simply read the HGTTG series, enjoyed it and moved on with their life, It might be overwhelming and not that interesting.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      Marvelously read by the voice of Arthur Dent and delightfully written in a style to honor the subject, Neil Gaiman's Don't Panic is a wonderful biography of both Adams and the beloved Hitchhiker's Guide. I learned loads of wonderful details about the series plus some cool related Doctor Who stuff and enjoyed it thoroughly. If you're on the fence regarding audio versus print, be aware that the audio can sometimes be a bit confusing since there are no visual cues to let you know that a quote is about to start. Personally, I found that well worth working through given the excellent performance of Simon Jones.
    • 5/5
      Over thirty years ago, a young journalist named Neil Gaiman (you may have heard of him since in other contexts) was given access to Douglas Adams, his life, his files, his unpublished outtakes, and many of his friends and coworkers, to write a highly entertaining account of the creation of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy--the radio show, the six books of the "trilogy," the movie, the games. This is a fascinating look inside how Adams worked, and just how chaotic his creation process was at its best.Because yes, all his most creative work was done in at atmosphere of chaos and looming deadlines.And in a time when radio had already become largely a domain of music, news, and talk, he did his best work for radio, and drew in listeners as few if any other entertainment writers and creators could do for radio. This included, of course, not just Hitchhiker's Guide, but his wonderful nature program about endangered species, Last Chance to See.This book is its own wild romp, while also giving due attention to Adams's struggles, depression, and frustrations. It's been updated several times since its origial publication, and access to Adams's files provides considerable insight into his working process. The unpublished outtakes and early versions also give us a view of how Hitchhiker's Guide developed, and the happy disregard for continuity and consistency that might have sunk many other creative works, but but gave life and vitality to the Guide in its many forms.It's a wonderfully enjoyable and informative book, and I can't really do justice to it. Just read it, okay?I bought this book.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 3/5
      Nothing I didn't know already to be honest, this book was more like comfort food for me.
    • 4/5
      The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast at 22.30 on a Wednesday evening in 1978 where the BBC almost hoped that no one would hear it. Radio programmes in those days almost never got reviews either, so there was a collective dropping of jaws when it turned out that there were two in the papers that weekend praising the show. Word of mouth recommendations meant that this obscure comedy sci-fi series grew to have a cult following very soon and it was to permeate the national culture in ways that Douglas Adams could never have conceived when he had the idea in a field in Innsbruck in 1971.

      Don't Panic…

      So began a much-loved trilogy that just happened to spread itself across five books. But Douglas Adams created far more things than just this. Born in Cambridge in 1952 he moved to London a little while later and after his parents divorced ended up in Essex. He stood out at school, mostly because he was very tall, 6 foot at the age of 12 and finally reached 6' 5", but was also known for his stories that were published in the school paper. University beckoned and he ended up at Cambridge where he tried and failed to join Footlights. He had written material that Footlights wanted to use, but they still didn't want him in it! Post university, the desire to get into TV or radio as a writer. He was fortunate to have his Revue shown on the BBC and this lead to a brief sketch writing with Graham Chapman of Monty Python fame. Then nothing, so a series of odd jobs ensued; was his brief writing career over before it started? Thankfully no, he kept plugging away and suddenly the thing that he had desired the most was happening. The rest is history; or is it the future.

      I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by.

      Neil Gaiman in this fondly written biography of Adams, has written a fitting tribute to the man, who was taken from us far too early. whose work has seeped into the British psyche; even my children knew the answer to everything is 42, but they didn't know where it had originated from. This has been corrected now and a second-hand set of the books was acquired and pointed out to them on the shelf and they were strongly advised to read them. The book is crammed full of facts and details such as the asteroid named in his honour was 2001 DA42. It is enough to warm the transistors in the heart of a depressed robot. A touching tribute to an author with an amazing imagination and has one of the most amusing dedications written that I have read in a while. Great stuff.
    • 3/5
      I never realized there were so many versions and forms of Hitchhiker's Guide. This was very detailed and informative and in parts very funny, but overall I felt it was too long.
    • 4/5
      As much about Douglas Adams as about the many incarnations of the Guide- and that's not a complaint!
    • 2/5
      Eh. This is simply a biography of Douglas Adams centered around how the Hitchhiker's Guide came to be. Frankly, I found it pretty boring.
    • 4/5
      I didn't think this book would be necessary but I thought every page had something informative, either about Douglas Adams himself or all of the incredible Hitchhiker's Guide elements available in almost every media format (even towels!) I will be doing further research on such things. I also liked all of the quotes from Adams and the fluid way the book was put together by the editors. I only wish there could have been insight into some of the events in the books themselves - how they came to be, however Adams thought of them. But this book acts as a history of all things Hitchhiker's and there are so many different media formats for Hitchhiker's, the book is necessary after all.
    • 5/5
      Written much in the style and humor of the author it honors, Neil Gaiman’s "Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" is a wonderful treat for fans of “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and its author. The book contains supporting material from Douglas Adams himself, as well as his own words as compiled from Gaiman’s interviews with him, as well as a tireless search of the media.Adams early aspirations were toward the stage. He saw John Cleese perform while at Cambridge and thought to himself, “I can do that… I’m as tall as he is” (page 7). Gaiman connects for the reader Adams early work with the work that would become The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. While working with Graham Chapman after the days on Monty Python’s Flying Circus, Adams amassed ideas he thought either too good to discard or too interesting to forget and they would make up elements of his later masterpiece. The Adams that Gaiman outlines for us very much worked on instinct and inspiration. Douglas said that he “Didn’t so much like writing as having written (Page 7)."Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" is a fanboy love letter to an author known and admired. There is, after all, a reason a day is dedicated to this internally best-selling author. “Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” is a wonderful reference for any fan of Douglas Adams and gives us a true insight into his process, his insecurities, his challenges and ultimately his success. Written in the light and thought-provoking style of its subject, I am now inspired to go out and snap up everything Nail Gaiman has ever written.On Page 59, Gaiman lists three opinions of why "The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" was so successful. The consensus seems to be that it’s because it’s not like nothing the reading public had ever seen before. As someone who first read Adams as a teenager and has been searching for like authors for the better part of my life, I believe this perfect style of brilliance and madness is so hard to produce that we’ll see it infrequently as time goes on. Adams is lost to us now. Jasper Fforde remains, and up and coming authors like Ford Forkum as well, but catching the magic in the bottle that was Adams is elusive. "Don’t Panic: Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" was a sheer delight to read and to remember the man that was Douglas Adams.
    • 3/5
      This book is a very pleasant stroll through Douglas Adams' literary biography. There's not much in it that I didn't know already but Gaiman's tone is so engaging that I didn't mind hearing it again.
    • 4/5
      An account of Douglas Adams' professional life, with an emphasis (of course) on the Hitchhiker's Guide series in its many and varied iterations. I wouldn't call this absolutely essential reading for the Douglas Adams fan; it's not exactly chock full of juicy details and surprising anecdotes. But it is a decent overview of Adams' career, with lots of quotes from the man himself, as well as from various other relevant folks. And it's a pleasant read, breezily and amusingly written, often with a deliberately Adams-esque sense of humor. It's also got some interesting odds and ends, including snippets of deleted scenes from the radio plays and TV show (although it's often rather obvious why they were cut) and several appendices, featuring such things as a plot-point-by-plot-point summary of the different versions of the story and some commentary by Adams on each of the characters.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating look at Douglas Adams' life (a bit) and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (a lot). It was most fascinating for revealing the tortured process that Adams underwent in writing his books, plays and radio programs. Perhaps not a book for anyone except Hitchhiker's fans, this is still well written and a fascinating look at the writer and his works.