When I first encountered the Hitchhiker's Guide, the first novel was recommended to me by a high school friend. I had a hard time finding it - all library copies had waiting lists, and all local book stores were sold out. This was around 1982, just before the release of the third book, Life, the Universe, and Everything. I eventually found a store with a copy, and voraciously attacked the first two books. I believe I eventually had to wait for a mass market paperback edition of the third book to be able to read it, and I attacked that too.
I thought the first two books were amazing, but I found the third to be quite different. It was written differently, though I couldn't quite put my finger no what was different about it. It just read differently, and the material was somewhat different.
Then I learned that there was a British TV series available on PBS, which essentially covered the material in the first two books, leaving off with Ford and Arthur being stranded on prehistoric Earth.
When the fourth book, So Long and Thanks For All the Fish, appeared, I wasn't interested in shelling out the money for a hardcover, but managed to get it cheap through a book club. I was very confused about how the book started, and it was a short, disappointing read compared to the others. What was going on?
Eventually, I heard that the books were based on a radio show - which I could not find anywhere. In 1992, Mostly Harmless was published, and I took a chance on it - this was after two Dirk Gentley books that I was very disappointed by. They both fell flat for me - I couldn't even make it half way through. I was also very disappointed that a major plot element of the first one was very similar to a Tom Baker Doctor Who story called City of Death. At the time, I didn't know that Mr. Adams was responsible for two Doctor Who stories, the other being The Pirate Planet, which was part of The Key to Time story arc which was the entire 16th season of the show. and aired in 1978/1979. So, I eventually learned that he used elements of his own Doctor Who story in the first Dirk Gentley book - and, this wouldn't be the first time, as I learned from Don't Panic.
Two or three years later, I was able to obtain recordings of the original radio show, which actually aired as two separate series. I was amazed to find that much of the material in the first two books was much the same, although the order may have been slightly different, but much of the material from the third book wasn't present - there was a ton of other material that never got used for the book.
After reading Don't Panic, I now understand why the third book reads so differently from the first two. Rather than trying to map a radio script, which was serialized, into a book, this was an attempt to write a story as an actual novel, which was very hard for Adams. As it turns out, he hated every book he wrote while he was working on it, that is until he was writing the next book he hated - at which point, he found he liked the previous one he wrote. It is strange that he initially didn't want to be a writer, but then chose it as a profession, even when it was so difficult for him. He was famous for missing deadlines.
Reading Don't Panic also helped straighten out the puzzlement I had when I saw a book at the bookstore with the following title: Doctor Who and the Krikkitmen. When I saw this, I remembered that the Krikkitmen were a major plot element in Life, the Universe, and Everything. I thought that this was surely a mashup - someone decided to combine elements of Doctor Who and Hitchhiker's, and have fun with it. As it turns out, this book is based on an original Doctor Who story, written by Adams, which never got made.
It was also very interesting to learn that at one point in time, a plot element of Life, the Universe, and Everything included a world on the brink of nuclear war which is pushed over the cliff by a change-of-address card fouling up a computer, which didn't make the final cut of the book. This was interesting to me, since just a few year's later, Terry Gilliam's film Brazil had a similar element. The adventure of the central character, Sam Lowry (played beautifully by Jonathan Pryce), is started by a fly fouling up a printer changing the name Tuttle into Buttle in a criminal report, which leads to the wrong man being arrested. As it turns out, Adams had associations with others from the Monty Python group besides Gilliam. At one point, he was working on a script with Graham Chapman, and he collaborated on Starship Titanic with Terry Jones - Jones wrote the book based on the text-adventure written by Adams. It makes me wonder if the "change-of-address card" idea was some form of collaboration in one direction of the other, but Don't Panic doesn't address this question, it is just my observation.
Speaking of text adventure games, there is such and adventure for The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The idea of a text adventure started way back in 1975-1976 with the original "Colossal Cave" adventure by William Crowther. Eventually, a company called "Infocom" created dozens of such games, like Zork, and eventually Adams was approached to create the Hitchhiker game. Apparently, Adams designed and wrote more than half of the game while working with an Infocom engineer.
Don't Panic is a very revealing account of the turbulent history of the creation and continuation of one of the most successful, inaccurately named science fiction trilogies in history. A very entertaining and interesting read - I recommend it to all fans of Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker books.
As always, I'm happy to hear from my readers. Please feel free to comment.
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