Books by Douglas Adams

“It’s a picture book, not a biography. Facsimiles of his papers and his terrible, messy handwriting. His untidy typing full of blobs and crossing outs and xxxxxxxxxxxxx, deleted passages. There was a lot to wade through. I’ve been to the archives seventeen times last year, photographing, then reading it, logging it, working out the chronology. It’s a very similar process to the archive documentaries I make. It’s in vaguely chronological order showing his development and growth: poems from when he was 12-years-old, student comedy stuff, early radio writing, Doctor Who and early Hitchhikers material—the things that got him on the map. And then details of the projects he got invited to work on later once he was famous. We follow that whole story, through his tech company that he started and failed, and a couple that managed to get underway before the dotcom bubble burst. So, his whole life story. If you’re interested in how writers write, and in Douglas as an author, you’ll get something out of it. It will appeal to people of a curious mindset.” Read more...

The Best Douglas Adams Books

Kevin Jon Davies, Film Director

“He had this idea for a detective novel. And of course, he becomes a time-travelling detective. It’s hard to sum up the plot, you just have to work through it yourself. What you may find—I did—is that you get more out of the second time reading it. It’s one of those books. You’ve got to concentrate. But it will make you laugh. Stephen Fry has spoken about the elegant phrasing. He compared it to P.G. Wodehouse, of whom they were both massive fans.” Read more...

The Best Douglas Adams Books

Kevin Jon Davies, Film Director

“I think it came from a game Douglas played at school with his English teacher, of whom he was very fond, Frank Halford. He pops up in a couple of documentaries. Douglas would play this game with him, and later Douglas played it as a kind of drinking game. They did it from both angles—sometimes they’d come up with a human experience that doesn’t yet have a name, or an object, or a feeling, something that we’d all recognise but doesn’t have a defined name. Then they’d come up with a string of placenames and try to put them together.” Read more...

The Best Douglas Adams Books

Kevin Jon Davies, Film Director

“Arthur Dent, his hero, is a very ordinary—dull, some would say—Earth man, who discovers that his house is about to be demolished by bulldozers. As he’s dealing with county council officialdom, a friend called Ford Prefect helps him escape the destruction of the Earth, which is being blown up by alien bureaucrats. It’s one scale up. That’s the joke. For the novel, he took the first four episodes of the radio show and made them work as a novel with his own unique sense of flair and verve. That sense of humour. People who hate science fiction liked it because they thought it was taking the piss out of science fiction. And people who like science fiction liked it anyway. So it appealed broadly, to different audiences.” Read more...

The Best Douglas Adams Books

Kevin Jon Davies, Film Director

“It’s a lovely book, with a point to it. It’s his only factual book, and that means it sounds more serious, but I don’t think so. It’s one of his funniest. You don’t have to be any kind of fan of science fiction to love this book. It stands alone.” Read more...

The Best Douglas Adams Books

Kevin Jon Davies, Film Director