Don't Panic

Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion
by Neil Gaiman [813 AdaYg]

Grab your towel, and whatever you do...Don't Panic! This is the behind-the-scenes history of Douglas Adams' phenomenonally popular Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Partly a biography of Adams' early years, Gaiman traces the origins of the HHGG, including all the variant versions of the property -- radio series, books (originally a trilogy, then expanded by Adams into 5 volumes), television series, stage plays, records, film, computer games. etc. Filled with humor, both riotous and wry, this is a must-read for fans of the series. I would also recommend this to fans of fantasist Gaiman, to see what one of his earliest published works is like. I particularly enjoyed seeing all the fragments from original manuscripts, to see how they differ from what ultimately made it into the published versions. Highly recommended for both fans and non-fans of HHGG alike! [Note: A completely updated version of this book was published in 2005 as Don't Panic: Douglas Adams and the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which brings readers up-to-date on Adams, through and beyond his 2001 death. Although the libraries don't own this edition, it is available through our InterLibrary Loan service.] [If you enjoy this, you may also wish to try Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams by Nick Webb, and, of course, the novels in the HHGG series.] -- recommended by Scott C. - Bennett Martin Public Library

[ Wikipedia page for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in its various formats ] | [ douglasadams.com ] | [ BBC's official H2G2 web site ]

Have you read this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?

New reviews appear every month on the Staff Recommendations page of the BookGuide web site. You can visit that page to see them all, or watch them appear here in the BookGuide blog individually over the course of the entire month.