Review: 42 – The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams, Edited by Kevin Jon Davies

A full-colour compendium of hundreds of never-before-published artefacts
from Adams’ archive, including diary entries, notes and musings, letters,
photographs, scripts, poems and more.

– Authorised by the estate of Douglas Adams, it includes personal
memorabilia from his family.
– Features a foreword from Stephen Fry and letters written after Adams’
death from friends and fans: Neil Gaiman, Margo Buchanan, Dirk Maggs,
Robbie Stamp, Arvind David.

When Douglas Adams died in 2001, he left behind 60 boxes full of notebooks, letters, scripts, jokes, speeches and even poems. In 42, compiled by Douglas’s long-time collaborator Kevin Jon Davies, hundreds of these personal artefacts appear in print for the very first time.
Douglas was as much a thinker as he was a writer, and his artefacts reveal how his deep fascination with technology led to ideas which were far ahead of their time: a convention speech envisioning the modern smartphone, with all the information in the world living at our fingertips; sheets of notes predicting the advent of electronic books; journal entries from his forays into home computing – it is a matter of legend that Douglas bought the very first Mac in the UK; musings on how the internet would disrupt the CD-Rom industry, among others.

42 also features archival material charting Douglas’s school days through
Cambridge, Footlights, collaborations with Graham Chapman, and early
scribbles from the development of Doctor Who, Hitchhiker’s and Dirk Gently. Alongside details of his most celebrated works are projects that never came to fruition, including the pilot for radio programme They’ll Never Play That on the Radio and a space-inspired theme park ride.
Douglas’s personal papers prove that the greatest ideas come from the fleeting thoughts that collide in our own imagination, and offer a captivating insight into the mind of one of the twentieth century’s greatest thinkers and most enduring storytellers.

My Review

Thanks to Anne for organising this tour and to the publisher for sending me a copy of this book. It’s a chonker, it must have cost a bit in postage.

I enjoyed watching an ’80 TV adaptation of Hitchhikers when I was at uni, about 20 years ago; I’ve seen the 2005 film adaption; and I have a copy of the book, omnibus edition. I have heard of the Dirk Gently books, but haven’t read them. Douglas Adams has been on my reading radar for quite a long time. He’s a bit of a legend in SFF. This book is a great way to explore and find more about him and his work. If you’re already a big fan, it’s a great addition to your collection.

This book is a full-colour, 300-page, comprehensive selection of documents from Douglas Adams’ life. There are transcriptions of some of the documents and there is commentary on most of them. The book contains letters to Douglas Adams from friends. For a fan of Douglas Adams’ work, this book is a treasure trove of information. It’s also a lasting testimonial to the life and work of Douglas Adams. I found the ‘Dear Douglas’ letter really moving. I also enjoyed reading the transcripts of Adams’ writing on a variety of subjects. His passion for wildlife and technology come through in the sections dedicated to these subjects.

I definitely enjoyed reading this book. It’s a browsing book, a reference work, rather than one you’d read from cover to cover.

EDITOR DETAILS

After the Hitchhiker’s Guide radio series aired in 1978, young art student Kevin Jon Davies sought out its little-known author Douglas Adams to record an early fanzine interview. He went on to direct The Making of Hitchhiker, the 1993 documentary for BBC Video, and Adams invited him to art-direct The Illustrated Hitchhiker, a large-format book with pioneering digital composites. Since then he has contributed to a number of Adams-related projects, including The Hexagonal Phase (2018), the final radio series of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.