THE NO. 1 SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER

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.

The No.1 Sunday Times bestseller: hundreds of artefacts from Douglas Adams' archive, printed for the first time

About the Author

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.

Reviews

• 'The prevailing mood of 42 ... is joyous celebration of a phenomenal mind and a huge talent for surreal humour' Sunday Times
• 'It is a rare opportunity to be granted insight into the earliest machinations of a beloved artwork, but that is what Davies offers us with this meticulous archive' Reader's Digest
• 'It really brings Adams to life in your imagination. Reading a drafted apology to a girlfriend for being "bloody stupid", or a page of typescript in which the author talks to himself ("It may interest you to know that you are writing garbage..."), you get a strong sense of the man - the fully-rounded individual, with all his frustrations and quirks, not just the towering wit of repute' SFX Magazine
• 'Although there can be no new Douglas Adams novels, crowdfunded publisher Unbound has given us the next best thing. It's a beautifully produced selection of Adams' work taken from 60 boxes of notebooks and memorabilia left behind at his death' Daily Express

Book Information
ISBN 9781800182684
Author Douglas Adams
Format Hardback
Page Count 336
Imprint Unbound
Publisher Unbound