But with this handsome volume, I hope that Douglas’s work has finally achieved the full complement of Introductions that it deserves. Perhaps future editions might even boast a Foreword and a Foreword to the Foreword, so as to keep Douglas’s wonderful writing to the forefront of properly prefaced literature.

Please enjoy this book and, when you have finished it, do not leave it on the train.

—Terry Jones
FEBRUARY 1, 2003

Editor’s Note

Editor’s Note

I first met Douglas Adams in 1990. Newly appointed his editor at Harmony Books, I had flown to London in search of Douglas’s long-overdue fifth Hitchhiker novel, Mostly Harmless. No sooner was I buzzed in the door to the Adams residence in Islington than a large, ebullient man bounded down the long staircase, greeted me warmly, and thrust a handful of pages at me. “See what you think of these,” he said over his shoulder as he bounded back up the stairs. An hour later he was back, new pages in hand, eager to hear my opinion of the first batch. And so the afternoon passed, quiet stretches of reading alternating with more bounding, more conversation, and fresh pages. This, it turned out, was Douglas’s favorite way of working.

In September 2001, four months after Douglas’s tragic, unexpected death, I received a phone call from his agent, Ed Victor. A good friend had preserved the contents of Douglas’s many beloved Macintosh computers; would I be interested in combing through the files to see if they contained the makings of a book? A few days later a package arrived, and, curiosity whetted, I tore it open.

My first thought was that Douglas’s friend, Chris Ogle, had undertaken a Herculean task—which, as it turned out, he had. The CD-ROM onto which Douglas’s writing had been collected contained 2,579 items, ranging from huge files that stored the complete text of Douglas’s books to letters on behalf of “Save the Rhino,” a favorite charity. Here, too, were fascinating glimpses into dozens of half-brewed ideas for books, films, and television programs, some as brief as a sentence or two, others running to half-a-dozen pages. Alongside these were drafts of speeches, pieces Douglas had written for his website, introductions to various books and events, and musings on subjects near to Douglas’s heart: music, technology, science, endangered species, travel, and single-malt whisky (to name just a few). Finally, I found dozens of versions of the new novel Douglas had been wrestling with for the better part of the past decade. Sorting these out to arrive at the work-in-progress you’ll find in the third section of this book would prove my greatest challenge, although that makes it sound difficult. It was not. As quickly as questions arose they seemed to answer themselves.