Tag: Douglas Adams

The Dirk Gently Graphic Novels (IDW, 2016-2017)

After hearing the Douglas Adams audiobook earlier in the year, I was again interested in the ancillary Dirk Gently stories published by IDW starting in 2016.  These were tie-ins and publicity to the BBC America series that ran for two seasons.  I had collected most of the stories as individual issues but not all of them, so I was delighted to receive the three volumes collecting three separate story arcs: “A Spoon Too Short,” “The Interconnectedness of All Kings,” and “The Salmon of Doubt.”

If you’ve never read Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency or The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul, the original novels by Douglas Adams, start with those. The comics play in that world but are not adaptations.

I am more of a Hitchhiker’s Guide fan, but as an adult I have come to appreciate the absurd, and Adams did well with Dirk Gently. Arvind Ethan David has acquitted himself honorably with the characters and tone of the original.  In particular, the Salmon of Doubt intertwines the TV version of Dirk Gently somewhat and I find myself wanting to go revist the 18 episodes of the show.  (In researching I found a 2010 version done on the BBC that was just four episodes that is on BritBox. More to watch!)

Back to the comics: these collections are good, filled with the variant covers of individual issues and a couple of actors introducing the volumes.  I’m not a huge fan of the artwork but it’s not bad.

 

Douglas Adams: The Ends of the Earth edited by Arvind Ethan David (2025)

I saw this as a Kickstarter last year and backed it, though not as an earlybird to get every bonus. I did get bonus audio. It came out in June 2025 and I got around to listening to it from the end of September until today.

I admit I had the wrong idea about this audiobook and was initially disappointed, as I looked at the surface for the “from the Adams Archives,” and not the “discussions about topics Adams felt strongly about”.  The main audiobook is about 5 hours with almost the same in the bonus material (which is not available with the public release).

The star of this are the excerpts from Douglas’ speeches. He was an engaging speaker and the bits from the horses’ mouth are the best part.  There are many readings and ‘dramatizations’ of excerpts from all of Adams’ work, which are good to hear. I could have done without most of the sound effects that were added to readings as they were distracting. For a book that wants you to focus on the meanings, it’s a bad choice.

The editor/author of this collection was an intern at Douglas’ company Digital Village and has long been adapting and presenting Adams’ work. His reverence for Douglas borders on fawning at times–we get it, we’re listening already.  As I have found with some other interviewers, they bring a little too much of their own biography into the interviews, which gets repeated since there are multiple interviews collected (essentially one interview per topic).

The collection centers around several topics, which break the book into easy chapters:  Creativity & Writing, Animal Conservation, Tech/Internet/AI, Politics & Capitalism, and Atheism.  David has enlisted a good range of interview subjects, some who knew Adams well.  Stephen Fry was the best of the interviews, although all were interesting.  My perk of bonus audio gave me the full keynote from one of Adams’ conference talks plus the unedited interviews of three of the participants in the book.

A interesting strategy for this audiobook is that it’s being released through podcast app services–you can’t buy it directly as a download (unless you were a kickstarter backer).  You can find out more about it at the link.

I’m glad I got this audiobook as I’ve collected most of what has been written by or published about Douglas Adams. It ranks with  Eoin Colfer’s And Another Thing… as something that a completist will want but that the casual fan will probably skip.