42, The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams

42, The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams (Unbound 2023) is a lavishly illustrated coffee-table book which trawls through the personal papers, drafts, scripts, notebooks and diaries of the much-missed humorous author (and later tech guru) Douglas Adams, who died aged just 49, in 2001. A famous procrastinator, Adams regularly berated himself within the body of his draft manuscripts for not remembering an idea or for not getting to grips with his complex plots and hilarious characters. The book covers his life, from cradle to grave, including his time living in Stalbridge, Dorset, his years at Cambridge Footlights and at the BBC.

Davies first went through the material in 2016 to help producer Dirk Maggs when he was adapting the sixth and final ‘Hitchhiker’ radio series. That’s when he realised there was potential for a book. Publishers Unbound launched a crowd-funding project in March 2021. It hit its target of £65,000 on the very first day and eventually multiplied it several times over, such is the continuing popularity of Douglas Adams’s name.

Kevin Jon Davies directed ‘The Making of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ and ‘Doctor Who: (More Than) 30 Years in the Tardis’ retrospectives for the BBC in 1993. This led to the spin-off film drama, ’Shakedown’ (1994), documentary ‘Dalekmania’ (1995) and episodes of a Sky TV drama series ‘Space Island One’ in 1997. His career had begun with hand-drawn animation for the TV version of ’The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ (1981) which many mistook for early computer graphics. That led to title sequences for Gerry Anderson’s ’Terrahawks’ (1983) and a year at Walt Disney (UK) for ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ (1988). 5 years followed on international TV commercials, blending live action with animation, using new digital techniques. Kevin conducted celebrity interviews for Sci-Fi Channel (Europe) and at Comic Cons and directed BBC DVD Extras for classics ‘Dad’s Army’, ‘Budgie’, ‘Adam Adamant Lives!’ and ‘Blake’s 7’. Author Douglas Adams asked Kevin to art-direct his book ’The Illustrated Hitchhiker’s Guide…’ (Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1994), and most recently, Kevin returned to publishing by editing ’42, The Wildly Improbable Ideas of Douglas Adams’, a hardback bestseller for Unbound, exploring the author’s personal papers. Kevin has more books in preparation, delving into further exciting archives.