Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I'm shocked. I still don't believe it. 
  

    
My first Neil Gaiman book was _Don't Panic_, a sort-of biography about
Douglas Adams. This is a terrible loss.
  

    
Jen - I also couldn't think of anything elegant to say. My heart just
broke when I heard the news. Luckily, I had an outlet for my grief. I
work for The NY Times and when it came across the wires, I explained to
the staff what a huge influence he was in the sci fi/fantasy realm.
Instead of just placing the notice on the obit page, I had it posted on
the homepage (http://www.nytimes.com). It was a small thing, but to
me, it just seemed necessary. 

42,
Jade
  

    
I'm in shock.

I'm daytripping to a local sf con this weekend and I'm not sure if being
with other fans who maybe understand will be a comfort or just make me
lose it all the more.
  

    
I was doing an interview about American Gods, and I'd brought this
page up on the screen, and was chatting away, and suddenly saw Jade's
first post.

For a weird moment I thought it was a joke, then I realised it wasn't.

"Douglas Adams is dead," I said.

"Yes," said the interviewer. "Did you ever meet him?"

I said yes.

After that the interview was pretty much a bust.

 I'd known Douglas fairly well in the 80s -- interviewed him for
Penthouse and Knave, then wrote Don't Panic, which involved lots of
interviews, and lots more spending time in his flat going through his
files and archives looking for cool stuff.

Saw him in Minneapolis a couple of years ago for a signing for the
Starship Titanic game. (A dozen people came to the signing. The game
kept crashing and he couldn't get out of one of the opening sequences.
It was kind of sad.) He'd asked me to work on a radio adaptation of the
later Hitchhiker's Books, and I'd said no as I didn't have the time.

We'd e-mail from time to time. 

He was a very brilliant man. (Not said lightly. I think he really was
one of the people who saw things differently and more clearly and from
a different angle.)  I don't think he liked the process of writing very
much,  and I think he liked it less and less as time went on. I'm not
sure that he ever figured out what it was that he did  want to do -- I
suspect it's something they don't have a concept for yet, let alone a
name -- and he would have done it brilliantly.

I hope that his death isn't followed by the publishing of all the
stuff he hadn't wanted to see print.

& I'll miss him.
  

    
My first book of Neil's was Don't Panic, way back in HS.

I clearly remember discovering Hitchhiker's.  It was one of the
formative books of my growing up and, like many people, I can recite
vast chunks of it by heart.

I can't believe it.
  

    

My first exposure to Neil was also Don't Panic, though it was years after
I'd read all of Sandman that I saw another copy of Don't Panic and realized
it. (I had first read it sitting in my high school's library.)

In trying to think of what to say in response to Mr. Adams' death, all I can
do is repeat a comment I saw in another conference.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.
  

    
I sat and read Don't Panic this afternoon (the original UK edition, on
which page 42 was left intentionally blank). It was very strange,
reading a book I wrote 14 years ago as a way of saying goodbye to
someone. 

But, in an odd way, it helped...
  

    
Lenny - 1245 - Really? It gets anthologised a lot, in the oddest
places.

Michelle -- Remind me to say "kersplooey" for you at the SF signing.

I wasn't really a naked angel. Just topless.

Danguy -- in print mostly an author gets a royalty of anywhere between
2% (Star Wars books) to 8% (usual starting royalty) to 10-15% (solid
author royalty -- often on a sliding scale depending on the number of
copies sold. I expect that the Anne Rices and Stephen Kings get above
15%.

Jade -- good job.
  

    
like many here, i too first read neil by reading "don't panic,"
although i too didn't make the full connection until i found it in the
bottom of a drawer years later (and promptly placed it on my growing
"gaiman shelf").

neil - that seems like a great way to help say goodbye to someone. 
and thanks for sharing your comments/sentiments about mr. adams.

off to go dig up my old copies of the hitchiker's trilogy and begin
rereading them (it's been far too long, and i only wish something
better had been the impetus to reread them).

  --  s

oh - finally got to listen to the "secret" "being an experiment" on
the Warning CD and enjoyed it immensely.
  

    
Seth -- I'm glad you finally read it.

...

It occurs to me that I should have said something else about Douglas.
Which is that he was immensely kind and generous, with his time and his
material, to a young journalist, fifteen years ago; and watching how
he, and how Alan Moore, treated their fans and other people taught me
an awful lot about how to behave as an author.
  

    
That should have read, glad you finally *heard* it, of course.
  

    
was just reading a page full of folks' comments about douglas adams'
untimely departure, and thought i'd share 2 bits i found
interesting/amusing:

---

one user asked, "so is the answer 49 then?"  

another user responded, "nah . . . he just missed another deadline." 
this was followed by the following adams' quote, "the thing i love the
most about deadlines is the wonderful WHOOSHing sound they make as they
go past."

---

apparently someone figured out that six times nine <i>does</i> equal
42, if you do the math in base 13.

douglas adams, in regards to this, apparently said "nobody writes
jokes in base 13."
  

    
I am having a very hard time getting this.  Douglas Adams is dead. 
The words don't sound right together.  He was my first exposure to SF,
and my first exposure to a good book that was funny.  I ache in my
chest.
  

    
Email from JaNell:

Neil & Everyone-
    I meant to post that today was my oldest son's 14th birthday, but I
just read about Douglas Adams...
    That just sucks. I mean that really sucks.
    Douglas Adams was on the list of people I wanted Sean to read. We
recently lost his favorite author, Rick Shelley, a really sweet guy, after
a heart attack at ChattaCon. That really sucked, too. Always sad to lose a
voice...

JaNell
  

    
I too re-read _Don't Panic_ yesterday; I even have the very same UK
edition.  It was the first Gaiman book I owned, and the second thing of
yours that I'd ever read (the first being "Nicholas was") -- and like
Seth, I didn't even make the connection when I began reading "Sandman"
until years later when I was rearranging my shelves, since which it's
lived on the "Gaiman - Adams" shelf, providing a nice segue from one to
the other.
     I owe a lot of laughter and smiles to Adams.
  

    
I've been in a bit of a media cocoon for the last day, and just heard
about all this... 

Like everyone else, I'm in shock. I remember, back in High School
Chemistry Lab screwing with this guy that sat between me and another
friend. He had never read Hitchhikers, and could only ping pong back in
bafflement as we batted lines back and forth like a ping pong ball...
one word at a time.

My freshman year in college, I had a professor who would slip Adams
material into his multiple choice tests:
A) Philistines
B) Hittities
C) Assyrians
D) Vogons

I remember hitting that one and looking up and catching his eye as he
grinned merrily at me, knowing exactly which question I was on and that
I was someone who would catch the joke.

I never knew him, although I met him very briefly once at a MacWorld
Expo where he was apoligizing for the delays in Starship Titanic and
being generally incredibly charming.

I had looked forward to his next endeavors. I had heard about his
plans for another Dirk Gently book, and a movie, and a Hitchikers'
movie... and know he would have done more games and who knows what
else.

I don't know. I'm just rambling.. but the world seems like a slightly
less funny place knowing he's not in it.
  

    
        I just now learned of the death, reading this topic.  I've been busy
the last couple days.
        I saw Douglas Adams at a signing at Cody's Books once.  I suppose I
was around fifteen.  He was reading from _Mostly Harmless_, and that
was my first experience of seeing written comedy read aloud by the
author, by someone who knows where all the pauses and inflections go
because they were playing in his head when he wrote the damn thing.  He
spoke about the travelling he'd been doing for _Last Chance To See_,
and discussed with passion the issue of extinction.  I remember
noticing that his nose, like Stephen Fry's, was twisted, halfway down
its length.  I'd read, someplace, that as a boy at school he'd managed
to severely break his nose with his own kneecap, and I wondered if its
asymmetry came from that or from a different break.  He signed my
paperback copy of _Guide_.  I've still got it someplace, I think.  His
work meant a lot to me in my early teens, and it seems like it would be
enormously unlike me to have gotten rid of such an artifact.  Times
like this I wish I could trick myself into believing in heaven or
reincarnation or somesuch.  Damn.
  

    
Hitchhikers was some of the first sf I ever read.  

I had a "Don't Panic" t-shirt with those words in friendly letters and
that green guy on it.  I wore it to death in high school and college and
it started more conversations than I could count.  

In those early days of usenet and the net, too, everyone quoted Adams.

So much time spent quoting the book, playing the game, making up vogon
poetry, and so forth.

I only met Adams once, during a signing/reading tour for _Last Chance To
See_ and he was gracious and very funny and very cool.  Though after
reading _Don't Panic_ and so many online things of his and interviews
elsewhere it was hard not to feel like you knew Adams a little, as much as
one can someone you don't really know.  If that makes sense.

I loved the way he interacted with the fans.  He had such a following, it
could've been a real pain for him, but if it was it never showed.

You always knew that anything he was involved with would be interesting.

And it's strange to imagine the world without him in it.

I'm a bit surprised how hard it's hitting me, but it hadn't occurred to me
that he wouldn't be around and it's just weird.  And I hadn't really
paused to think of the effect he had, 'til now.  That embarasses me
somewhat, but there you go.


I very much wanted to wear my "Don't Panic" t-shirt yesterday, but it's
threadbare and stored away somewhere where I can't find it.

Maybe it was a little lame, maybe it was a little geeky, and maybe no one
noticed.  But for at least the first few hours I was at a con yesterday, I
carried a towel with me.  
  

    
Email from Douglas Spadotto:

Hello. 
I'm from Brazil, and would like to send this message to the Neil
Gaiman forum of inkwell.vue:

    Hello Neil!
    I read that you're coming to Brazil in May. That's cool. I'm from
Curitiba, and me and my friends are travelling 400 kilometers to see you.
It's going to be an adventure. I have tests in my university the day
before and after your signing, then I'll travel 800 kilometers in a day!
In a bus! Well, that4s not why I write to you.
    I'm writing to ask you if you could bring some copies of American Gods
for a preview here. Even if we pre-order at Amazon or whatever, it's going
to be a long time waiting. Internet is bad sometimes, all the "civilized"
world gets a book, and we sit here reading what the Internet brings to us:
previews, reviews, etc. When we actually get the book, it's almost too
late. E-books are out of the question. I can't read a book siting in the
front of the computer, and many people agree with me.
    Well, sorry if my english hurts your eyes, but I'm a
portuguese-talking person. Maybe when I move to other country I can learn
and practice more."

    I'll be very grateful if you post this at the forum. Please let me
know of your answer.

    Douglas Spadotto
  

    
Last night, driving home from the airport with the radio on for the traffic
reports, we listened to a long obituary for Perry Como.  87, we said, that's
a long full life more or less.  Then suddenly a much shorter and more
offhanded obit for Douglas Adams.

"WHAT??" we said.

If I weren't currently brain-dead from a head cold, I'd put my CDs of the
Hitchhiker series on.  And I should pull the copy of "Last Chance to See"
off the shelf and finally get around to reading it.
  

    
*sigh*

I've spent the whole weekend alternately refusing to believe that this
is true, and trying to forget that it happened. The electronic
memorial that is becoming h2g2.com is nice, as is a comic tribute I
noticed today at http://www.userfriendly.org/static/ .
  The only direct contact I had with DNA was at a reading/signing at
the Michigan Theater in Ann Arbor, MI back in about '92. He was
terrifically funny, and amazingly patient with the seemingly endless
line of people who wanted scads of stuff autographed afterwards.
  The world seems a tiny bit less bright today.
--Bill^2, feeling like my heart has been smashed in by a slice of
lemon wrapped around a large gold brick
  

    
Douglas -- That's very exciting. Are you coming to the Rio event or
the Sao Paolo one? 

I'm afraid that AMERICAN GODS doesn't get published in the US until
June 19th, so there won't be any early copies for sale -- you're still
at the mercy of Amazon.com, or Dreamhaven, or whoever you buy your
books from.

 I can bring with me a proof copy -- probably will, to do a reading
from, if there's anywhere that  I'm meant to do a reading, or any way
to do it before a signing.
  

    
Blogger is misbehaving -- I don't mind how hard it is to get things to
post, but it's started eating and truncating old posts -- I see the
one with all the UK and US tour dates on it has been swallowed by the
beast.
  

    
Out of interest, is anybody out there quietly copying/saving the
american gods blogger entries? I'd assumed that the archives would be
all I needed, but the May 4 entry is truncated, and I worry that more
of it may have vanished...