Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams @ The TARDIS Library (Doctor Who books, DVDs, videos & audios)


Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams
 

No. 2 of 20 in the Crew biographies series
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By:Nick Webb
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Editions:  UK (hardback) | UK (paperback) | US (hardback) | US (paperback) | UK (2nd paperback)

Cover image for Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams
Edition: UK (hardback)
Released:  October 2003
Publisher:  Headline
ISBN:0-7553-1155-8
Format: hardback
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Edition: UK (paperback)
Released:  July 2004
Publisher:  Headline
ISBN:0-7553-1156-6
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Cover image for Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams
Edition: US (hardback)
Released:  March 2005
Publisher:  Ballantine
ISBN:0-345-47650-6
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Cover blurb:
PRAISE FOR WISH YOU WERE HERE

“Webb’s tale brims with affection and humour, every page is a delight."
The Daily Mail

“It’s perhaps the ultimate credit to Webb that he can be just as funny as Adams in his writing. With many of the same veins of humour that Adams had running throughout this biography, it’s as if the great hitchhiker has never really left."
The Leeds Guide


Inside cover flaps read as follows:

It all started when Douglas Adams demolished planet Earth in order to make way for an intergalactic expressway—and then invited everyone to thumb a ride on a comical cosmic road trip with the likes of Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the other daft denizens of deep space immortalized in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams made the universe a much funnier place to inhabit and forever changed the way we think about towels, extraterrestrial poetry, and especially the number 42. And then, too soon, he was gone.
   Just who was this impossibly tall Englishman who wedded science fiction and absurdist humor to create the multimillion-selling five-book “trilogy” that became a cult phenomenon read round the world? Even if you’ve dined in the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, you’ve been exposed to only a portion of the offbeat, endearing, and irresistible Adams mystique. Have you met the only official unofficial member of Monty Python’s Flying Circus? The very first person to purchase a Macintosh computer? The first (and thus far only) author to play a guitar solo onstage with Pink Floyd? Adams was also the writer so notorious for missing deadlines that he had to be held captive in a hotel room under the watchful eye of his editor; the creator of the epic computer game Starship Titanic; and a globetrotting wildlife crusader.
   A longtime friend of the author, Nick Webb reveals many quirks and contradictions: Adams as the high-tech-gadget junkie and lavish gift giver... irrepressible ham and painfully timid soul... gregarious conversationalist and brooding depressive... brilliant intellect and prickly egotist. Into the brief span of forty-nine years, Douglas Adams exuberantly crammed more lives than the most resilient cat—while still finding time and energy to pursue whatever side projects captivated his ever-inquisitive mind.
   By turns touching, tongue-in-cheek, and not at all timid about telling the warts-and-all truth, Wish You Were Here is summation as celebration—a look back at a life well worth the vicarious reliving, and studded with anecdote, droll comic incident, and heartfelt insight as its subject’s own unforgettable tales of cosmic wanderlust. For the countless fans of Douglas Adams and his unique and winsome world, here is a wonderful postcard: to be read, reread, and treasured for the memories it bears.


NICK WEBB was a publisher for nearly thirty years before, perversely, turning to writing. He commissioned The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy while he was an editor at Pan Books, and remained good friends with Douglas Adams until the end of the author’s life. He lives in Hackney, England.

Cover image for Wish You Were Here: The Official Biography of Douglas Adams
Edition: US (paperback)
Released:  December 2007
Publisher:  Del Rey Books
ISBN:0-345-47651-4
Format: paperback
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Cover blurb:
“Webb’s tale brims with affection and humour; every page is a delight.” — The Daily Mail

It all started when Douglas Adams demolished planet Earth in order to make way for an intergalactic expressway—and then invited everyone to thumb a ride on a comical cosmic road trip in The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Adams made the universe a much funnier place to inhabit and forever changed the way we think about towels, extraterrestrial poetry, and especially the number 42. And then, too soon, he was gone.
    In Wish You Were Here, Nick Webb, a longtime friend of the author, reveals the many sides, quirks, and contradictions of Douglas Adams. A summation as celebration, it is a look back at a life well worth the vicarious reliving, as studded with anecdote, droll comic incident, and heartfelt insight as its subject’s own unforgettable tales of cosmic wanderlust.

"It’s perhaps the ultimate credit to Webb that he can be just as funny as Adams in his writing. With many of the same veins of humour that Adams had running throughout this biography, it’s as if the great hitchhiker has never really left."
-The Leeds Guide

Cover image for Wish You Were Here: The Biography of Douglas Adams
Edition: UK (2nd paperback)
Title:  Wish You Were Here: The Biography of Douglas Adams
Released:  August 2011
Publisher:  Ashgrove Publishing
ISBN:978-1-85398-162-3
Format: paperback
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Cover blurb:
Webb’s tale brims with affection and humour; every page is a delight.
DAILY MAIL


In the Sagittarius arm of our galaxy, the unfashionable end, there’s a small planet that swarms with life of all varieties Including a dominant species of primates. One of them, who was exceptionally large and exceptionally clever, sported a Himalayan nose and a distinctly odd way of looking at everything. His name was Douglas Adams, the author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, four more wildly funny volumes in the same trilogy, and much else besides. His writing is full of excellent jokes and expressions that have entered the language. Are we ready for Life, the Universe and Everything? Militantly atheist, Douglas was possessed by a disturbing sense of wonder. Step back from the familiar, he thought, and it is very strange that we exist at all.

Douglas Adams loved being a writer; it was just the writing that drove him to despair and his colleagues to heroically suppressed exasperation. When he wasn’t doing it, he spent his time in headlong pursuit of love, friendship and his intense enthusiasms, such as music and computer technology. Otherwise his default position was the restaurant, where he gave full expression to his generosity and funniness.

This blography was written with the help of Douglas’s family and friends; it is an insider’s account of a man who is still missed by millions of fans around the world.


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