The novel was first published serially in Rolling Stone magazine, under the byline "Raoul Duke". The book version was published with Thompson's name as the author.

HST: Well, I would have preferred to write about this, but under the circumstances, I’ll try to explain. There were two planes in the last months of the McGovern campaign. One was the Dakota Queen, actually it was the Dakota Queen II– like “junior”– the Dakota Queen Second. McGovern’s bomber in World War II was the original Dakota Queen. Ed: So the public’s perception of McGovern was distorted – but you think that McGovern essentially was at the root of that distortion. Compare this with the drug collection of Raoul Duke, the first person narrator of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971): HST: That was the next question I was going to ask. Have you thought about what might have happened if you’d kept up that approach?McGovern: Well, see, nobody’ll ever know that for sure, ’cause those records are never gonna be available. I think the FBI has them.

Stubbs, Philip. "The conflict over Fear and Loathing's script credit". gilliamdreams.com . Retrieved February 17, 2017. But what the hell? This was certainly acceptable, I felt, and preferable beyond any doubt to the horror of being lashed into hamburger with chain-whips by Mankiewicz and Barger in the Clubhouse Bar… Holden, Stephen (May 22, 1998). " 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas': The Attitude Is Missing". The New York Times . Retrieved June 13, 2023.Many critics have hailed Steadman's illustrations as another main character of the novel and companion to Thompson's disjointed narrative. The New York Times noted that "Steadman's drawings were stark and crazed and captured Thompson's sensibility, his notion that below the plastic American surface lurked something chaotic and violent. The drawings are the plastic torn away and the people seen as monsters." [22] HST: I don’t know. That’s the kind of language Mankiewicz used all through the campaign when he got confused and started treading water. Morris, Chris. (October 26, 1996). Hunter S. Thompson Brings 'Fear and Loathing' to Island. Billboard magazine, 43, 10