The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY is not just a book--it's a phenomenon. It's based on a BBC radio series that also spawned four other books, a TV series, a 2005 film, a text-based computer adventure game, and a website. As the story begins, Arthur Dent is having a bad day. First, the town council knocked his house down to build a local bypass. Then a fleet of alien spaceships blew up his planet to make way for an intragalactic bypass. Can things get any worse? Possibly. Having been rescued from the Earth's destruction by his friend Ford Prefect, Arthur embarks upon a hectic, hysterically funny adventure that includes torturously bad poetry, a depressed robot, the two-headed President of the Galaxy (currently on the lam), and the legendary planet-building planet of Magrathea. Arthur's only consolation is the wise advice printed on the cover of that classic tome, THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: "Don't Panic." HITCHHIKER'S has developed a cult classic status that extends beyond SF fans, and people enjoy swapping quotes from it in much the same way that they exchange quotes from MONTY PYTHON. Although there is an extensive crop of British writers who write humorous fantasy in much the same vein, such as Terry Pratchett and Tom Holt, no one has quite been able to make the splash in satirical SF that Adams has.