The Hitch Hiker Guide’s to the Galaxy

Adam, Douglas. The Hitch Hiker Guide’s to the Galaxy. 2002. 216p. ISBN 0-345-45374-3. Available at FIC ADA on the library shelves.

Arthur Dent lives a miserable life. His house, he has just found out, is about to be demolished so that a road can be built. As the bulldozers start to crawl towards his house, he shaves, dresses, then leaves and lays down on the ground. The foreman attempts to convince him to get up, but Arthur refuses, holding up the project’s timetable. Passing by, his friend, Fort Prefect, convinces Arthur to follow him to the pub while the foreman lays down in the mud, taking his place.

At the pub, Ford announces loudly that the end of the world will happen in twelve minutes. He plies Arthur with drinks, telling him that he’ll feel better. Arthur is not sure what is happening, and when he hears the sounds of demolition he realizes his house has just been knocked down. Not of that matters, however, as the Earth itself is about to be destroyed by a Vogon construction fleet so that a galactic highway can be built in this sector.

Transported from Earth to the inside of a Vogon ship, Arthur and Ford barely escape the planet’s destruction.. Ford reveals that he’s an alien from Betelgeuse who has been conducting research for the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the most comprehensive space encyclopedia. He’s been stuck on Earth for fifteen years, and now he’s pretty happy to be off.

Meanwhile, Zaphod Beeblebrox, Galactic President, steals the Heart of Gold, a ship that travels on improbabilities. When Ford and Arthur are ejected from the Vogon spaceship, they are, improbably, collected 1 second away from death by Zaphod, who turns out to be Ford’s cousin. Along with Trillian, a human female Arthur had met before, and Marvin, a depressed android, they set off on the quest to rediscover the planet Magrathea, which originally designed Earth. Riotous adventures take place as the crew learns to deal with one another.

Originally a radio show, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has been produced as a novel and as a movie, and continues to be popular both as a comedy and as a space opera novel.