Summary
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * "Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon."-- The Washington Post Book World
SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES * Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy !
Nominated as one of America's best-loved novels by PBS's The Great American Read
It's an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur's best friend has just announced that he's an alien.
After that, things get much, much worse.
With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover.
Douglas Adams's mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything.
Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .
Author Notes
Douglas Noel Adams (sometimes referred to Bop Ad because of his distinctive signature) was born in Cambridge, England, on March 11, 1952 and educated at St. John's College at Cambridge University. He graduated with honors in English Literature in 1974. In addition to being a writer/editor for radio, television, and stage, Adams has worked as a hospital reporter, barn builder, and radio producer.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 1979, one of his bestselling humor and science fiction novels, was originally a radio series. It was the first in a four-book series that includes The Restaurant at the End of the Universe; Life, the Universe, and Everything, and So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. He once stated that the idea for his first novel came while he was "lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck and gazing at the stars." He pokes fun at humanity by mixing science fiction with humor.
Adams's additional books include The Meaning of Liff; The Deeper Meaning of Liff; Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency; The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul; and Mostly Harmless. He has also co-authored the book Last Chance to See, about endangered species.
Douglas Adams died May 11, 2001 of a heart attack in Santa Barbara, California at the age of 49.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Excerpts
Chapter One The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It stood on its own and looked out over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means--it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye. The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of London because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about thirty as well, tall, dark-haired and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought. It was, too--most of his friends worked in advertising. On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the lane was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent's house for what was to be the last time. It hadn't properly registered yet with Arthur that the council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead. * * * At eight o'clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn't feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash. Toothpaste on the brush--so. Scrub. Shaving mirror--pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur Dent's bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth. Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn. The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something to connect with. The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one. He stared at it. "Yellow," he thought, and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed. Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking the night be- fore? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. "Yellow," he thought, and stomped on to the bedroom. He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed important. He'd been telling people about it, telling people about it at great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people's faces. Something about a new bypass he'd just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself out, he'd decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn't have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out. God, what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. "Yellow," he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with. Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path. Mr. L. Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based bipedal life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local counci Excerpted from The Galaxy by Douglas Adams All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.