Even 30 years on this is still a fresh and funny series of stories, whether you read them or listen to the original BBC radio shows. The anarchic, or ‘random’ to use modern parlance, plot, place settings and characters makes them more appealing than a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster!
DON’T PANIC. Useful advice for Arthur Dent who is about to discover that along with his house, the Earth, is going to be destroyed by the Vogons and he is about to become embroiled in the search for the ultimate question to life the universe and everything (as we know the answer is 42).
One Thursday lunchtime Earth is unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this is already more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun. And the Galaxy is a very, very large and startling place indeed ...
The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy became a massive cult success when it was first published and continues to sell all over the world. It introduced such memorable characters as Arthur Dent, Marvin the Paranoid Android, Zaphod Beeblebrox and, of course, the Vogons, and remains one of the funniest, most irreverent and entertaining novels ever.
Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and created all the various and contradictory
manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV,
computer game, stage adaptation, comic book and bath towel. The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy was published thirty years ago......on 12 October 1979 and its phenomenal success sent the
book straight to number one in the UK bestseller list. In 1984 Douglas Adams
became the youngest author to be awarded a Golden Pan. His series has sold over
15 million books in the UK, the US and Australia and was also a bestseller in
German and many other languages. The feature film starring Martin Freeman and
Zooey Deschanel with Stephen Fry as the Guide was released in 2005 using much of
Douglas’s original script and ideas. Douglas lived with his wife and daughter in
Islington, North London, and briefly in California, where he died in 2001.
