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).
This beautifully illustrated edition of the New York Times bestselling classic celebrates the 42nd anniversary of the original publication-with all-new art by award-winning illustrator Chris Riddell.
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. . . .
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.
