"
IRRESISTIBLE!" -- The Boston Globe: Seconds before the Earth is demolished to make way for a galactic freeway, Arthur Dent is plucked off the planet by his friend Ford Prefect, a researcher for the revised edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who, for the last fifteen years, has been posing as an out-of-work actor.Together this dynamic pair begin a journey through space aided by quotes from The Hitchhiker's Guide ("A towel is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have") and a galaxy-full of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox--the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod's girlfriend (formally Tricia McMillan), whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student who is obsessed with the disappearance of all the ballpoint pens he bought over the years. Where are these pens? Why are we born? Why do we die? Why do we spend so much time between wearing digital watches? For all the answers stick your thumb to the stars. And don't forget to bring a towel!"[A] WHIMSICAL ODYSSEY...Characters frolic through the galaxy with infectious joy."--Publishers WeeklyFrom the Paperback edition. -
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
aired for the first time at 10:30pm on Wednesday, 8th March 1978 on
the BBC as a radio comedy. The radio show's popularity spawned books,
a televisions series, several stage plays, a computer game and
feature films.
The novel adaptation of Adam's radio
series is a misnamed “Trilogy” of six books, five written by
Douglas Adams – that sold more than 15 millions copies in his
lifetime - and a sixth by Eoin Colfer.
At the release of the fourth book the
series was named "trilogy in four parts," and the US
edition of the fifth book was originally released with the legend
"The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named
Hitchhiker's Trilogy" on the cover. Subsequent re-releases of
the other novels bore the legend "The [first, second, third,
fourth] book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's
Trilogy". In addition, the blurb on the fifth book describes it
as "the book that gives a whole new meaning to the word
'trilogy'"
Before his death from a heart attack on
May 11, 2001, Adams was considering writing a sixth novel in the
Hitchhiker's series. Eoin Colfer, an Irish writer of Children's
Books, most famous for his Artemis Fowl series, wrote the sixth book
in the Hitchhiker's series in 2008–09.
Books in the Series (Trilogy) are as
follows:
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the
Galaxy
The Restaurant at the End of the
Universe
Life, the Universe and Everything
So Long, and Thanks for All the
Fish
Mostly Harmless
And Another Thing...
Two omnibus editions were created by
Douglas Adams to combine the Hitchhiker series novels and to "set
the record straight". The stories came in so many different
formats that Adams stated that every time he told it he would
contradict himself. Therefore, he stated in the introduction of
The
More Than Complete Hitchhiker's Guide that "anything I put
down wrong here is, as far as I'm concerned, wrong for good."
The two omnibus editions were The More Than Complete Hitchhiker's
Guide, Complete and Unabridged (published in 1987) and The
Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide, Complete and Unabridged (published
in 1997).
Inspired in part by Ken Walsh's
Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe published
in 1971, which stresses the importance of towels to the travelling
hitch-hiker, an important article to the Hitchhiker's in Adam's
galaxy as well.
When Elon Musk's Tesla Roadster was
launched into space on the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy rocket
in February 2018, it had the words DON'T PANIC on the dashboard
display and carried amongst other items a copy of the Hitchhiker's
Guide to the Galaxy and a towel.
First published in London 12th
October 1979 – sold 250,000 copies in the first three months. US
edition is 1980, Harmony Books. First edition, signed run
$1,000-$2,000.-
