The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy – Douglas Adams

After last week’s adventure on The Narrow Road To The Deep North, I needed something a little more light-hearted. When I tell people I’m reading my way through a list of classic and popular books, The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is their number one suggestion/request. I couldn’t get to it for ages: it was super difficult to find a copy in my usual secondhand bookstores. One staffer literally laughed when I asked if they had it; every copy they get (and they don’t get many, because no one wants to part with it) is snapped up immediately. So, you’d better believe that I pounced as soon as I saw one! Even though I’m not a sci-fi reader, this one is such a cultural icon – and so many people recommend it so highly – I was really excited.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy actually began as a radio series, first broadcast on 8 March 1978. Adams didn’t adapt it to book form until the following year, but it’s a good thing he did because it sold 250,000 copies in just the first three months after its release. What makes my secondhand store find even more of a miracle is that this is one of those editions! The very first published by Pan Books back in 1979. Can you believe it?? You’ll pry this baby out of my cold dead hands!

And I tell you this not just to show off: it’s actually quite important to know which edition someone is reviewing, because Adams made substantial re-writes between each print run. Even though the basic plot points remain the same, the editions often contradict each other with changes to character, dialogue, and so forth. So, anything that follows might be a little different to what you recall if you read a later edition, don’t @ me 😉

Right from the get-go, Adams is funny. His author bio says things like: “He has also worked at various times as a hospital porter, barn builder, chicken shed cleaner, bodyguard, radio producer, and script editor of Doctor Who. He is not married, has no children, and does not live in Surrey.”

It comes as no surprise, then, that he’s a pretty kooky guy, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is a pretty kooky book. Adams claimed that the concept and title were inspired by a bender. He was hitchhiking around Europe and one night, lying drunk in a field (if I had a dollar), he got to thinking about his mate’s copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To Europe and mused that there should be a version written for the galaxy. And he was onto something, believe it or not: his drunken idea turned into an international multi-media phenomenon.

The story begins with THE END OF THE WORLD. Literally. A Vogon fleet vaporises our dear planet to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. Luckily, an unassuming English gent – our protagonist, Arthur Dent – is rescued by Ford Prefect, the humanoid alien freelancer who’s writing a guide to Earth for The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy. Ford drags Arthur up and away, and they hitch a ride on a passing Vogon space craft. And so, their misadventures begin…

As I’m sure you can tell already, I did a good job of picking a light read to counteract my last one. The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is silly, it’s fun, and it’s quite satirical in tone (it reminded me of Catch-22 in that way, actually). Arthur Dent explores the galaxy with his alien buddy, and they make a few friends along the way: Trillian (another human that had escaped Earth prior to its destruction), Zaphod Beeblebrox (the two-headed President of the Galaxy), and Marvin (the Paranoid Android). My favourite part was the off-hand mention of a planet where all the lost biro pens go: I think I could live there quite happily.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy ended up being the first in a series of five books that Adams ironically called a “trilogy”. After it, there’s The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, The Universe and Everything (1982), So Long And Thanks For All The Fish (1984), and Mostly Harmless (1992). There was also a sixth book in the series, called And Another Thing…, published in 2009 to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the novel’s release (but being that Adams is, well, dead, it was written by Irish author Eoin Colfer).

The series has inspired countless multi-media adaptations, beyond even the original radio broadcasts: films, television shows, music, graphic novels… Adams’ story is so pervasive in pop culture that when Elon Musk launched his Tesla Roadster in Feburary 2018, he emblazoned the dashboard with DON’T PANIC, and packed a towel and a copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy on board (all of which are in-jokes from the book).

So, yes, there’s a lot of fun to be had, and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy is perfect if you’re in need of a chuckle, as I was. I’m not sure I’d read it again, I didn’t love it that much, but I’m glad I gave it a go. It made me think a lot about how sci-fi is often maligned, and how varied the genre can actually be, unbeknownst to the readers that look down their noses at it.

Most of all, though, I’m glad I finally understand the meaning of a cryptic note a former colleague left for me when he moved on to a new job; it said “So long, and thanks for all the fish!”. I puzzled over that for years, but now it finally makes sense! If you don’t get it, you’ll just have to read The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy or die wondering 😉

My favourite Amazon reviews of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy:

• “felt a lost of i. q.” – albe
• “A fun random adventure in an absurd future past about space Wikipedia. It was the most random book I’ve ever read but it was short and entertaining.” – Seth
• “The words soar and scintillate, in exactly the way a brick doesn’t. Douglas, you left us too soon. Farewell.” – Mark A. Wilson
• “Adventurous spirit of Star Trek meets scientific imagination of Harry Potter meets hilarity of Sharknado. At the end of the day, Douglas Adams is a genius and it’s not hard to see how this novel inspired a young Elon Musk!” – Pearl Ibarra
• “Ordered by accident. Enjoyed Marvin the robots escapades though. When he disappeared I lost interest.” – Rich Bowen
• “I know it is a “classic” and I migh have enjoyed it if I had been smoking weed but I don’t and I didn’t” – Headed South
• “Among the worst of books. Imagine if Kurt Vonnegut and Terry Pratchett had a love child, and then that love child had no talent.” – Dr Funk
• “I made it a quarter of the way through the book when I had to put it down. The paragraph in particular referenced a million gallon vat of custard and i couldn’t get past it. Even in science fiction, a million gallon vat of custard just isn’t believable. Belief cannot be suspended with this book.” – Lindsey Mertz