The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979, ISBN 0330258648) is the title of the first of five books in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy comedy science fiction series by Douglas Adams. The novel is an adaptation of the first four parts of Adams's radio series of the same name. The novel was first published in London in October, 1979.

The novel takes its name from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a fictional guidebook for hitchhikers (based on the Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe) written in the form of an encyclopedia.

Plot summary

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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ("The Guide is definitive; reality is frequently very inaccurate.") is the most popular known reference work in the Milky Way, for two reasons: it is inexpensive, and it has the words Don't Panic written on it in large, friendly letters on its cover. It is a galactic bestseller everywhere except on the backward planet Earth, where they still think digital watches are "a pretty neat idea." Ford Prefect is a field correspondant for the Guide stationed on Earth and fully aware they've forgotten about him. His best friend is the unassuming Earthling Arthur Dent. His boring life in West Country is changed one morning when Ford alerts him that he's actually from somewhere near Betelgeuse and that they have to get off the planet before it's demolished. Indeed, an alien race of bureaucrats called Vogons intend to destroy Earth to make way for a "hyperspace bypass".

After escaping with minutes to spare via hitchhiking, Arthur and Ford are thrown into open space and are inadvertedly picked up seconds before asphyxiation point by the Heart of Gold, a ship which was stolen (as opposed to launched) by President of the Galaxy (in a government unheard of on Earth)Zaphod Beeblebrox, who happens to be Ford's semi-cousin. The ship is piloted by Zaphod and Trillian, whom Arthur once met at a party, and attended to by clinically depressed android Marvin. Ford and Arthur learn of Zaphod's immediate intentions for the ship: finding the legendary lost planet of Magrathea, which supposedly built luxury planets. When they do, Arthur meets an old resident, Slartibartfast, who tells him some rich clients (known to humans as mice, which are three-dimensional representations of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings that only had representatives on Earth to monitor its progress; the mice in question were in fact thought by Trillian to be her pets, though if anything the case was the opposite) have reawoken the Magratheans from cryosis for one more job. The planet to build is Earth Mark II, to replace the now demolished Earth Mark I, which the Magratheans built not as a planet but an organic supercomputer to calculate the Question, not the Answer, to Life, the Universe and Everything. The Answer is already known to the mice. As Deep Thought told them, the Answer is 42, but this only makes sense if the Question is known. Earth was, in fact, demolished five minutes before the Question was calculated.

The mice explain it will take too long to wait another ten million years for Earth II to produce the Question when, as a last-generation organic byproduct of the computer's matrix, they could simply find the Question imprinted in Arthur's brainwaves. Of course, they have to kill him and remove his brain, prepare it and dice it. Fortunately, a distraction is caused by way of the Galactic police, come to arrest Zaphod for theft. Before the four of them are killed by the police in the chase, the officers' life support is cut off and they die. Back at the Heart of Gold, they find Marvin, their savior—he had plugged his external feed into the the policecraft's input port and uploaded his horribly depressing views on life. The craft responded by, in an act that took the on-board life support system with it, committing suicide.

Zaphod decides to take the Heart of Gold to the restaurant Milliways, and their story continues in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe.

Illustrated Edition

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"The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" is a specially designed book made in 1994. It was first printed in the United Kingdom by Weidenfeld & Nicolson, Limited and in the United States by Harmony Books (who sold it for $42). It is an oversized book, and came in silver-foil "holographic" covers in both the UK and US markets. It features the first appearance of the 42 Puzzle, designed by Adams himself, a photograph of Adams and his literary agent Ed Victor as the two space cops, and many other designs by Kevin Davies, who has participated in many Hitchhiker's related projects since the stage productions in the late 1970s. Davies himself appears as Prosser. This edition is out of print - Adams bought up many remainder copies and sold them, autographed, on his website.

External link

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• Review by Science Fiction Weekly

1979 novels | Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy | Science fiction novels | Debut novels

Stopařův průvodce po Galaxii | Štoparski vodnik po galaksiji | Guida galattica per gli autostoppisti (romanzo)