How do you start to describe a book so insanely hilarious that speaks more truth than truth itself?
How do you start to explain how important having a towel is, to someone who has never attempted to hitchhike across the Galaxy for less than 30 Altairian dollars a day?
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", first published in 1980, is the first of the highly-acclaimed, illogically funny series by Douglas Adams (1952-2001).
"It is the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - not an Earth book, never published on earth... never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one - more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolan Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."
Thus begins the adventure of Arthur Dent, an insignificant Earthling who, seconds before the total annihilation of the Earth to make way for the construction of a new space hyperpass, was plucked off the planet by his friend Ford prefect, a researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Together they take off for a journey into space, picking up unlikely friends on the way - a two-headed, three-armed totally out-to-lunch ex-President of the Galaxy who was on the run for stealing the most unique starship in the history of the Galaxy, his girlfriend Trillian, formerly known as Tricia McMillian back when she was still an Earthling, and Marvin, a chronically depressed, paranoid android.
"Here I am, brain the size of a Planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't" (Marvin)
The gang set off for a madcap adventure in space operating on Improbability Drive by computers trying to be sickeningly sweet, making narrow escapes from hideous Vogons and murderous mice alike, teaching computers to make tea, and finding out about the Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything.
"But that's not the point!" raged Ford. "The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!"
How do you start to explain how important having a towel is, to someone who has never attempted to hitchhike across the Galaxy for less than 30 Altairian dollars a day?
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", first published in 1980, is the first of the highly-acclaimed, illogically funny series by Douglas Adams (1952-2001).
"It is the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - not an Earth book, never published on earth... never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one - more popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolan Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker's Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover."
Thus begins the adventure of Arthur Dent, an insignificant Earthling who, seconds before the total annihilation of the Earth to make way for the construction of a new space hyperpass, was plucked off the planet by his friend Ford prefect, a researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Together they take off for a journey into space, picking up unlikely friends on the way - a two-headed, three-armed totally out-to-lunch ex-President of the Galaxy who was on the run for stealing the most unique starship in the history of the Galaxy, his girlfriend Trillian, formerly known as Tricia McMillian back when she was still an Earthling, and Marvin, a chronically depressed, paranoid android.
"Here I am, brain the size of a Planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge. call that job satisfaction? 'Cos I don't" (Marvin)
The gang set off for a madcap adventure in space operating on Improbability Drive by computers trying to be sickeningly sweet, making narrow escapes from hideous Vogons and murderous mice alike, teaching computers to make tea, and finding out about the Answer to Life, The Universe and Everything.
"But that's not the point!" raged Ford. "The point is that I am now a perfectly safe penguin, and my colleague here is rapidly running out of limbs!"
What, then, IS the Answer all about, and where is Earth's role in the search of the great Question? What is the secret of Magrathea, the legendary planet? How bad CAN alien poems get? What is the Improbability Drive, and why did all the dolphins disappear off the face of Earth? What,indeed, was Man, the apelike creatures, doing ON the surface of the Earth? (That is, before it was blown away. Probably doesn't matter much anymore anyway. Not even to those who had digital watches). And more importantly, what constitutes good tea?
Marvin. He's got this terrible pain in all the diodes down his left-hand side. I am still doubled-up in stitches.
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