The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams
821 Rating(s)
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Author: Douglas Adams

Narrator: Stephen Fry

Unabridged: 5 hr 51 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 04/05/2005


Synopsis

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “Extremely funny . . . inspired lunacy . . . [and] over much too soon.”—The Washington Post Book World

Now celebrating the pivotal 42nd anniversary of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy!

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. . . .

About Douglas Adams

Douglas Adams, a legend of imaginative fiction, ushered in the advent of comedic science fiction with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. The book developed into a hugely successful series of five novels. The Dirk Gently series—Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul—helped cement Adams as one of the most successful and beloved authors in science fiction.


Reviews

AudiobooksNow review by JZapp on 2007-12-19 12:38:03

First of all, it's only 3 discs. Second, it's more like a radio program, with stops and starts than a book. Third, it's a lousy book. I am a big fan of the other three books so I was totally disappointed with this.

Goodreads review by Jon on June 29, 2007

In my experience, readers either love Adams' books or quickly put them down. I, for example, quite literally worship the words Adams puts on the page, and have read the Hitchhiker's Trilogy so many times that I have large tracts of it memorized. But both my wife and father couldn't get past book one......more

Goodreads review by J.G. Keely on January 02, 2014

The universe is a joke. Even before I was shown the meaning of life in a dream at 17 (then promptly forgot it because I thought I smelled pancakes), I knew this to be true--and yet, I have always felt a need to search for the truth, that nebulous, ill-treated creature. Adams has always been, to me,......more

Goodreads review by Emily May on July 28, 2018

I am not one of those who think this is the best book ever written. It does not affect me on any deep emotional level and this kind of quirky sci-fi comedy is just not really my thing. However, that being said, Adams' has some of the best quotes EVER (not all of these are from this exact book): "In t......more

Goodreads review by Tom on January 16, 2008

Another classic. If you don't like this series, you probably put your babel fish in the wrong hole. You are the reason that human beings are only the third most intelligent species on earth behind mice and dolphins. So long, and thanks for all the fish!......more

Goodreads review by Federico on February 15, 2024

Absurdity at its finest. Arthur Dent is having a bad day, his house is about to be levelled down because it’s in the way of the construction of a new freeway. At the local pub, he encounters his enigmatic friend Ford Prefect. Prefect, a galactic hitchhiker, is leaving the Earth, and taking Dent wi......more


Quotes

Don't panic! Here are words of praise for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy!

"It's science fiction and it's extremely funny...inspired lunacy that leaves hardly a science fiction cliche alive."

Washington Post

"The feckless protagonist, Arthur Dent, is reminiscent of Vonnegut heroes, and his travels afford a wild satire of present institutions."

Chicago Tribune

"Very simply, the book is one of the funniest SF spoofs ever written, with hyperbolic ideas folding in on themselves."

School Library Journal

"As parody, it's marvelous: It contains just about every science fiction cliche you can think of. As humor, it's, well, hysterical."