Adds extra information to the Hitchhiker trilogy, including previously unpublished radio show excerpts and a profile of Douglas Adams.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing companies of Ursa Minor. It is about the size of a paperback book, but looks more like a large pocket calculator, having upon its face over a hundred flat press-buttons and a screen about four inches square, upon which any one of over six million pages can be summoned almost instantly. It comes in a durable plastic cover, upon which the words DON'T PANIC are printed in large, friendly letters.
There are no known copies of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy on this planet at this time.
This is not its story.
It is however the story of a book also called, at a very high level of improbability, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy; of the radio series that started it all; the six-book trilogy it comprises; the computer games, towel and television series that it, in turn, has spawned.
To tell the story of the book - and the radio series, and the towel - it is best to tell the story of some of the minds behind it. Foremost among these is an ape-descended human from the planet Earth, although at the time our story starts he no more knows his destiny (which will include international travel, computers, an almost infinite number of lunches, and becoming mindbogglingly rich) than an olive knows how to mix a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.
His name is Douglas Adams, he is six foot five inches tall, and he is about to have an idea.