Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

BookRags Literature Study Guide

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Introduction

When The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was first broadcast as a 12-part radio series on the British Broadcasting System in 1978, it was successful. No one could have guessed, though, that it would mushroom into a multimedia phenomenon that would encompass five novels, a television series, a stage production, and, more than twenty years later, dozens of websites created by devotees who could not get enough of its bizarre universe. Douglas Adams's novel based on the series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy concerns the exploits of Arthur Dent, an average British citizen who gets caught up in a myriad of space adventures when his house, and then the Earth, is demolished. With no planet to call home, he is left to hitchhike through space with his friend Ford Prefect, whom he thought was an outof-work actor, but who is really a researcher for the intergalactic guidebook named in the title. Adams's book is one in which literally anything can happen, with the only rule being that what comes next will probably be the last thing the reader would expect and is bound to be amusing.

Author Biography

Douglas Adams was born in 1952, in Cambridge, England. He attended school at John's College in Cambridge, where he began his career writing comedy sketches, and received his master of arts degree. In 1978 he began writing radio scripts for the British Broadcasting System. One of the series he created was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which he produced and wrote. The series ran in twelve installments in 1978. For two years he was a script editor and writer for the worldrenowned, long-running Dr. Who television show.

Because of the popularity The Hitchhiker's Guide had on radio, a publishing house approached Adams to turn the series into a novel--up to that point, he had never even considered writing a novel. The book sold an astounding 100,000 copies...