The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Somewhere in the unfashionable end of the Galaxy's western spiral arm orbits an insignificant blue-green planet whose inhabitants still consider digital watches impressive.

Somewhere in the unfashionable end of the Galaxy's western spiral arm orbits an insignificant blue-green planet whose inhabitants still consider digital watches impressive. Most of them spent most of their time unhappy, preoccupied with small green pieces of paper. One Thursday, a woman sitting alone in a Rickmansworth café suddenly understood how to fix everything—how to make the world genuinely good. Before she could reach a phone, a catastrophe intervened, and her insight was lost forever. Her story, however, is not this one. What follows is the account of that catastrophe, and of a remarkable book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—an electronic encyclopedia from Ursa Minor, wildly inaccurate but enormously popular, distinguished by two words on its cover: Don't Panic.

Arthur Dent lies in mud to save a house he'll never need

Arthur Dent—thirty, anxious, employed in local radio—wakes on a Thursday morning to find yellow bulldozers parked outside his unremarkable house. The local council intends to demolish it for a bypass. The plans, Arthur discovers, had been on display in the cellar of the planning office, in a locked filing cabinet, in a disused lavatory, behind a door bearing a warning about a leopard. He does the only reasonable thing: lies down in the mud in front of the lead bulldozer and refuses to move. The council foreman, a nervous man named Prosser who is unknowingly descended from Genghis Khan, argues and blusters. Arthur holds his ground. The standoff settles into a miserable routine of squelching, threats, and idle bulldozer drivers drinking coffee.

An alien hitchhiker drags his friend to the pub before doomsday

Ford Prefect appears at Arthur's side with disturbing urgency. Arthur's closest friend for six years, Ford is secretly an alien from near Betelgeuse—a roving researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, stranded on Earth for fifteen years while waiting for a ride. A sensor in his satchel has detected something massive approaching the planet. Ford fast-talks Prosser into lying in the mud as Arthur's replacement, then hauls Arthur to the village pub. There he orders six pints and announces the world will end in roughly twelve minutes. Arthur, bewildered and hungover, drinks his three pints as Ford insists—muscle relaxant, Ford calls it. The barman feels something strange radiating from Ford: the subliminal signal of a being born six hundred light years away.

The Vogons give humanity the same excuse Arthur's council gave him A rumbling crash from outside the pub—Arthur's house, knocked flat while he was drinking. He sprints back, screaming at the workmen. Then something far worse: enormous…