This book (and radio/television series) is almost legendary now, and it's only after becoming personally acquainted with Douglas Adams' vivid imagination and absurd sense of humour that certain everyday names and cult catchphrases start to make sense. So that's where 'Babel fish' comes from! 'So long, and thanks for all the fish'. Not to mention that the 80s pop group Level 42 are said to have named their band after the meaning of life, the universe and everything.

Utterly random, but very entertaining, and Mr Adams' imagination is staggering. I love Marvin the Paranoid Android (I think we share a life philosophy), and can't wait to read the rest of the series. Better late than never! ( )

With the release of a new book written in Adams’ world I wanted to reacquaint myself with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect and the wonderful Marvin the Paranoid Android. As smart and as clever as I remembered with some sparkingly dialogue. An undoubted classic. ( )

Great book, better than the tapes ( )

Good novel, personally enjoyed the BBC radio adaptation much better. However the novel was very funny and I intend to read the following four novels as well.

Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Galaxy lies a small, unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

On this planet there is a book, one of the most remarkable books ever to come out of the great publishing houses of London: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Not a serious book, by any means; not a book to be enjoyed by anyone who takes things too seriously. Still, though, a wholly remarkable book.

It begins with the end of the world, and things go steadily downhill from there. Arthur Dent, the lone human survivor of the terrible, stupid tragedy which destroyed the Earth, finds himself pulled along on a madcap adventure with the President of the Galaxy, his best friend from Earth (who turns out to actually be from Betelgeuse Five), a terminally-depressed robot, and a girl he once met at a party and completely failed to get anywhere with. The results are hilarious.

Douglas Adams was a writer who excelled at the kind of non-sequitur humor best captured in Monty Python's sketches and films. However, if that were all there were to HGTG and its sequels, it would grow boring rather quickly. Fortunately, Adams' talents lay far beyond the merely absurd. Despite the silliness and the frequent asides (which quote the titular in-universe Guide), he makes you care about the characters. It's hard not to identify with Arthur Dent's inability to cope with the bizarre circumstances he finds himself in; one imagines this would be the reaction of anyone suddenly taken away from everything they know, never to return. It's hard not to empathize with Ford Prefect, the man from Betelgeuse who finds himself trapped on a planet out in the galactic boondocks for fifteen years. And hell, even Marvin elicits some sympathy for the interminable bleakness of his lot in life.

Also, specifically in reference to the 2005 audiobook recording: While the original audiobooks (featuring Adams himself as the narrator) are not bad by any means, Stephen Fry is amazing. He was practically the only good thing about the film adaptation, and this new audiobook recording (which was a tie-in to that movie) is probably the only good thing that came out of it, in the end. Unfortunately, the fact that the movie flopped apparently also means that we won't get recordings of the rest of the books read by Fry. Still, the Adams editions are perfectly adequate. ( )