The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an enduring science fiction classic that stands alone as a comic masterpiece of imaginative invention. Throughout its various incarnations on radio, television, print and the cinema screen, HHGTTG continues to win new fans to is own brand of inspired logical lunacy to this day.

An epic tale told on a galactic scale, the Hitchhiker's Guide has beguiled generations of sci-fi fans with its combination of sharp satire, strangely plausible nonsense and ready wit.

The Complete Radio Series Box Set

Here's where it all began! Originally broadcast in 1978 on Radio 4, the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio series broke new ground in radio drama, becoming an instant hit with listeners and securing Douglas Adam's place as a master humorist.

This handsome box set features all five series of Hitchhiker's – the two original series written by Adams himself and the three follow-up series adapted from the books by Dirk Maggs and first aired in 2005 and 2006.

With a cast featuring Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect and Peter Jones as the Guide as well as guest appearances from such luminaries as Griff Rhys Jones, Jackie Mason, Joanna Lumley and even Christian Slater, the complete radio series box set really is a landmark work of audio drama which remains ahead of its time to this day.

In addition to all five phases of the radio series, the box set also contains a bonus CD which features behind-the-scenes interviews with key people involved in the production of the Guide, including an illuminating and entertaining chat with Douglas Adams himself.

HGTTG: The Complete 5-Book Novel Trilogy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Adapted by Douglas Adams from the first four episodes of the radio series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was an instant smash hit when it was first published back in 1978.

The hapless Arthur Dent's life takes a turn for the surreal when his friend Ford Prefect reveals himself to be an alien, and announces that the Earth is about to be utterly destroyed by a Vogon Constructor Fleet in order to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Rescued by the charismatic two-headed Zaphod Beeblebrox and his stunningly attractive assistant Trillian, Ford and Arthur find themselves travelling to the farthest reaches of the universe as unwitting participants in a cosmic scheme that was first set in motion millions of years ago…

      

The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Picking up where The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy left off, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe continues the aimless adventures of Arthur Dent and his accidental companions as they stumble from one improbable situation to another

Featuring a malfunctioning Improbability Drive , the terrifying Total Perspective Vortex, a faulty teleportation device and some haphazard time travelling, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe again showcases the incredible imagination and inventiveness of Douglas Adams, tied together by an epic plot that puts everything into perspective…

      

Life, the Universe and Everything

Reunited with Ford Prefect and the mysterious Slartibartfast, Arthur Dent is rescued from Earth's prehistoric past to watch a nice game of cricket at Lords just days before the entire planet is demolished by the overly-bureaucratic Vogons.

However, as is somewhat inevitable given Arthur's track record, even this simple activity proves to be less than straightforward, and soon he and his friends find themselves thrown into an alien plot that threatens the very existence of the universe itself…

Life, the Universe and Everything is the first novel in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy five-book trilogy not to be based on the original radio series, and it does a wonderful job in carrying the story forward and paving the way for future stories in the sequence.

      

So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish

With the universe saved, Arthur Dent is once again hitchhiking his way around the galaxy when he makes an unscheduled stop at a rainy, mediocre planet that soon starts to look familiar to him. It seems very much like Earth. The Earth that Arthur is all-too-painfully aware no longer exists.

He meets Fenchurch – also known as Fenny – with whom he finds a mysterious sense of interconnectedness, and the two fall for each other as Dent takes her on flying lessons over a slumbering London.

As much an unlikely romance as a comic sci-fi yarn, So Long and Thanks for all the Fish marks a bit of a departure in style for Adams , but his quirky sense of skewed logic and trademark inventiveness are still very much to the fore.

      

Mostly Harmless

Arthur Dent's seemingly endless quest to lead a simple, untroubled life is thwarted once again as circumstances conspire against him and place him in the midst of yet another galactic conspiracy. Always the plaything of forces beyond his control, Arthur's fragile equilibrium as a sandwich maker on the planet Lamuella is shattered when his daughter arrives seemingly out of nowhere…

With a stolen copy of the Hitchhiker's Guide Mark II, a series of confusingly similar alternate universes and their inhabitants thrown into the mix, Adams takes his readers on another whimsical flight of fancy through the farthest reaches of the cosmos until events reach their final, unstoppable conclusion in a dramatic climax that could only have been hatched in the unique mind of this seminal sci-fi author.