Reading order
| # | Title | Published | Author | Buy on Amazon |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | 1979 | Douglas Adams | Buy |
| 2 | The Restaurant at the End of the Universe | 1980 | Douglas Adams | Buy |
| 3 | Life, the Universe and Everything | 1982 | Douglas Adams | Buy |
| 4 | So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish | 1984 | Douglas Adams | Buy |
| 5 | Mostly Harmless | 1992 | Douglas Adams | Buy |
| 6 | And Another Thing… | 2009 | Eoin Colfer | Buy |
Douglas Adams started the Hitchhiker’s Guide as a BBC radio comedy in 1978. The first novel followed a year later. Arthur Dent, an ordinary Englishman, barely escapes Earth’s demolition by hitching a ride with his friend Ford Prefect, who turns out to be an alien researcher for the titular guidebook. What follows involves the answer to life, the universe, and everything (it’s 42), an improbable spaceship powered by an Infinite Improbability Drive, and a chronically depressed robot named Marvin.
Adams had been a writer for Doctor Who and Monty Python before Hitchhiker’s took off. His humor mixes absurdism with sharp observations about bureaucracy, technology, and human nature. The books are funny, but they also have a melancholy streak that deepens with each installment. Mostly Harmless, the fifth book, ends on a bleak note that Adams himself disliked.
The series began on radio, became novels, then a television show, a video game, comic books, and finally a 2005 film starring Martin Freeman. Each version tells the story differently because Adams rewrote it every time, treating the plot as flexible material.
Adams died of a heart attack in 2001 at age 49. He’d been planning a sixth novel. Eoin Colfer, author of the Artemis Fowl series, wrote And Another Thing… in 2009 with permission from Adams’s widow.