The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This and a host of such quotations are what the book is filled with at appropriate junctures!

Most people are inclined to believe that this book is loosely based on their life or at least based on that part of life that constitutes breakfast … in most time zones at least!
If you still don’t quite get the hang of what I am saying and you are parlously looking for the gist of what I’ve said, I would recommend that you don’t pay too much attention to fuzzy green creature that is hovering above your left ear….
Seems awfully disconnected eh? All that I’ve said so far? Hold your breath and put on your flippers.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy or “h2g2” to many of us is a trilogy of books or as the author puts it: "A trilogy of six books"!

Douglas Adams, for those of you who haven’t heard of, was a British author who wrote satires. His satires are loosely based on the most mundane of things such as breakfast to things such as popular (depending on which part of the world you are in) sporting activities such as cricket!

The first book which goes by the name "The Hitchhiker’s guide to the galaxy" follows Arthur Dent (an earthling) about on his very first adventure with Ford Prefect, an alien being, who Arthur mistook for a human.

Arthur is rather rudely forced into an adventure that he hadn’t signed up for when an alien race, the Vogons, demolish the earth to make way for a ‘hyperspace bypass’! Arthur and Ford, by way of fate and also some complex probabilistic mathematics end up on a Space ship (named  ‘The Heart of Gold’) which by the way was being commandeered by a person who went by the name ‘Zaphod Beeblebrox’, the current President of the Galaxy. Also in tow is another earthling, a rather pretty one, Tricia ‘Trillian’ MacMillan and an ultra-depressed robot ‘Marvin’ who has GPP (’Genuine People Personality’) and his personality is of one who is chronically depressed!!! As Arthur and Trillian don’t have their planet to go back to, they are pretty much resigned to their fate of wandering the galaxies and this is what the first book sets up quite nicely.

In the first book, this motley crew wanders the galaxy to find the planet Magrathea which is/was famed to have the only factory of it’s kind; a factory that manufactures Luxury PLANETS! Yes, you read that right: It manufactures LUXURY PLANETS! There, Arthur, after being separated from the rest of the group, is taken to the interior of the planet by Slartibartfast, a native of the planet. The others are kidnapped. Slartibartfast explains to Arthur that the Earth is actually a supercomputer commissioned and paid for by a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings. These beings had earlier built a supercomputer named Deep Thought, to calculate the Answer to "Life, the Universe, and Everything". This computer, after seven and a half million years of calculating, had announced that the Answer is in fact ‘42′!!!

Being unsatisfied with the Answer, they set about finding the Question. Deep Thought designs a computer, the Earth, to calculate the Question. However, ten million years later, and just five minutes before the completion of the program, the Earth is demolished by the Vogons. The manifestations of two of these beings, Frankie and Benjy Mouse, had arrived on Magrathea on the Heart of Gold, disguised as Trillian’s pet mice.

The mice realize that Arthur, as a last-generation organic byproduct of the computer’s (earth) matrix, has the Question imprinted into his brain and offer to buy his brain from him. Arthur disagrees, and a fight ensues. The mice are about to cut Arthur’s head open, when due to a diversion created, they escape. The galactic police had arrived on the planet to arrest Zaphod. The group is attacked by 2 members of the police, who abruptly die when their life support systems fail: Marvin had explained his (highly depressed and forlorn) view of the universe to the mother ship’s computer and it committed suicide, taking their life support systems with it.

This is where the first book ends and the group now decides to go to "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" for lunch, which is the title of Douglas Adam’s second book!
This book spawned into an extremely successful radio show in the 70s’ and not so successful movie in 2005!