The volume contains some interesting insights into the making of the original radio show, as well as a interestingly different version of the story for those who have only read the books. I wouldn't say it's a must ready unless you're a fan of the series, but Adams' sense of humour is always spot on.

The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy is the first of 5 books in the series by Douglas Adams
The novel features the disgruntled character of Arthur Dent an ordinary man with a rather bleak outlook on life.
That soon changed whence a long time friend, Ford Prefect reveals that the world is about to end and that he is in fact an alien who happens to be an expert at navigating the nooks and crannies of the galaxy. The book takes you through their various adventures throughout the galaxy.
The characters in the book were quite unique but a bit too outlandish and one dimensional. Douglas uses characters like waves in the ocean and it was quite annoying as a reader to constantly have to move planets and adapt to a new set of rules and people.
The plot has a similar vibe to this since the characters and their objectives are ever changing. Douglas proves to be humorous as promised however many of his ideas sound like something out of a comic drawn by an eight year old. The ending of the book was quite a good twist but it feels a bit anticlimactic and unsatisfying because of all the effort a reader puts to reading it.
Overall, this book is like a drug. Addictive. As soon as you get bored it drags you back in with a fresh and exciting twist. I can see why it is a bestseller and popular amongst teenagers but it is a bit childish for my liking. Personally I don't think it was worth the time and the overdue notice in my inbox. I would highly recommend it to children below the age of 14 however not for older kids and adults.

Anyone who has compared versions would, I think, agree, that the best expression of the Hitchhiker's universe is the original BBC radio productions. One should have that to listen to, but sometimes you're in a reading mood. These scripts are a great alternative. They are different enough from the novels that you want both (if this is the kind of thing you like), yet pleasantly reminiscent of both the books and the radio show. We will not speak of the recent so-called film.

A very good read. Not only do we get to relive our favourite scenes in this weird galaxy of ours, but we get an inside look at how the radio programme was made. The sections detailing how sound effects were produced was particularly interesting, as were the details about the development of the storyline (did you know that Marvin, the paranoid android, wasn't originally meant to be a steady character?).
Worth reading, if you can find it.

signed copy, met the author at the Miami Book fair.

Just finished re-reading the original Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio scripts on Kindle. The scripts are so much better than the book. After having listened to the original radio show and read the script book, the novelization is really kind of dry and boring. So read the scripts; they're a lot better.

Basic Plot: Arthur Dent is rescued from Earth just as it is about to be destroyed.

I stumbled across this strange gem of a book when I was in high school. Being involved with the school radio station, I was looking for something to do as a project for a radio competition and found this book. Previous to this discovery, I hadn't known that Adams had originally created The Hitchhiker's Guide as a radio series before it was a novel. It blew my mind. There are some significant differences between the novels and the scripts, but that comes from this technically being the "first draft." I never did get to record any of the scripts for my competition, but a part of me still wants to take a stab at it someday.

It's all the good bits from the books, condensed and snappy.

I have tried to get into radio comedy at various times. I spent many an hour trying to discover what was funny about the Goon Show as to me it just sounded like allot of man talking in silly voices. I had discovered Hitch Hikers through the TV show and had subsequently read all the Hitch Hiker novels and thought Douglas Adams the greatest writer I’d ever read.

And then, one Christmas, nearly two thousand years after one man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to be nice to people for a change, BBC Radio 4 played the Hitch Hikers radio series on consecutive nights and I tuned in my portable hoping to change my opinion of Radio comedy by what was universally considered a ground breaking show.

Well I never got my epiphany, and still can’t do Radio comedy, so buying this book is a difficult circle to square. I think I’d buy directions in the use of tooth picks if Douglas Adams had written them. Anyway it’s got a nice cover.

Fun, fun, fun!

We've got an audio copy of the radio play, too. Fantastic! I love how they handled the infinite improbability count down to normality for Arthur and Ford....

If you mention this book to your average British bookworm their eyes light up and they get super excited - similar sight when someones mentions Harry Potter to me. You can tell their are avid fans. In fact, this book is a prominent series in British popular culture, and as well as becoming a international phenomenon. This is just the first book in a 6 part series, it's got a radio show (thats actually how it started!), TV series, stage shows, video games, comic books and most recently a film starring Martin Freeman. The world is positively obsessed!

Sadly, I cannot say I fall into that category. Trust me, no one is more upset about this news then I am. I just did not find it entertaining, funny or prolific in any sense of the word. There were several factors for disliking this book, and I've managed to narrow it down to two things; characters and theme of absurdity.

I struggled with the fact that all the characters were quite annoying, meaning I wasn't really rooting for anyone. You have Arthur, the main protagonist, who is meant to represent the human race and I believe the reader as well, that is just shocked for most of the novel and confused (as are we!). Then there is his vague and preoccupied best-friend alien Ford Prefect, who occasionally answers Arthur's questions and seems a bit on edge for most of the book. He's meant to represent the nomad journalist longing for adventure and wanting to update his guide to the universe. There is also a depressed robot (who I probably relate to most on this book while reading it), an arrogant president of the Imperial Galactic Government, Zaphod Beeblebrox (slightly more intelligent than Trump). I understand that most of his characters are trying to prove a certain point i.e. Vogons are a stab at the beaurocrats while the mice are meant to be a higher intelligent version of humans, etc but the author wrote the book made these characters like subjects in a lab rather than characters that you can sympathise or get to know better.

The other struggle for me was the theme of absurdity that forms the basis of this book. I understand that this is Douglas Adams just poking fun at the government, establishments  and the absurd world we call home. It just really didn't fly with me, if anything it agitated me as it was hard to follow the plot and get into the book. What kind of absurdities do you say? Take the entire page written about the importance of towels. Yes, you've read it correctly:

A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have. Partly it has great practical value...more importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. (22)
I guess he was trying to be funny here? Just not really a laugh out loud moment for me. There are other things, that aren't only absurd, but that happen randomly, without any cause of meaning. Take Ford Prefect's question to Arthur whether he was busy, when he was trying to stop the bulldozer from destroying his home:

'Ford! Hello, how are you?'

'Fine,' said Ford, 'look are you busy?'

'Am I busy?' exclaimed Arthur. 'Well, I've just got all these bulldozers and things to lie in front go because they'll knock my house down if I don't, but other than that...well, no not especially, why?' (11)
What a hilarious and unexpected response! I could just hear the audience laughing in the background. I can tell that these are meant to be funny, and highlight the absurdity of what was happening but I kept just looking at how many pages were left in the chapter and hoping it would get better I'm afraid to say!

There are many contradictions throughout the novel as well. Such as mice ruling the human race, instead of them being our lab rats. Or the name of the ship that Zophad commands is called Heart of Gold, implying someone that is caring and nice, which is a contradiction because he's a devious, narcissistic and irresponsible fellow. The fact that he's the president of the Imperial Galactic Government just shows us how Douglas Adams views government officials and how manipulated the government body is. Most of the other characters and machines that they encounter in the galaxy are all selfish individuals who are pretending to be all sorts of things if it benefits them.

Douglas Adams is also trying to test our understanding of intelligence, by shattering our view that humans are the more intelligent life forms on the planet, and instead declaring that dolphins and mice are actually the more superior species in the galaxy, for the dolphins knew about the destruction of Earth and tried to, unsuccessfully to warn the humans, and we learn that it was the mice who had actually commissioned Earth to be made:

'Earthman, the planet that you lived on was commissioned, paid for, and run by mice...they are merely the protrusion into our dimensions of vast hyper-intelligent pan-dimentional beings.' (138)
I know this comedy/science fiction novel is meant to be a satire and a stab at establishment and authority but I just couldn't get into it at all. The most fun I had was actually writing this review and looking back and trying to analyse some of the passage and their meaning. He's a brilliant guy and I applaud him for trying something a bit different with this novel, I just can't say I enjoyed the journey particularly. Maybe if I read it a third time...

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