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The Hitchhik­er's Guide to the Galaxy: Douglas Adams' Kultbuch

1.024 Words / ~2½ pages sternsternsternsternstern_0.25 Author Bernhard M. in Sep. 2010
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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979)

Douglas Noel Adams was born in Cambridge, Great-Britain in March 1952, educated at Brentwood School, Essex and St John´s College Cambridge, where he gained a MA in English literature .After four years as independent author, Adams achieve the break through with his BBC Radio 4 series “The Hitchhiker´s Guide to the Galaxy´s in the year 1978.The Radio series has been transformed into different mediums: A series of best-selling novels, a TV series, a record album and even a computer Game.

Douglas Adams created a hype with his novel series and sold over 15 million books in the UK, the US and Australia and was also a best seller in German, Swedish and many other languages. Adams died unexpectedly in May 2001 of a sudden heart attack. He was 49 years old.

He had been living in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and daughter. His last project was a movie version of Hitchhiker.

One morning the world of Arthur Dent, an average guy from Great-Britain, fell apart as construction worker tear down his house to build a bypass road. A few minutes later the world literally breaks down by reason that Alien´s needed the space the world took to construct a new hyperspace-expressway.

Arthur and his best friend Ford Prefekt, which is in reality an Alien from a small Planet nearby Betelgeuse, survive the explosion by hitchhike in a construction spaceship. Their whole equipment on the journey is a towel, a guide to the Galaxy´s and a so called “Babel fish” which is able to translate every single language spoken in the universe.

Arthur and Ford travel later on through the universe with the president of the universe, a girl called Trillian, a criminal called Zaphod Beeblebrox and a manic-depressive roboter called Marvin on a stolen prototype of a spaceship called “Heart of Gold” which has a new invented drive system.

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The group made a stopover on a planet which habitants raise new planets, the destroyed planet Earth was their product. Arthur and his friends come to know that the Earth was in reality a super computer which had the task to calculate the question of the answer from the meaning of life.

The answer from the meaning of life is 42 and the question calculated by the Earth in ten millions of years would be answered five minutes after the super computer Earth got destroyed. This is ironie.Moreover Arthur brings to light that the whole earthly existence was initiated by mices which rule the universe.

What I like is that the book gives attention to the the central questions of mankind in a very easy way. Adams theses are mostly far away from reality and very implausible but when the reader comes to the point where he understands the real intention of Adams, he will love it.

So they need a new computer which calculates in millions of years the question from the answer and gets five minutes before finishing calculating destroyed for an unimportant bypass road. This insane story made me love the book. It made no sense at first but after thinking about the story I realized it is a very intelligent one and should be seen in a metaphorical way.

The intention of Adams is that there is no answer for questions like the sense of life or who is god and if how many, every single human has to figure out his own solution and will be satisfied with it or not.

Every human actor in the book is open minded and is an example how mankind should be , to live more peaceful and happy on Earth. I learned from Hitchhiker guide to Galaxy´s that we shouldn´t ask such complex questions and better realize how great life is even without know all answers.


The book is not literarily worth and not appropriate as a book for a school class but very funny and makes the reader think about his own life in the world and how precious things like animals and nature maybe really are.

Here is one quote extended from the Novel which proves the colloquial language spoken in the book. Language in school lectures should be on a higher level:

“Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.”


The most hyped thing in the book is the answer of the question for the meaning of life: 42

There are many communities which analysis the possible meanings of the number 42 and try to find a solution. If you type the answer to life, the universe and everything into the Google calculator it will answer you 42!

Until 1993.His answer is:


“The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one.(…)I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do'. I typed it out. End of story.” Douglas Adams


The movie adaptation from 2005 of the book Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is not as good as the book .The reason is in my point of view that the script wasn´t made by Adams , he died 2001 and other authors which are on another level had to write it.

This is why the movie somehow lost his soul and brilliancy. It is nearly impossible to get the idea of something you haven´t created with your own hands, so only Adams could have satisfied the fans with the movie adaptation. The film is close to the novel and tells the same story, some parts from the original are changed or not in the movie.


) Franklyn Arkhurst


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