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This beautifully illustrated edition of the New York Times bestselling classic celebrates the 42nd anniversary of the original publication—with all-new art by award-winning illustrator Chris Riddell.
SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • “An astonishing comic writer.”—Neil Gaiman Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. After that, things get much, much worse. With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover. Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .
This beautifully illustrated edition of the New York Times bestselling classic celebrates the 42nd anniversary of the original publication—with all-new art by award-winning illustrator Chris Riddell.
SOON TO BE A HULU SERIES • “An astonishing comic writer.”—Neil Gaiman Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels by PBS’s The Great American Read It’s an ordinary Thursday morning for Arthur Dent . . . until his house gets demolished. The Earth follows shortly after to make way for a new hyperspace express route, and Arthur’s best friend has just announced that he’s an alien. After that, things get much, much worse. With just a towel, a small yellow fish, and a book, Arthur has to navigate through a very hostile universe in the company of a gang of unreliable aliens. Luckily the fish is quite good at languages. And the book is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy . . . which helpfully has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large, friendly letters on its cover. Douglas Adams’s mega-selling pop-culture classic sends logic into orbit, plays havoc with both time and physics, offers up pithy commentary on such things as ballpoint pens, potted plants, and digital watches . . . and, most important, reveals the ultimate answer to life, the universe, and everything. Now, if you could only figure out the question. . . .
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Excerpts-
From the bookChapter One
The house stood on a slight rise just on the edge of the village. It stood on its own and looked out over a broad spread of West Country farmland. Not a remarkable house by any means—it was about thirty years old, squattish, squarish, made of brick, and had four windows set in the front of a size and proportion which more or less exactly failed to please the eye.
The only person for whom the house was in any way special was Arthur Dent, and that was only because it happened to be the one he lived in. He had lived in it for about three years, ever since he had moved out of London because it made him nervous and irritable. He was about thirty as well, tall, dark-haired and never quite at ease with himself. The thing that used to worry him most was the fact that people always used to ask him what he was looking so worried about. He worked in local radio which he always used to tell his friends was a lot more interesting than they probably thought. It was, too—most of his friends worked in advertising.
On Wednesday night it had rained very heavily, the lane was wet and muddy, but the Thursday morning sun was bright and clear as it shone on Arthur Dent’s house for what was to be the last time.
It hadn’t properly registered yet with Arthur that the council wanted to knock it down and build a bypass instead.
At eight o’clock on Thursday morning Arthur didn’t feel very good. He woke up blearily, got up, wandered blearily round his room, opened a window, saw a bulldozer, found his slippers, and stomped off to the bathroom to wash.
Toothpaste on the brush—so. Scrub.
Shaving mirror—pointing at the ceiling. He adjusted it. For a moment it reflected a second bulldozer through the bathroom window. Properly adjusted, it reflected Arthur Dent’s bristles. He shaved them off, washed, dried and stomped off to the kitchen to find something pleasant to put in his mouth.
Kettle, plug, fridge, milk, coffee. Yawn.
The word bulldozer wandered through his mind for a moment in search of something to connect with.
The bulldozer outside the kitchen window was quite a big one.
He stared at it.
'Yellow,' he thought, and stomped off back to his bedroom to get dressed.
Passing the bathroom he stopped to drink a large glass of water, and another. He began to suspect that he was hung over. Why was he hung over? Had he been drinking the night before? He supposed that he must have been. He caught a glint in the shaving mirror. “Yellow,” he thought, and stomped on to the bedroom.
He stood and thought. The pub, he thought. Oh dear, the pub. He vaguely remembered being angry, angry about something that seemed important. He’d been telling people about it, telling people about it at great length, he rather suspected: his clearest visual recollection was of glazed looks on other people’s faces. Something about a new bypass he’d just found out about. It had been in the pipeline for months only no one seemed to have known about it. Ridiculous. He took a swig of water. It would sort itself out, he’ d decided, no one wanted a bypass, the council didn’t have a leg to stand on. It would sort itself out.
God, what a terrible hangover it had earned him though. He looked at himself in the wardrobe mirror. He stuck out his tongue. 'Yellow,' he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.
Fifteen seconds later he was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was...
About the Author-
Douglas Adams was born in 1952 and created all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer games, stage adaptations, comic book, and bath towel. He was born in Cambridge and lived with his wife and daughter in Islington, London, before moving to Santa Barbara, California, where he died suddenly in 2001. Chris Riddell, the 2015–2017 UK Children’s Laureate, is an accomplished artist and the political cartoonist for the Observer. He has enjoyed great acclaim for his books for children. He has won a number of major prizes, including the 2001, 2004, and 2016 CILIP Kate Greenaway Medals. His book Goth Girl and the Ghost of a Mouse won the Costa Children’s Book Award 2014. Riddell has been honored with an OBE in recognition of his illustration and charity work. He lives in Brighton with his family.
Reviews-
Starred review from April 4, 2005 Audio reviews reflect PW 's assessment of the audio adaptation of a book and should be quoted only in reference to the audio version. Fiction THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY: The Tertiary Phase Douglas Adams , performed by the author, Simon Jones, Geoffrey McGivern et al. Audio Partners , three CDs, 3 hrs., $29.95 ISBN 1-57270-469-1
American readers may not be aware that Adams's sci-fi parody classic started out as a BBC radio production. This audio, which contains a portion of that radio serial, will have listeners glued to their CD players. Never a dull moment passes in this uproarious dramatization, as Arthur Dent—a refugee from Earth, which was destroyed to make way for a galactic freeway—escapes from prehistory, and self-imposed insanity, on a time-traveling sofa along with his alien friend, Ford Prefect, who is a reporter for the eponymous guide. The pair find themselves reunited with old friends (such as Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed president of the galaxy) and swept up in an attempt to stop the explosively xenophobic denizens of the planet Cricket from wreaking havoc on all of existence by behaving remarkably like players of the British sport of the same name. Each CD contains two episodes full of hilariously appropriate sound effects, dramatic music and witty fake advertising, and every performer brings his or her character to life with aplomb, including Adams, who makes his appearance in one scene as Agrajag, an entity that is killed and reincarnated innumerable times. Fully embodying the zany otherworldliness of the series, this audio production is a treat for anyone familiar with the Hitchhiker's books (the first of which will debut as a major motion picture from Touchstone in May).
January 2, 2006 This quick little addition to the series, far more subdued than the previous "phase," is paradoxically a better introduction for newcomers to Adams's often imitated brand of satire. Arthur Dent, the series' protagonist and straight man, returns home to a destroyed and rebuilt Earth (identical to the one he left but for the lack of dolphins) and promptly falls in love. The object of his clumsy affections is Fenchurch, a young woman who had been on the verge of comprehending the secret to eternal contentment when Earth was destroyed. In order to recover her lost revelation, Fenchurch and Arthur (and some of his old hitchhiking friends) seek out God's final message to his creation, written in fire on the top of a mountain in a distant part of the galaxy. The story is straightforward by series standards and depends little on previous (and, as yet, unreleased) episodes of the radio program; the humor is decidedly low-key and the running time surprisingly short. All of this allows easy access for first timers, but won't leave a big impression on fans, especially after the promise of the perfectly zany Tertiary Phase .
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