50 Fun Facts About The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Which 'holistic' detective did Douglas Adams create?

Dirk Gently: Adams died in 2001 before finishing a third Dirk novel, and its drafts were published unfinished in The Salmon of Doubt.

Which drink does Arthur Dent try to get from the starship's Nutri-Matic machine?

Tea: the machine only serves a liquid 'almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea', and Arthur's lecture on the real thing ties up the ship's computer during an attack.

In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, why is Earth demolished at the start?

To make way for a hyperspace bypass: that same morning Arthur Dent had lain in front of a bulldozer to stop his house being knocked down for a local bypass.

What is the name of the alien who rescues Arthur Dent from the destruction of Earth?

Ford Prefect, stranded on Earth for 15 years, named himself after a popular British car because he thought the name would be 'nicely inconspicuous'.

Which race of bureaucratic aliens destroys the Earth?

The Vogons dismissed Earth's protests: the demolition plans had been on display in the local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty years.

What is the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything?

42 sent fans hunting for hidden meanings, but Adams dismissed one popular theory by saying he didn't write jokes in base 13.

What is the name of the supercomputer that calculated the Answer?

Deep Thought could not say what the Question was, so it designed an even greater computer to find out, which turned out to be the Earth.

What was Trillian's name before she left Earth?

Tricia McMillan met Arthur at a party in Islington, but she left Earth with Zaphod instead.

What is the name of the spaceship Zaphod Beeblebrox steals?

Heart of Gold: Zaphod, as President of the Galaxy, was meant to be officiating at its launch, and he stole it during the ceremony.

In the novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, what physical peculiarity does Zaphod Beeblebrox have?

Two heads and three arms: Zaphod says the third arm was fitted recently, just beneath his right one, to help improve his ski-boxing.

Which company built Marvin as a prototype of its Genuine People Personalities technology?

Sirius Cybernetics Corporation makes such faulty goods that its complaints division is the only part of the company to have shown a consistent profit.

Marvin complains that he has a brain the size of what?

A planet: 'Here I am, brain the size of a planet and they ask me to take you down to the bridge,' Marvin moans in the novel.

Who voiced Marvin in the original Hitchhiker's radio and TV series?

Stephen Moore was a vastly experienced stage actor, yet after voicing Marvin on radio and TV he was remembered mostly for the gloomy robot.

Which comedy actor voiced the Book in the original Hitchhiker's Guide radio series?

Peter Jones: the producers wanted a 'Peter Jonesy sort of voice', and after several actors including Palin turned the part down, they asked Jones himself.

The episodes of the radio series are called "Fits", borrowing from which Lewis Carroll poem?

The Hunting of the Snark is subtitled 'An Agony in Eight Fits', which is why the radio episodes carry names such as Fit the Ninth.

The theme tune "Journey of the Sorcerer" was originally recorded by which band?

The Eagles' instrumental had a banjo in it, which Adams felt would give the show an 'on the road, hitch-hiking feel'.

In 1978, the Hitchhiker's radio series became the first BBC radio comedy made in what format?

Stereo: the makers had been told comedy couldn't work in stereo because listeners wouldn't know which speaker the punchline was coming from.

How is the Hitchhiker's book series jokingly described?

A trilogy in five parts: the fifth book, Mostly Harmless, was billed as 'the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's Trilogy'.

Which publisher issued the first Hitchhiker's novel in 1979 after BBC Publishing turned it down?

Pan Books: BBC Publications had been offered the book first, yet once Pan held the rights the BBC asked bitterly why it hadn't been offered to them.

Which Hitchhiker's device destroys victims by showing them their true insignificance in the universe, yet fails to harm Zaphod?

Total Perspective Vortex: Zaphod survives only because he is inside an electronically synthesized universe made for him, where he really is the most important being.

What is the name of the Restaurant at the End of the Universe in the second Hitchhiker's novel?

Milliways: diners pay by depositing one penny in a savings account in their own era, and compound interest covers the fabulous bill by the End of Time.

Arthur's Scrabble tiles spell which Ultimate Question?

What do you get if you multiply six by nine? 54, which is why Arthur says he always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe.

What wiped out the Golgafrinchans who stayed behind on their homeworld?

A disease from dirty telephone receivers wiped them out, because they had packed every telephone sanitiser off in the B Ark with the other 'useless' third.

Which London sports venue does Arthur Dent land at in Life, the Universe and Everything?

Lord's Cricket Ground: Arthur arrives on a time-travelling sofa just as a squad of robots from Krikkit lands on the pitch and steals the Ashes.

Life, the Universe and Everything was based on a treatment Adams had written for which television series?

Doctor Who: Adams and Tom Baker tried to get his Krikkitmen story made as a Doctor Who film, and when it never happened he recycled it into this novel.

In So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, who provided the replacement Earth that Arthur returns to?

It was part of their Save the Humans campaign; the title is their parting message.

What is the name of the girl Arthur falls in love with in the fourth novel?

Fenchurch is the girl in a Rickmansworth café on the first page of the first novel who finally sees how to make the world good and happy, just before Earth is destroyed.

What job does Arthur settle into on Lamuella in Mostly Harmless?

Sandwich-maker: the villagers believe Almighty Bob sent Arthur to them in a burning fiery chariot, when really he was the sole survivor of a spaceship crash.

What is the full name of Arthur and Trillian's daughter?

Random Frequent Flyer Dent was conceived from DNA Arthur had sold to fund his space travels, and he learns he is a father only when Trillian turns up with her.

Which author wrote the sixth Hitchhiker's novel, And Another Thing..., in 2009?

Eoin Colfer, best known for Artemis Fowl, was personally chosen by Adams's widow Jane Belson, and he admitted the prospect of a new Hitchhiker book terrified him.

Which company released the 1984 Hitchhiker's Guide text adventure game?

Infocom's game had one early puzzle so notoriously hard that the company ended up selling T-shirts reading 'I got the Babel Fish!'

Who played Arthur Dent in the 2005 Hitchhiker's Guide film?

Martin Freeman took the role, while Simon Jones, Arthur on radio and TV, got a cameo as the ghostly image who warns the travellers away.

Who provided the voice of Marvin in the 2005 Hitchhiker's Guide film?

Alan Rickman voiced Marvin, while the robot's old TV costume was refurbished for a cameo, standing in a queue as Arthur does a double-take.

Who directed the 2005 Hitchhiker's Guide film?

Garth Jennings got the job after Jay Roach dropped out and Spike Jonze recommended him and producer Nick Goldsmith, the music-video duo Hammer & Tongs.

Which actor played Slartibartfast in the 2005 Hitchhiker's Guide film?

Bill Nighy played Slartibartfast, who won an award for Norway's fjords and, told to do Africa for the new Earth, started doing it with fjords again.

What do fans carry on 25 May for Douglas Adams?

A towel: the Guide says anyone who sees a hitchhiker still has one will assume he's a man to be reckoned with and happily lend him anything he has lost.

What advantage helped the Hitchhiker's Guide supplant the Encyclopedia Galactica?

It is slightly cheaper, one of two edges that let it supplant the older Encyclopedia Galactica even though much of it is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate.

What is the Babel fish?

An ear-dwelling creature that translates any language, and by removing every barrier to communication it has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in creation.

How do the aliens who capture Arthur Dent torture their prisoners before ejecting them from an airlock?

By reading poetry aloud: Arthur praises the captain's 'metaphysical imagery', hoping for mercy, but both prisoners are thrown into space anyway.

Which species turns out to be the most intelligent on Earth in the Hitchhiker's Guide?

Mice are protrusions of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings who ran experiments on humans all along; the cheese and the squeaking were just a front.

Which world is home to the ancient industry of building custom-made worlds?

Magrathea grew so rich building worlds that the rest of the Galaxy was reduced to abject poverty, so its builders went to sleep to wait out the slump.

Two missiles fired at Zaphod's stolen ship turn into a sperm whale and what?

A bowl of petunias, whose only thought as it fell was 'Oh no, not again', because it was a reincarnation of Agrajag, a being Arthur keeps killing.

At which Cambridge college did Douglas Adams study English?

St John's College: Adams was rebuffed when he first tried to join the Footlights comedy club, and when he finally got in months later he found it aloof.

A writing partnership with which Monty Python member earned Adams a 1974 Flying Circus credit?

Graham Chapman also co-wrote a TV pilot with Adams, Out of the Trees, but it never became a series and only that first episode was ever made.

In which city did Douglas Adams die in May 2001?

Santa Barbara: Adams had moved his family to California while the Hitchhiker film was in development, and he was still working on its screenplay when he died.

Which conservation charity was Adams a founder patron of, climbing Kilimanjaro for it?

Save the Rhino: Adams wore a rhino costume for part of the Kilimanjaro climb he made for the charity.

What was written on the dashboard of the Tesla Roadster launched into space in 2018?

DON'T PANIC was shown on the dashboard screen as the car, with a mannequin called Starman at the wheel, went into an orbit around the Sun that crosses the orbit of Mars.

Near which Austrian city was Adams lying drunk in a field in 1971 when he had the idea for the title?

Innsbruck: Adams was carrying a Hitch-hiker's Guide to Europe, but he told the story so many times that he later said he no longer remembered the moment itself.

Which physicist voiced The Guide Mark II in the 2018 Hexagonal Phase radio series?

Stephen Hawking voiced the Guide Mark II, the edition that in the fifth novel manipulates events so that every version of Earth is destroyed.

What does Wonko call the world outside his inside-out house?

The Asylum: Wonko decided the world had gone mad after reading instructions on a packet of toothpicks, so he built a house to put the world in.