10 Books…With Context - The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy

I see these things copy-and-paste jobbies pop up on Facebook all the time - “10 day challenge: post 10 [books / films / albums / photos of your kid that they’ll hate seeing in years to come] without context and nominate fifteen other people every day, fourteen of who will completely ignore it (but you all know there’s that one person who will do it).” Now, I realise that these are largely data mining attempts designed to help expose potential passwords but that's not the bit I have a problem with (there’s a whole blog here; if someone’s going to mine my data, good luck to ‘em sifting through all this gubbins). No, it’s the “no context” thing. Now, it may just be because I’m the written equivalent of gobby (fingery? Nope, changed my mind, moving away from that one) but I want to give a bit of context on these things. So, without being prompted by anyone (and to provide a lighter antidote to current events which have largely left me wanting to scream obscenities), here are ten books that I really like in no particular order but with a bit of context as to why.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy
By Douglas Adams
First Published:- 12 October 1979 (UK)

Alright, I say “in no particular order” but this was really the first one that popped into my head as it is my “go to” book. I didn't think I’d have one, didn't think I’d be able to narrow it down to just the one but this is it. It’s the book that I’m always in the mood to read and it’s the book that always lightens said mood.

What’s It About?
Average human Arthur Dent wakes to find that his house is about to be demolished to make way for a new bypass. More unsettling is the news delivered by longtime friend Ford Prefect that he’s not from Guildford after all but is from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and that the house is the least of his worries:- the Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass. And that’s just the start of Arthur's day….

Background
Technically, this book is a novelisation. Adams wrote Hitchhiker's as a radio series for Radio 4 and this book adapts (roughly) the first four episodes. He’d go on to write four more books in the series (very slowly; Adams was notoriously bad at meeting deadlines, liking having written but disliking the actual process of writing itself), a TV series, theatre version, album version, computer game and the initial drafts for the film version which was produce after his untimely death at the age of 49 in 2001.

Why’s It Good?
Because it’s that rare beast that is hard to get right - it’s comedy science fiction that is both genuinely science fiction-y and genuinely funny. Adams has a love of language and the absurdity of everyday life that are served well by the outlandish absurdities of science fiction (he’s got some form in the mixing the two having served as script editor to Tom Baker’s Doctor Who at a point where Baker had been in the role for some time and was looking to up the humor quotient). Also, it has some cracking lines in it, most of which have seeped into the mulch of my everyday speech.

There’s your first entry on the list. I’ll do ten as that seems to be the standard number for these sort of challenges. Come back again for another one of these (probably with some other stuff mixed in inbetween in the meantime)...

My copy, bought in about 1988 for the princely sum of £2.50