The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
1979–1992 series of five books by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a comedy science fiction franchise created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio sitcom broadcast over two series on BBC Radio 4 between 1978 and 1980, it was soon adapted to other formats, including both novels and comic books, a 1981 BBC television series, a 1984 text adventure game, stage shows and a 2005 feature film.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is an international multimedia phenomenon; the novels are the most widely distributed, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005. The first novel, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), has been ranked fourth on the BBC's The Big Read poll. The sixth novel, And Another Thing..., was written by Eoin Colfer with additional unpublished material by Douglas Adams. In 2017, BBC Radio 4 announced a 40th-anniversary celebration with Dirk Maggs, one of the original producers, in charge. The first of six new episodes was broadcast on 8 March 2018.
The broad narrative of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy follows the misadventures of the last surviving Earth man, Arthur Dent, following the demolition of the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. Dent is rescued from Earth's destruction by Ford Prefect—a human-like alien writer for the electronic travel guide The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—by hitchhiking onto a passing alien spacecraft. Following his rescue, Dent explores the galaxy with Prefect and encounters Trillian, another human who was taken from Earth (before its destruction) by the President of the Galaxy, Zaphod Beeblebrox, and Marvin the Paranoid Android.
The public source identifies “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” as 1979–1992 series of five books by Douglas Adams. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Hitchhiker's, Guide and Galaxy.
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A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, the useful work is to connect “1979–1992 series of five books by Douglas Adams” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25169. VIAF identifies the subject as 182157875. The Library of Congress control number is no2010139811. None of the 5 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1978, 1980, 1981 and 1984.
The absence of detail may reflect summary conventions rather than a lack of surviving documentation. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.