Arthur Dent's house is demolished for a bypass, then the whole Earth is demolished for another one, and he hitches a ride into the stars with a towel and a friend from Betelgeuse.
The funniest science fiction novel there is, with a dry narrator, big ideas and a surprisingly kind heart, held back by a loose plot, some dated jokes and a five book series that gets patchier as it goes. Four and a half out of five.
Every guide comes as a video and a full written article. Pick the one you need: the review is spoiler-free, the ending explained is not.
Is The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams worth reading? A spoiler-free review: the voice, the Guide, the ideas, the thin plot, the dated jokes and an honest verdict on all five books.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ending explained: Magrathea, Deep Thought, the mice, Zaphod's brain, and how books two to five end. Full spoilers.
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reading order, the trilogy in five parts, Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing..., the radio show, the 1981 TV series, the 2005 film and what happened to the Hulu series, as of October 2026.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy began as a BBC Radio Four comedy in 1978 and became a novel by Douglas Adams in 1979. Arthur Dent is an ordinary Englishman whose house is about to be knocked down for a bypass, when his friend Ford Prefect, secretly an alien researcher for a galactic travel guide, announces that the world is about to end. The first novel runs to about forty-six thousand words in thirty-five short chapters, and it is the first of five novels, collected in the omnibus The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
Below you’ll find a spoiler-free review, the ending explained with full spoilers for all five books, a guide to the reading order, the radio show, the film and the adaptation news, and seven books to read next. There is mild swearing and some jokes that are very much of 1979.
Arthur Dent is an ordinary man in an ordinary English village, and on this particular Thursday the council wants to knock down his house to build a bypass. He lies in the mud in front of the bulldozers in protest.
Then his friend Ford Prefect turns up, insisting they go to the pub right now, because the world is about to end. Ford is not from Guildford, as he has always claimed. He is from a small planet near the star Betelgeuse, and he writes for a very remarkable book, and the two of them are about to go on a very long hitchhike.
Arthur Dent is an ordinary man in an ordinary English village, and on this particular Thursday the council wants to knock down his house to build a bypass. He lies in the mud in front of the bulldozers in protest.
The funniest science fiction novel there is, with a dry narrator, big ideas and a surprisingly kind heart, held back by a loose plot, some dated jokes and a five book series that gets patchier as it goes. Four and a half out of five. Read it if: you like british humor, monty python or terry pratchett; you want science fiction that never takes itself seriously; you want a book you can finish in two or three evenings. Skip it if: you want a tight, plot driven story; you want deep emotional drama; you can't stand silliness or dated jokes. Review: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy →
Our ending explained covers the final chapters in full, with spoilers. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ending explained: Magrathea, Deep Thought, the mice, Zaphod's brain, and how books two to five end. Full spoilers. Ending explained: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy →
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reading order, the trilogy in five parts, Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing..., the radio show, the 1981 TV series, the 2005 film and what happened to the Hulu series, as of October 2026. Series & screen: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy →
And Another Thing... by Eoin Colfer, Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, The Colour of Magic by Terry Pratchett, Space Opera by Catherynne M. Valente, Redshirts by John Scalzi, The Sirens of Titan by Kurt Vonnegut.
Douglas Adams wrote five novels: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984) and Mostly Harmless (1992). Eoin Colfer wrote a sixth, And Another Thing..., in 2009.
In the book it is the answer given by the supercomputer Deep Thought to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything, but nobody knows what the question was. The joke is that an answer is useless without its question.
The first novel is about forty-six thousand words in thirty-five short chapters. The five-novel omnibus is roughly two hundred sixty-five thousand words.
Yes. Read the five Douglas Adams novels in publication order, starting with The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), then Eoin Colfer's sixth book if you want more.
Amazon links. We may earn a commission if you buy through them.
