The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Book Club Questions: 20 Discussion Questions for Douglas Adams's Novel

The Short Version

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams’s 1979 comic science fiction novel, is a good book club pick because it is short, quick and endlessly quotable. The first novel runs to about forty-six thousand words in thirty-five short chapters, so nobody can say they ran out of time. Underneath the jokes about bypasses and towels, the book asks what we do when the universe is huge, careless and absurd.

Below are twenty questions: ten that avoid the ending and ten that spoil it, including a few that look ahead to the rest of the five book series. We rate the first book four and a half out of five. It began as a BBC Radio Four comedy in 1978, which is why it reads so well aloud.

Before You Start: Content Notes For Your Group

There is no real violence on the page and almost no sex, but there is occasional mild swearing. Some jokes, especially about women, are very much of 1979 and may make your group wince. Trillian does far less than she deserves.

Spoiler-Free Questions

1. Arthur Dent lies in the mud to stop a bypass, and then the whole Earth is demolished for another one. Why is that a good way to start?
2. The narrator cannot stop commenting, and Ford says time is an illusion and lunchtime doubly so. Which line made you laugh out loud?
3. Ford Prefect has pretended to be from Guildford but is from near Betelgeuse. What makes the friendship between Ford and Arthur work?
4. The Guide has Don’t Panic on the cover in large, friendly letters. Why is that the right motto for the book?
5. Mr. Prosser, the council man, descends from Genghis Khan and is nervous about it. What does the opening say about bureaucracy?
6. Arthur’s planning notice is in a locked filing cabinet in a basement under a sign reading Beware of the Leopard. Is that joke still true today?
7. Zaphod Beeblebrox is the two headed, vain ex president of the galaxy. Is he a hero, a fool or both?
8. Marvin is a robot with a brain the size of a planet who is permanently depressed. Why is he so funny?
9. The Vogons are officious, bureaucratic and bad tempered. Who in your own life is a Vogon?
10. Our review says the plot is thin and the book works like a clothesline for jokes. Did the lack of plot bother you?

Spoiler Questions (Finish The Book First)

11. Deep Thought spends seven and a half million years and answers forty-two. Is the joke that the answer is meaningless, or that we need the question first?
12. The Earth was a computer built to find the question, and the white laboratory mice were the ones who commissioned it. Did you enjoy that reveal?
13. The mice, Benjy and Frankie, want to buy Arthur’s brain for a talk show circuit. What is Adams saying about people who want the answer as a product?
14. Slartibartfast says he would rather be happy than right any day. Do you agree?
15. Zaphod discovers that part of his own brain was cut off, by himself, and book one never explains why. Does the open question work as a cliffhanger?
16. The whale and the bowl of petunias get a short life, thinking about their stomachs and naming the ground. Why is this scene so memorable?
17. The book ends with the three phases of civilization: How, Why and Where, as in where shall we have lunch. Is that a satisfying last line?
18. Marvin talks a ship’s computer into suicide. Is that the darkest joke in the book?
19. If your group has read further, which later ending stood out: the Golgafrinchans, the cricket ball bomb, God’s apology written in fire, or the Vogons finishing the job in book five?
20. The book says the universe does not care about Arthur, but the writing clearly does. Is it a hopeful book or a bleak one?

The Story Behind The Book

Adams says the title came to him in 1971, lying drunk in a field in Innsbruck while hitchhiking across Europe with a battered guide. The story began as a BBC Radio Four comedy, first broadcast in March 1978, and Adams wrote the novel for Pan Books in 1979, famously late. He died in 2001. The five novels are sold together as a trilogy in five parts, and Eoin Colfer wrote a sixth, And Another Thing, in 2009. There is also a 2005 film with Martin Freeman as Arthur, which makes a good comparison for the group.

What To Read Next

Start with our review if you want a spoiler-free look first. The ending explained page covers the answer of forty-two and how all five books end, and the series guide gives the reading order. Our list of books to read next suggests more comic fiction for readers who loved the voice.