The Short Version
If you’ve just read The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or you’re about to, this is the video that tells you what comes next, and how the radio show, the TV show and the film fit in. Spoilers for book one only, and barely.
The short version: there are five novels by Douglas Adams, plus a sixth by Eoin Colfer, and you read them in publication order. As of October twenty twenty-six, the Hulu series is dead.
The Reading Order
Here they are in order. Book one is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, in nineteen seventy-nine. Book two is The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, from nineteen eighty. Book three is Life, the Universe and Everything, from nineteen eighty-two.
Then So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, from nineteen eighty-four. And finally Mostly Harmless, from nineteen ninety-two, which is a long gap, as you will see. Read them in that order, because each one assumes the last.
A Trilogy In Five Parts
You may have noticed the numbers don’t add up. In the introduction to the omnibus I read, Adams calls his fourth book the fourth and last book in the trilogy. It’s a joke. The collected edition really is sold as a trilogy in five parts.
That tells you almost everything about the tone of these books. The series cheerfully contradicts itself, jokes about its own history, and treats continuity as a suggestion. Don’t get stressed about it. Honestly, it’s part of the charm.
What Each Book Is Like
Book one is the pure comedy, a quick tour of a doomed planet and a very strange galaxy. Book two is more of the same, with a famous restaurant, and a rock band whose concerts could be heard by nobody sensible.
Book three is plot heavy, with cricket and robots. Book four is the gentlest, and the one with a love story. Book five is the bleakest, and a very different mood. If a book doesn’t work for you, you can skip ahead, but go in knowing they change.
Why There Are So Many Versions
Here is the part that confuses everyone. The story began as a radio show, and Adams himself says in the introduction that every time he tells the history he contradicts himself. First came BBC Radio Four, starting on Wednesday, March eighth, nineteen seventy-eight, at ten thirty at night, with almost no publicity.
Then a book, a pair of record albums, a television series and a computer game, each with a different storyline. The books were not copies of the radio scripts. Some characters behave in completely different ways, which, as Adams said, amounts to the same thing but saves rewriting the dialogue.
The Radio Show
If you want the original, start with the radio series. Producers Simon Brett and then Geoffrey Perkins shaped it, and Adams stayed deep in the studio with the sound engineers, according to his own account, making sound effects slowly and expensively.
The first series was six episodes, or fits, as they called them. Later, the BBC and director Dirk Maggs adapted books three to five for radio in the mid two thousands. Those are the closest you will get to Adams in sound, and they are fantastic car listening.
The TV Series
The BBC made a six part television series, broadcast on BBC Two from January fifth to February ninth, nineteen eighty-one, with Simon Jones as Arthur Dent and Peter Jones voicing the Guide. It won several awards, according to reference sources.
It’s charmingly low tech, with hand drawn graphics for the Guide. Be warned that it follows the radio structure, and it incorporates changes from the books, so the three versions never quite match. Watch it as a classic, not as a book adaptation.
The Game
Adams also wrote a computer game with the company Infocom, which came out in nineteen eighty-four. In his own words, it bore only fleeting resemblances to anything that went under the title before.
It is a text adventure, and it has a reputation for being tough. You type commands, and the game answers back in a very Adams voice. It’s another reminder that he loved technology, and that he was happiest talking and inventing, not slogging through novels.
The Twenty Oh Five Film
Then there’s the film. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, directed by Garth Jennings, came out in two thousand five, with Martin Freeman as Arthur. Adams had spent years on the screenplay, but he died in two thousand one, and it reached screens four years later.
According to Box Office Mojo, it made about one hundred four million dollars worldwide, against a reported budget of roughly forty-five to fifty million. It’s a pleasant, odd film with wonderful Vogons, and my opinion is that it’s an amusing sketch of the book, not a replacement.
And Another Thing
In two thousand nine, thirty years after the first book, a sixth novel arrived. And Another Thing, by Eoin Colfer, the Irish author of Artemis Fowl, was published on October twelfth. It was commissioned by Adams’s widow, Jane Belson.
I should say I haven’t read it. The radio version, the Hexagonal Phase, aired on Radio Four in twenty eighteen. It’s the one with unpublished Adams material in it. If you’re a completist, it’s the place to go.
What About The Hulu Series?
The big news. In twenty nineteen, Hulu announced a series with Carlton Cuse and Jason Fuchs. It never arrived. In July twenty twenty-six, Cuse told the site ScreenRant that it was dead, and he was no longer working on it.
He called the story an incredibly difficult one to crack. As of October twenty twenty-six, I couldn’t find any official statement from Hulu, and no new adaptation in sight. The most recent screen version is still the twenty oh five film, plus an immersive London stage show that reportedly ended its run in February.
The Stage Show
There’s one more version that you might still hear about. An immersive Hitchhiker’s Guide live show opened at Riverside Studios in London in November twenty twenty-five, and was scheduled to leave in February twenty twenty-six, according to theatre listings.
I haven’t seen it, so I can’t review it. But it’s a nice sign that, nearly fifty years on, people still want to sit in a room and be told not to panic. Check the listings, because shows like this tend to come back.
Adams And The Guide
A little context helps. Before the novel, Adams was a struggling writer who took odd jobs, including working as a hired bodyguard, and then became script editor on Doctor Who in the days of Tom Baker. That comes from Neil Gaiman’s foreword.
The Guide made him famous almost accidentally. Gaiman says he didn’t enjoy writing, and loved deadlines for the whooshing sound they make as they go by. That tells you why the later books took so long, and why the series is so patchy.
Where To Start
My advice. Read book one, then decide. If you like it, read book two, and then, honestly, you can choose your own adventure. If you want to try the radio show, the first series is perfect.
If you want more of Adams, I’d add Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency, from nineteen eighty-seven, and its sequel, The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, from nineteen eighty-eight. Neither is part of the Guide series, and I’m giving those dates from general knowledge.
Which Edition
The omnibus I read is called The Ultimate Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, with all five novels, a foreword by Neil Gaiman and the introduction I keep quoting. It is great value, and a nice thing to have on a shelf.
Just know it is a big book of about two hundred sixty-five thousand words. If you’d rather start small, buy the first novel alone, and see whether the series works for you before you commit.
Outro
That’s the whole Hitchhiker’s universe, in order. Five novels, one radio show, a TV series, a game, a film, a sixth book and one very dead Hulu series. My spoiler free review, and my ending explained video, are linked in the description.
Tell me in the comments: which version did you meet first, the radio, the TV show, the film or the book? Thanks for watching, and subscribe if you’d like more reading guides. Don’t panic, and always know where your towel is.
