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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams, debuted as a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978. Since then it has been adapted to other formats, slowly becoming an international multi-media phenomenon over a span of several years. Adaptations have included stage shows, a series of five books first published between 1979 and 1992 (the first of which was titled The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), a 1981 TV series, a 1984 computer game, and three series of three-part comic book adaptations of the first three novels published by DC Comics between 1993 and 1996. There were also two series of towels, produced by Beer-Davies, that are considered by some fans to be an "official version" of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as they include text from the first novel. A Hollywood-funded film version, produced and filmed in the UK, was released in April 2005, and adaptations of the last three books to radio were broadcast from 2004 to 2005. Many of these adaptations, including the novels, the TV series, the computer game, and the earliest drafts of the Hollywood film's screenplay, were all done by Adams himself, and some of the stage shows debuted new material written by Adams.

Some of the main characters

  1. Arthur Dent
  2. Slartibartfast
  3. Ford Prefect
  4. Vogons

The title The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy[3] is often abbreviated as "HHG", "HHGG", "HHGTTG", or "H2G2". The series is also often referred to as "The Hitchhiker's Guide", "Hitchhiker's", or simply "[The] Guide." This title can refer to any of the various incarnations of the story, of which the books, having been translated into more than 30 languages by 2005, are the most widely distributed. The title can also refer to the fictional guidebook The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, an eccentric electronic encyclopedia that features in the series. Last but not least, h2g2, launched as the "Earth Edition" of The Guide, is a website now hosted by the BBC featuring a range of user-submitted articles.

© Copyright Robert Bartolucci 2006