The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a fictional electronic guide book in the multimedia scifi/comedy series of the same name by Douglas Adams. The Guide serves as "the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom" for many members of the series' galaxy-spanning civilization. Entries from the guidebook are used as comic narration to bridge events and provide background information in every version of the story. The guide is published by "Megadodo Publications", a publishing company on Ursa Minor Beta. While the titular “hitchhiker” of the book generally refers to the series Ford Prefect, it is in fact written and edited by many characters throughout the series. In the original radio scripts, the Guide's voice was called the "Narrator" and in the 2004–2005 series, "The Voice". For all of the radio series and the 1981 TV series, the role was credited as "The Book", though this was changed to "Narrator/The Guide" for the 2005 movie. In the first two phases of the radio series, the LP album adaptations of the first radio series and in the television series, the Guide was voiced by British actor Peter Jones. During the 2004–2005 radio series, The Guide was voiced by William Franklyn. In the film version, it was voiced by Stephen Fry. In the Hexagonal Phase of the radio series, based on the novel, And Another Thing..., the Guide was voiced by the series co-creator John Lloyd. Overview In the Guide'''s own entry on itself, it is described as being Megadodo Publications' most successful book, being more popular than The Celestial Homecare Omnibus, better-selling than 53 More Things To Do in Zero Gravity and (considering the numerous errors) more controversial than philosophical author Oolon Colluphid's blockbuster "God Trilogy" (Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes, and Who is this God Person Anyway?). It also states on how it supplanted the Encyclopedia Galactica as a standard guide book for the galaxy's denizens for two reasons, one of them being that it sells for a cheaper price than the Encyclopedia Galactica does and the other being that it has the words "Don't Panic" printed on its cover.