Don't Panic!

Right.

I spent ages wondering what to write about today, and I have eventually decided to keep to the theme of radio series-cum-books, I also wanted something a bit more cheery in the run up to Christmas, so here it is: The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy.
((NB, I would like to add, for your amusement, that I had to check that my English was correct in the above sentence. It is now sadly ingrained forever into my internet history that on 17/12/2014, I asked Google to define 'cum'. In retrospect, I really should have just used a different word))

Unlike The War of the Worlds, Hitchhikers began life as a radio series, and was later created into a book, or the infamous 'Triology of Four', which incidentally contains five books, with a sixth by Eoin Colfer. This messy logic is only fitting for this damn book, which will forever be one of the strangest things ever written, with it's ridiculous made up language and even more ridiculous plotline. If you want an overview of the plotline, here's Wikipedia, because I have neither the time nor patience to go into enough detail: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy_(novel)

Douglas Adams may be the most famous writer to come out of Doctor Who, having written several episodes in the 1970s, he's had several spin off books too, and his works are constantly referenced even into the reboot series, Hitchhikers is a favourite book of the God of modern Who, Russel T Davies, it is an icon of British science fiction, for sure.

One of the main reasons this book is so special is the brilliance of the wordplay and command of language. Adams skirts just on the line between logic and nonsense, so much of the stuff you read reads like it ought to make sense. You know it doesn't make sense, but you can't deny the reasoning behind it. For example...

"a towel has immense psychological value.... What the strag will think is that any man that can hitch the length and breadth of the Galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through and still know where his towel is, is clearly a man to be reckoned with."

Secondly, Hitchhikers is amazing because of how ingrained into culture it has become without anybody really noticing. Walk into any room of people anywhere in the world and ask them what the meaning of life is, guaranteed at least one person will shout out '42!', they may not even know why, but it's a reference to the answer the great computer 'Deep Thought' gave when the mice gave it 7.5 billion years to answer the same question.

The randomness of it all just makes sense, mostly due to the existence of the 'Infinite Probability Drive', which makes unlikely things more likely to happen:

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

Once you have read the book, it will be forever ingrained in your brain that 42 is just the answer, because it is, that you should never, ever let a Vogon read you poetry, that the Norwegian Fjords were designed by Slartibartfast and he won a competition for them, that you should always carry a towel upon your person and that your best friend might be from a small planet in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guildford as he usually claims.

Having spent an hour trying, I now realise there is absolutely no way to explain this book other than to use the word 'odd.'. So I am going to finish up here, leave it short and sweet, and let you go.
Emily.