The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has been described as: ‘wildly popular’; ‘the standard repository for all knowledge and wisdom’; and ‘an amusing textbook for people who want to be better local leaders ’ –  although the first two of these comments are only what the book says about itself. The story, which was written by Douglas Adams, has sold something like 14 million copies; been dramatised on stage, TV and film; and led to the world’s first and only trilogy of five books.   You can read the text from which the short extracts below are taken here (it’s a PDF) and you can buy the book from all good online and high street booksellers or borrow from your local library .  The story begins with Arthur Dent discovering a large yellow bulldozer in the drive outside his house.  Mr Prosser, who works for the local council, has come with the news that Arthur’s house has – in line with the rumour in the local pub – been scheduled for demolition to allow for the construction of a bypass…

 

Mr Prosser said: “You were quite entitled to make any suggestions or protests at the appropriate time you know.”

“Appropriate time?” hooted Arthur. “Appropriate time? The first I knew about it was when a workman arrived at my home yesterday. I asked him if he’d come to clean the windows and he said no he’d come to demolish the house. He didn’t tell me straight away of course. Oh no. First he wiped a couple of windows and charged me a fiver. Then he told me.”

“But Mr Dent, the plans have been available in the local planning office for the last nine months.”

“Oh yes, well as soon as I heard I went straight round to see them, yesterday afternoon. You hadn’t exactly gone out of your way to call attention to them had you? I mean like actually telling anybody or anything.”

“But the plans were on display…”

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.” “That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.” “So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in

a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

 

At this point in the story, Arthur’s friend Ford Prefect turns up and persuades him to get up from where he is lying in his dressing gown in front of the bulldozer.  Ford – who, as it turns out, is actually an alien hitchhiker and freelance travel guide writer – asks Mr Prosser to take Arthur’s place in front of the bulldozer so that he can buy his friend a ‘stiff drink’ to prepare Arthur for another bit of bad news.  This – as it turns out – involves the imminent destruction of planet Earth. But Arthur is at this point still more worried about whether Mr Prosser won’t take the opportunity to demolish his house…

 

Arthur remained very worried. “But can we trust him?” he said.

“Myself I’d trust him to the end of the Earth,” said Ford. “Oh yes,” said Arthur, “and how far’s that?”

“About twelve minutes away,” said Ford, “come on, I need a drink.”

Later, Arthur and Ford hitch a lift on one of the spaceships tasked with destroying the earth to make way for a new hyperspace bypass.  It is crewed by a bureaucratic and intolerant race of aliens, called Vogons, who write dreadful poetry. The chief Vogon points out to the population of Earth before it is destroyed:

 

“There’s no point in acting all surprised about it. All the planning charts and demolition orders have been on display in your local planning department on Alpha Centauri for fifty of your Earth years, so you’ve had plenty of time to lodge any formal complaint and it’s far too late to start making a fuss about it now.”

Adding, after protest is expressed from an unknown earthling:

“What do you mean you’ve never been to Alpha Centauri? For heaven’s sake mankind, it’s only four light years away you know. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to take an interest in local affairs that’s your own lookout.”

“Energize the demolition beams.”

Light poured out into the hatchways.

“I don’t know,” said the voice on the PA, “apathetic bloody planet, I’ve no sympathy at all.” It cut off.

There was a terrible ghastly silence.

 

Meanwhile, in a surprisingly untidy cabin onboard the Vogon ship, Ford has inserted a small fish into Arthur’s ear. Which, he later explains is a ‘Babel fish’ – enabling Arthur to understand and communicate telepathically with aliens regardless of what language they speak. The story continues, with an increasing degree of improbability; via the ultimate answer to ‘life, the Universe and everything’; a trip to a planet that makes designer planets; and the discovery that everything that has happened so far is tied up with the fact that the Earth is actually a super-computer designed by aliens to work out ‘the ultimate question’ – without which the ultimate answer (which is ‘42’) is meaningless.

 

Is this a Case Study?

The playwright, George Bernard Shaw, observed that ‘The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place’.  With that in mind, would you describe the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy as ‘science fiction’ or as ‘a case study in communication skills’ and why?

When you’ve had enough of doing that, please navigate yourself back to the rest of the content in this guide using the menu options on the right OR if you might like to watch the episode of the BBC dramatization of the Hitch Hiker’s Guide dealing with the events described above?