The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (travel guide)

Depiction from the comics.

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. Perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard of. More popular than The Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway? It's already supplanted the Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for two important reasons. First, it's slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC printed in large friendly letters on its cover. -The Guide

The Guide & Its Various Versions

The Guide as seen in the 2005 movie.

Guide in the TV Series.

The Guide itself is a device which, according to the book, resembles a laptop computer which is open all the way, with 100 press buttons. It has a screen measuring about three or four inches. This is what the Guide looks like in the TV show.

In the Movie, it looks more like a conventional book. In this version, there is a hitchhiking symbol on the front cover and the DON'T PANIC is on the back cover. In the Movie version of the Guide (which is voice activated), the screen has bars which are the links to the subsections of the articles.....

The Introduction to The Guide

Depiction from the radio series release.

The guide contains an introduction saying, Space is big. Really Big, You just won't believe how vastly hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space. Listen...

Things It Defines

The Guide used in the TV show full series DVD menu

• Itself
• Sirius Cybernetics Corporation
• Babel Fish
• Alcohol
• Eccentrica Gallumbits

• Earth
• Vogons
• The Universe

• Towels
• Flying
• Poetry

See Also

• List of quotes from the Guide.