"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," by Douglas Adams, is a richly imaginative, clever, innovative, and funny science non-fiction novel. Adams came up with his idea for the novel when he was in Austria near Innsbruck. According to "The Cosmic Comic: Douglas Adams," (1952-2001) by George Watson, "In his rucksack was a hitchhiker's guide to Europe, and staring up drunkenly at the night sky Douglas Adams wondered idly if anyone could write a guide to the cosmos, too" (112). That was how his first book was born. Watson continued to explain, "Adams offered the idea, along with two others, to a BBC producer over a Japanese lunch in London, and the producer liked it" (112). .
Therefore, it was broadcast as a radio comedy/serial on BBC (British Broadcasting Company) Radio 4 in 1978. Steven Alasdair of Scotsman Newspaper wrote, "The fertile imagination of Douglas Adams created one of the best-loved and most admired scripts in BBC Radio ever produced". It has been very successful and over the years, it progressively became an international multi-media phenomenon, and it was adapted into different formats. Later, it was followed by a series of novels, television series, theater shows, audiobooks, comic books and computer games. Moreover, the film version was released in April 2005. Adams rewrote the story considerably for the film and other novel adaptations; however, they still all have the basic plot and theme. Adams' writing of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reflects his enthusiasm to technology and his views on religion.
According to "Hitchhiker: A Biography of Douglas Adams," by M.J. Simpson, "Adams was a serious fan of technology" (36). He owned different types of computers; a word processor, DEC Rainbow, Apricot, BBC Micro, and Tandy 1000. He was also involved in different technology projects such as using the first version of iMovie and first release of Mac OS X.
