Initially, reviewers praised The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, pleased to have found a book that attempted to be humorous and was, for the most part, successful. "This hilarious and irrepressibly clever book is one of the best pieces of humor to be produced this year," applauded Rosemary Herbert in Library Journal.

Richard Brown, writing in The Times Literary Supplement, characterized Douglas Adams's writing as having "a posh-school, wide-eyed, naive manner related, perhaps, to the primitive manner currently in vogue in high-brow poetry circles." The main point of Brown's review, though, was to explore the relationship between the Hitchhiker books and the media, television and radio, that Adams was writing for when the books came into existence. Most reviewers categorized this book with science fiction novels and, in that context, found much to appreciate.

Because science fiction is a genre that often takes itself too seriously...