This book is just the first in a series about Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, and the colorful characters that they encounter in their travels through space and time. Fans have followed them through a series of five novels, including this one, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe, and Everything (1982), So Long and Thanks for All the Fish (1984), and Mostly Harmless (1992).

For fans who have trouble keeping a handle on the characters and events in the Hitchhiker books, Pocket Books published a guide in 1981 that covers the original trilogy, called Don't Panic: The Official Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion.

Mark Leyner's novels have been compared to Adams's for their unpredictability and sense of fun. His most recent, 1997's The Tetherballs of Bouganville, bounces through a cultural landscape strewn with markers of our time, such as...