Earth

As The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy opens, Arthur Dent wakes to discover bulldozers ready to tear his house down in order to build a freeway bypass. He goes out and lies in front of the bulldozers. The foreman cannot convince Arthur to move. The foreman insists that the plans have been on display for months and that Arthur could have filed a complaint if he wanted to, but Arthur says he knew nothing about the plans until the day before, and when he did learn of them, he found them "displayed" in a locked file cabinet in the dark basement of the local planning office.

Ford Prefect is a friend of Arthur's. Arthur doesn't realize that his friend is an alien who has been stranded on Earth for fifteen years. He is a researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a book explaining how to...