The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was published
On this day · 12 October 1979
Douglas Adams's comic novel about the end of the world arrived in paperback on October 12, 1979.
On October 12, 1979, Pan Books published Douglas Adams’s The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, adapting the first four episodes of his hit BBC Radio 4 series into a novel. Pan had picked up the rights for a modest £3,000 after the BBC’s own publishing arm passed on it.
The book follows Arthur Dent, snatched from a soon-to-be-demolished Earth by an alien guidebook researcher, into a universe that is gloriously indifferent to him. Adams’s deadpan jokes, from the towel-as-essential-equipment to the answer 42, became cultural shorthand.
It sold a quarter of a million copies within three months.
The paperback’s first appearance beat the hardback into print, and it climbed to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list. It launched a self-described “trilogy of six,” with The Restaurant at the End of the Universe following in 1980. Decades on, fans still know not to panic.
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