The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. Perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard of. More popular than 'The Celestial Home Care Omnibus', better selling than 'Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity', and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters 'Where God Went Wrong', 'Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes' and 'Who is this God Person Anyway'?

It's already supplanted the Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for two important reasons. First, it's slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC printed in large friendly letters on its cover.