Recommendations from our site
“Arthur Dent, his hero, is a very ordinary—dull, some would say—Earth man, who discovers that his house is about to be demolished by bulldozers. As he’s dealing with county council officialdom, a friend called Ford Prefect helps him escape the destruction of the Earth, which is being blown up by alien bureaucrats. It’s one scale up. That’s the joke. For the novel, he took the first four episodes of the radio show and made them work as a novel with his own unique sense of flair and verve. That sense of humour. People who hate science fiction liked it because they thought it was taking the piss out of science fiction. And people who like science fiction liked it anyway. So it appealed broadly, to different audiences.” Read more...
Kevin Jon Davies, Film Director
“I miss Douglas Adams. He’s been dead since 2001. He occupied that area for me between friend and acquaintance. He was, I suppose, a work friend. The first book I ever wrote that did anything was The Companion to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. I got to work with Douglas on it. Douglas Adams was a genius. A lot of the pleasure in reading Douglas Adams is in jokes that are elegantly and delightfully tuned while also commenting on the human condition.” Read more...
Neil Gaiman, Novelist
“This is a tale with countless humorous moments, and it’s so bizarre that I instantly fell in love with it.” Read more...
The Best Young Adult Science Fiction Books
Estelle Francis, Children
“The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy – they always call it a trilogy even though there were four and then five books – obviously they’re classics, especially the first four, everyone loves them. The casual way in which Adams treats the universe as a whole – as something you can just sort of run around in – conveys a sense of excitement about the universe that really appeals to a lot of people… They’re novels, not textbooks. Good books on cosmology, astrophysics, or outside of my field for that matter, get people excited about the topic…There’s a lot in this trilogy that’s subtle and buried. For example, there’s a lot of talk about the bigness of space that really gives you a sense of the actual size of space in a way that a textbook typically doesn’t. The books play a lot with things like the Big Bang or the end of time in a fun way. I would obviously not even remotely suggest this as a textbook, but it goes part and parcel with the more serious side of physics.” Read more...
David Goldberg, Physicist
“Rereading this book is a way to reboot your brain anytime you’re feeling stale in your thinking.” Read more...
The best books on How the World Works
Venkatesh Rao, Entrepreneurs & Business People
“This is the Bible of science fiction. It’s funny and anyone with the remotest interest in science fiction must read it.” Read more...
The best books on How to Win Elections
Marko Rakar, Political Commentator
