8 March – The first episode of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - the radio series later to be turned into a book, a television programme, a game, and a film - is broadcast on BBC Radio 4.
The group's activities are permeated by a great deal of humour and a love of science fiction and fantasy, with recurrent references to Star Wars, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and similar works.
The early AlphaSmart models included a couple of jokes, including a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
On April 5, 2001, staff writer Brendan Buhler interviewed The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy author Douglas Adams in what turned out to be Adams' final interview before he died.
He has also contributed several short stories and non-fiction articles to numerous publications, writing on such diverse subjects as Angel, Firefly, The Golden Compass, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, CSI:Miami, King Kong, X-Men, Wonder Woman, Star Wars, and Star Trek.
It is described in Keen 4 as "the second-dumbest creature in the universe" (a reference to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the dumbest) with thought patterns that go "swim swim hungry, swim swim hungry".
Instances of compulsory acquisition in literature and films include The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, where first Arthur Dent's home is acquired for the building of a bypass road and then the Earth is acquired (demolished) to make way for a hyperspace bypass; and The Castle, an Australian film, where the Kerrigans' home is sought to be acquired to allow for an airport extension.
Those first titles were The Complete Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Annotated Alice, and Jurassic Park.
The genus name means fjord fish (fiord + Greek ichthys = fish) while the species name is a references to Slartibartfast, a character from Douglas Adams' 1979 novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy who was one of the designers of the supercomputer Earth, winning an award for his design of the Norwegian fjords.
The date was chosen as to commemorate the release of the first Star Wars film, A New Hope on 25 May 1977 (see Star Wars Day), but shares the same date as two other similar fan "holidays": Towel Day, for fans of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy by Douglas Adams, and the Glorious 25th of May for fans of Terry Pratchett's Discworld.
"Googleplex" is also part of a title referring to a minor character from the 1979 book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, a powerful computer called the "Googleplex Star Thinker".
Heimdallr is a character in Eoin Colfer's And Another Thing..., the sixth book of Douglas Adam's series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Notably, David Learner, who portrayed Belial, is better known for his role as Marvin the paranoid android from the BBC series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and also as Pickle in the cult children's TV program Knightmare.
A separate initiative for observing Geek Pride Day on May 25 is based on the Star Wars connection along with ties to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (see Towel Day) and Discworld.
TDV produced the video game Starship Titanic, and started h2g2, a community site dedicated to producing what is referred to as the Earth edition of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
He's also known for the Swedish translation of the radio series and the first four novels in the The Hitchhiker's Guide series.
Among the projects upon which he worked were the BBC television adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and, for the inaugural series, he was chief model maker for the first series of children's TV show Thomas the Tank Engine.
This timeline shows the dates (and order of release) of all of the various media relating to Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series.
The original quotation that explained the importance of towels is found in Chapter 3 of Adams' work The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Earth is a supercomputer, designed to calculate the "Ultimate Question of Life, The Universe and Everything".
The number 42 is not a random number based on productive efficiency, but rather it is a reference to the novel by Douglas Adams called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The story also appears in some versions of the complete omnibus editions of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
The jester in Zork Zero will sometimes say So long, and thanks for all the fish, a reference to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which was the basis for another Infocom game.
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Radio credits include the original radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, appearing in Fit the Sixth.
They are best known for their roles as the Doctor (from Doctor Who), and Trillian (from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy), respectively.
His film work includes The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and The League of Gentlemen's Apocalypse.
The text adventure The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a piece of interactive fiction based on Douglas Adam's book of the same name, is a teletype-style command-line game.
Kirtley co-hosts the Geek's Guide to the Galaxy podcast along with fantasy & science fiction editor John Joseph Adams.
Douglas Adams's Guide to The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a BBC Radio production sold as an audio book on two cassette tapes.
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The participants are Douglas Adams, Simon Brett (producer of the very first programme), Simon Jones (Arthur Dent), Geoffrey McGivern (Ford Prefect), Paddy Kingsland (sound effects and audio mixing), Stephen Moore (Marvin), Geoffrey Perkins (producer of the first two radio series, except for the very first programme) and Nick Webb (Pan Books).
In some cases, compound interest may swell small amounts into a fortune, as happens in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams and When the Sleeper Wakes by H. G. Wells, or the Futurama episode "A Fishful of Dollars".
He played Ford Prefect in the radio series (1978–80) and subsequent LP releases of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, and reprised the role for the three new series broadcast on BBC Radio 4 between 2004 and 2005.
He also appeared as the waiter Garkbit in the television version of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Théoden in the 1981 BBC Radio adaptation of The Lord of the Rings, as General Hermack in the 1969 Doctor Who serial The Space Pirates, and in Bachelor Father.
In sharp contrast to Douglas Adams' close work with Steve Meretzky on Infocom's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game, James Clavell contributed little to the design of the game, although he and Dave Lebling met several times.
She has appeared on camera in television and movies such as Wind at My Back, Friday the 13th: The Series, The Dating Guy, Night Heat, TekWar, Spearfield's Daughter, The Twilight Zone, The Hitchhiker, Beyond Reality and The Jon Dore Show.
The pre-title sequence (narrated by Stephen Fry) of the 2005 movie The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was filmed at Loro Parque.
He collaborated with Douglas Adams on The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Bureaucracy and the never-completed Milliways: The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe for Infocom, and with Georgina Sinclair on Jinxter for Magnetic Scrolls.
In the alternate ending, after the destruction of Earth, the description of the Babel fish from the earlier series is replayed with an additional section, which states that dolphins and Babel fish are acquainted, and that the dolphins' ability to travel through possibility space (first mentioned in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (novel) and elaborated on in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish) is shared by the Babel fish as well.
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After the events in So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, Arthur Dent and his love interest Fenchurch attempt to sightsee across the Galaxy, but when Fenchurch disappears during a hyperspace jump due to being from an unstable sector of the Galaxy, Arthur becomes depressed and travels the Galaxy alone, raising money to pay his passage by donating his biological material to DNA banks (mostly sperm, due to it having the highest payout).
Her first major role was as Random Dent, in the radio version of Mostly Harmless the fifth series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, as well as short film, feature, theatre and radio parts.
The split infinitive, specifically its famous use in the Star Trek opening sequence, is the basis of a joke from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: "In those days men were real men, women were real women, small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri were real small furry creatures from Alpha Centauri. And all dared to brave unknown terrors, to do mighty deeds, to boldly split infinitives that no man had split before — and thus was the Empire forged."
Her most recent roles in film include a pub customer in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and a Ministry of Magic witch in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.
Adams discusses the future of publishing with Peter Cochrane, Muriel Gray and Stewart Brand.
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Adams discusses the future evolution of technology and Artificial Intelligence with Chris Langton, Stuart Kauffman, and others.
Arthur attempts to determine the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe and Everything by reaching into a Scrabble bag made from Ford's towel and pulling out letters randomly, hoping Deep Thought's computational matrix in Earth would have rubbed off on his subconscious.