Where the 
first books kept me alive, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and the rest of that trilogy was a light in the darkness. I’d always had an odd sense of humor and found someone whose brain was just as warped as mine.
This was also the time when I discovered British comedies on one of the local PBS television stations. I had already fallen in love with the humor of Peter Sellers in the Pink Panther movies but now I had a source of laughs that didn’t depend on the chance movie television schedule. I could, occasionally, watch Red Dwarf or I could bury my nose in one of the five books of the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker’s Trilogy.
Not only did The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy Bring some much needed laughter into my life, it also started my quirky habit of using quotes to share my thoughts rather than trying to explain the odd jumble of words and images that played through my mind. The most important quote, of course, is “The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything is 42.”
That answer, 42—which, coincidentally, was misspoken and should have been “Tea for 2” in my opinion, “Chai anyone?”—started, in part, my own search for 42.
A towel, it says, is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitchhiker can have.
Partly it has great practical value.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value.
Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows were his towel is.
The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.
When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject’s taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject’s metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject’s brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
One note on the trilogy of five books known as the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, this should be noted about part six: “For THHGTTG’s 30th anniversary, part six of three, And Another Thing… was published. This book was written by Eoin Colfer since Adams was unavailable to write the book due to his being dead for biological reasons.”