Astronomy and science fiction in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Hitchhiker's Guide

Douglas Adam's comic work of science fiction, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, satirizes both society and science. As the story opens, protagonist Arthur Dent is railing against the local government for its decision to raze his home, which is in the way of highway construction. Dent argues that he was never made aware of the decision, though officials assure him the plans had been on display for a sufficient amount of time, albeit "on the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying 'Beware of the Leopard'"(Adams 2010, p. 9). Similarly, planet Earth is in the way of hyperspace bypass construction project, for which plans were also available for review. Bureaucratic red tape ensured the plans were never seen and Dent flees the planet with his alien friend Ford Prefect before it explodes. They hitchhike their way through the galaxy in a novel that explores various scientific concepts including The Big Bang Theory, black holes, time travel, quantum theory, mathematical probability, animal intelligence, and computer technology.

The Hitchhiker's Guide is a book within a book; its main characters are writing about their travels in a journal called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Interestingly, their book is in electronic format and can be read on a device "that looked rather like a largish electronic calculator…[with] a screen about four inches square on which any one of a million 'pages' could be summoned at a moment's notice" (Adams, p. 20). More than thirty years after Adams penned his work, the writer of this paper read it on a Kindle, a device remarkably like the one Adams described. Adams also described accessing music with a device that was "touch sensitive -- you merely had to brush the panels with your fingers" (Adams, p. 67), unknowingly forecasting the development of the iPod Touch.

Dent and Prefect travel through space by hitchhiking, picked up by spacecraft within the improbable nanosecond during which contact could possibly occur. They travel from planet to planet in a "nothingth of a second," making their travel faster than the speed of light, given the distances over which they traverse. Although this mode of travel has been theoretical supported by the theory of special relativity, it has obviously never been done except within the pages of books such as Adams's. In reality, it seems as improbable as Adams' physics of improbability.