The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1)

I listened to the Stephen Fry narration - what a rollicking adventure. Only afterwards did I learn it was originally a radio play, which makes perfect sense.

It’s incredibly funny and incredibly British. I knew half the jokes already just from cultural osmosis, despite never reading the book or watching the film before. Some of the one-liners still got me (“best bang since the big one”), and the weird set-pieces like the whale’s inner monologue as it plummets towards the planet - had me properly laughing. Dolphins and hamsters(!)… still not sure what to say there ahaha.

What surprised me is how much it still resonates. The computer “Deep Thought” and the philosophers terrified of being put out of a job feel straight out of the current AI/LLM debates. Even Google cribbed its name from “Googleplex.” Adams was way ahead of his time.

Very funny, very weird, and now I get why it’s such a global touchstone.