In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a wholly remarkable book. Perhaps the most remarkable, certainly the most successful book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor. More popular than the Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than 53 More Things To Do In Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid’s trilogy of philosophical blockbusters: Where God Went Wrong, Some More Of God’s Greatest Mistakes, and Who Is This God Person Anyway?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom. For though it has many omissions, and contains much which is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over he older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. First, it’s slightly cheaper. And second, it has the words Don’t Panic printed in large friendly letters on its cover.