FUN FACTS

DID YOU KNOW?

REAL LIFE AND TOWELS

Towels reveal from a real-life experience Adams had on a vacation with friends to Greece. According to Adams, “Every morning they’d have to sit around and wait for me because I couldn’t find my blessed towel … I came to feel that someone really together, one who was well organized, would always know where his towel was.”

ADAMS REMOVED A SWIPE AT AN OLD CLASSMATE.

The Guide describes Vogon poetry as the third worst poetry in the universe, two spots shy of one Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex. The original radio script used the name of a very real poet—Paul Neil Milne Johnstone of Redbridge, Essex, a classmate of Adams’ at Brentwood School. Adams made the switch when Johnstone complained about the use of his name.

BEFORE THERE WERE NOVELS, THERE WERE RADIO SHOWS.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide got its start as a six-part radio play broadcast by the BBC in 1978. Adams had previously written for radio series like The Burkiss Way, so the medium was familiar to him. Nick Webb, editor of Pan Books, heard the series and immediately sought out Adams to write a novel based on the show. Adams later joked, “A publisher came and asked me to write a book, which is a very good way of breaking into publishing.”

(The Christian Science Monitor, 2013)