Arthur Dent’s day will be going from bad to worse. At present he is in the process of fighting for his home not to be demolished to make way for a new highway.

Thanks mainly to the hilarity and accurate potrayal of the local council, which accurately depicated and still relevant now, the opening sequence is simple but brilliant. Of course these are the least of Dent’s problems as he will soon find out.

What Arthur isn’t aware of is that soon a flock of alien spaceships will be headed to Earth to, allegedly, make way for an intergalatic highway. It just so happens, just as Arthur’s house is the cause of concern for the local council, planet Earth is the cause for concern for the intergalatic highway where it requires demoliishing to create the required path.

When things go wrong, they tend to happen all at the same time, and so it is that Dent’s rather mundane and dull life is about to get all the excitement he didn’t want. You see, Dent, through all his troubles, his monotony and his despising of where he is, actually loves where he is. The fact that it isn’t perfect doesn’t matter to him. Still, aliens intent to destroy your planet, who also use poetry as a form of torture, are not going to pay heed to any individuals desire against the destruction of their beloved planet.

Fortunately for Dent, his rather suspicious friend, curiously named Ford Prefect (and if you’re old enough, you probably remember seeing them on TV or in the newspapers) is about to save Dent’s hide, and in the process start an adventure that will take them to the end of the universe, travel back in time, find the source of human ancestory while starting a begrudging fight with a reincarnated spirit that Arthur seems to kill everytime by sheer accident. All of this will take place across the mistitled trilogy of five books, collectively known as The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.

It’s so funny at times, it will make your ribs hurt, your cheeks strain with all the smiling

Along the way, they run into a two-headed President of a planet who happens to have stolen the spaceship with the improbability drive – a spaceship that is unlikely to take you to the place you want to go, but more likely the place you are unlikely to find, while affecting the environment around it by making changes that are as improbable as you can imagine.

Accompanied by a humanoid female who’s presence is explained later in the book, a talking computer with a personality trait that is so grating that you’d want to literally grate its circuits, and a paranoid android in the form of the manic depressive Marvin.

I first read Adam’s book when I was around ten years old, enjoying the humourous adventures of Dent’s intergalatic space journey, but not quite grasping the sarcasm or irony which Adam’s work is infused with. Having re-read it in a bid to refresh my memory in anticipation of the movie’s release this year, it’s quite a poignant piece and certainly a timeless book as it’s relevance could never age.

much of the first book, as Adams points out, is simply a straight translation of the original script from the radio

The characters are infused with the sort of everyday stupidity and question that people really ask. Everyone wants to know the “answer” to “that question”, but never quite achieving either. Everyone thinks they know the answer, but what is the answer in actual fact? Or as Adam’s puts it, what is the question?

Dent is such a normal character, that indentifying with him is not a difficult task. In actuality, even the cocophny of aliens that are introduced within the book are not actually all that alien, thanks mainly due to the babelfish (a fish that you place in your ear in order to universally translate any language that is spoken, alien or otherwise).

Their mannerisms, the behaviour and attitude is that of your typical man on the street. They don’t want to be bothered, and don’t particularly want to be going around the galaxy doing odds and sods. They’re just as dumb as everyone else on Earth, and equally war-like. You could say that Adam’s has personified Earth and all it holds into the galaxy within which his book is set.

It is the humour with which Adams handles Dent’s refusal to accept that his planet has been destroyed and the trouble that ensues on his journey that makes you smile; just like the TV series and radio show (which preceded the book itself). In fact much of the first book, as Adams points out, is simply a straight translation of the original script from the radio (the TV show was different in parts).

You don’t need a British sense of humour, or need to be British to appreciate the brilliance of Adams’s writing. It’s been called school-boyish and student material, but those are often comments by literary snobs who would require a sense of humour transplate of epic proportions; smiling would perhaps cause them 10 years of depression.

Even after 20 years, the book doesn’t seem to have lost any of its humour, wit or irony; all of which is still relevant now (and for the forseeable future)

Adams composes his stories with the imagination of a child, the writing of an adult, but with a universal appeal that hits home with a person of any age. It’s not limited to a certain group, and if you enjoy a book that is saturated in humour from start to end, then The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy would be a brilliant choice.

Even after 20 years, the book doesn’t seem to have lost any of its humour, wit or irony; all of which is still relevant now (and for the forseeable future). The balance of taking a situation that is completely serious and turning it on it’s head that it is still as engrossing, but likely to leave you grinning is a talent few authors seem to have a handle, with the modern equivalents being Terry Pratchett or, at a darker level, Nick Walker.

All in all, what you get from the book is very much a case of “life isn’t so bad, you just need to have a sense of humour”. Dent’s adventure holds this true, as his obsession with tea, and that distinctly British attitude is what gets him out of the most difficult situations.

Adams’s book is certainly a modern classic – I don’t mean classic in the sense that it will win literary awards that would make the literary patriarchs pleased with snobbish glee. It’s the sort of classic that everyone can enjoy, appreciate and understand. It’s so funny at times, it will make your ribs hurt, your cheeks strain with all the smiling, and your eyes pop out in disbelief at some the brilliant absurdities that take place. It’s a classic, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Verdict: Timeless, sci-fi comedy with floods of humour, epic galactic adventures, written to perfection. Don’t forget your towel.