The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
Apart from the original radio programs that I listened to in Stirling on my study abroad,
the travails of Arthur Dent dodging Vogons never inflamed my passion—and I’m not
quite sure where time travel slipped into the further radio shows, books, TV shows,
movies and video games (which I won’t list here, apart from noting Tim’s favorite
quote from The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: “There was an accident
with a contraceptive and a time machine. Now concentrate!” Still, those original radio
shows got me laughing, including the first moment of time travel in the 4th
episode.
The radio series spawned six books and at least one time-travel infused short story.
For instance, at the very moment that Arthur Dent said, “I seem to be having this
tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle,” a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of
the space-time continuum and carried his words far, far back in time across almost
infinite reaches of space, to a distance galaxy where strange and war-like beings were
poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle.
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas
Adams (BBC Radio, 29 March 1978).