Earth is unexpectedly destroyed at lunchtime one Thursday by a Vogon Constructor Fleet clearing the pathway for an interstellar highway. Arthur Dent is now the only human in the galaxy after hitching a ride, as he only later discovered, on the Vogon ship with his good friend Ford Prefect. Ford is really not from Guildford, as he had claimed during his fifteen year sojourn on earth, but actually from a small moon in the vicinity of Betelgeuse, and one of the authors to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which displays the words DON'T PANIC on the cover. They discover that Earth had been moments away from revealing the question to the meaning of life, the answer of which the second-greatest computer in the universe had already divulged to be 42. A series of improbable and startling events ensue in no apparent order, peppered with bright humour and excerpts from the Hitchhiker's Guide. One of the best humour /sci-fi books ever.