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Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Audible Audiobook – Unabridged

Douglas Adams (Author), Stephen Fry (Narrator), Macmillan Digital Audio (Publisher)
Teachers' pick for school years 1–9
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A much loved science-fiction classic, this entertaining intergalactic adventure has a lot going for it - including narration by British comedian Stephen Fry. Adams displays his talents for a creating a whole new world in this first of five audiobooks in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. Packed with brilliant humour, extraordinary characters and a highly original storyline, it's no wonder that this novel is a favourite of so many.

One Thursday lunchtime the Earth gets unexpectedly demolished to make way for a new hyperspace bypass. For Arthur Dent, who has only just had his house demolished that morning, this seems already to be more than he can cope with. Sadly, however, the weekend has only just begun, and the Galaxy is a very strange and startling place.

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  1. Book 1 of 6
    Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
  2. Listening Length
    5 hours and 51 minutes
  3. Author
    Douglas Adams
  4. Narrator
    Stephen Fry
  5. Audible release date
    1 Jan. 2012
  6. Language
    English
  7. Publisher
    Macmillan Digital Audio
  8. ASIN
    B0094II5WE
  9. Version
    Unabridged
  10. Program Type
    Audiobook
  11. See all details
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Product details

Listening Length 5 hours and 51 minutes
Author Douglas Adams
Narrator Stephen Fry
Whispersync for Voice Ready
Audible.co.uk Release Date 01 January 2012
Publisher Macmillan Digital Audio
Program Type Audiobook
Version Unabridged
Language English
ASIN B0094II5WE
Best Sellers Rank 41 in Audible Books & Originals (See Top 100 in Audible Books & Originals)
1 in Science Fiction (Audible Books & Originals)
3 in Science Fiction for Young Adults
3 in Humorous Fiction & Satire

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
25,325 global ratings

Customers say

Customers find the writing style nice and easy to read, allowing their imagination to do the rest. They also find the humor splendid, witty, and amazing at subverting expectations. Readers describe the message as intelligent, insightful, and insightful. They find the characters well thought out and brilliantly clever. They describe the storyline as marvelous, timeless, and excellent.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

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HumorStorylineWriting styleMessageCharacterizationPlot complexityLength
130 customers mention ‘Humor’130 positive0 negative

Customers find the humor in the book splendid, absurd, and easy to follow. They also say the writing is brilliant yet simple.

"...It hasn't disappointed. Humour still holds up all these years on. Who wouldn't want to meet and chat to Marvin!..." Read more

"...There were so many genuine laugh-out-loud moments; I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did...." Read more

"...There's moments of absolute genius, and some genuinely comedy gold, but there's also too much over description of really pointless things...but I..." Read more

"...This lends a great deal to the comedy, especially the interplay between Eddie the computer, the talking doors, and of course Marvin...." Read more

66 customers mention ‘Storyline’61 positive5 negative

Customers find the storyline marvelous, easy to follow, and short. They also say the characters create a vast and interesting universe with rich history. Readers describe the book as a classic, with ridiculous scenarios and absurd, madcap humour. They say it's not that dated and a great read.

"...Stephen Fry's narrative was good but I think if they had different people for the different characters it would have been better...." Read more

"What's to say about this book, this series?It's iconic? It's the cleverest and wittiest sci-fi book written? The best radio sci-fi ever?..." Read more

"...who is able to create such memorable characters and create a vast and interesting universe with rich history that you simply want to know more and..." Read more

"...a short read that pulls you in from the very first page, with ridiculous scenarios and absurd, madcap humour from the start that had me laughing out..." Read more

31 customers mention ‘Writing style’22 positive9 negative

Customers find the writing style of the book nice, easy to read, and brilliant. They also say it's simple and brilliant, allowing one's imagination to do the rest.

"...The writing is just brilliant - yet so simple!..." Read more

"...I found it enjoyable and easy to follow, as long as you don't get too bogged down in details and keep and open mind - it's a good read." Read more

"...for me (that I didn't realise when I bought it), was that this isn't the full book, and this publication has been separated into parts...." Read more

"...The story was easy to read, with light, absurd humour that floated me through the story until the end...." Read more

15 customers mention ‘Message’15 positive0 negative

Customers find the message in the book insightful, funny, and full of wit and humour. They also appreciate the subtle knock-backs to religion.

"...There are all the usual things to say of Adams' work. It's insightful, thought provoking, worryingly realistic and amazingly witty...." Read more

"...All-in-all, I think this book is intelligent, funny, and insightful and I definitely plan to read the next one." Read more

"...It touches on philosophy and makes the reader ask questions such as what really is the meaning of life?..." Read more

"...The Author has a great take on philosophical and scientific theories without making one bored.Negative..." Read more

14 customers mention ‘Characterization’14 positive0 negative

Customers find the characters well thought out and brilliantly clever. They also say Stephen Fry is excellent and brings every character to life.

"...Stephen Fry is just brilliant; he does all the different voices just as he does through the Harry Potter books...." Read more

"...The characters are very simple, and yet in H2G2 this seems incredibly natural, where in any other book it would probably be boring and childlike...." Read more

"...A genius writer who is able to create such memorable characters and create a vast and interesting universe with rich history that you simply want to..." Read more

"...Stephen Fry is excellent and brings every character to life, the story (as ever) is wonderful and for me was the most pleasing part was that my nine..." Read more

7 customers mention ‘Plot complexity’3 positive4 negative

Customers are mixed about the plot complexity. Some find the book easy to follow, while others say it's hard to follow at times. However, most find the story interesting and difficult to put down.

"...I could not make progress in the past as it was just as hard to pick up this time around...." Read more

"...It's honestly hard to put down...." Read more

"...several times I have read it once more and still find it extremely difficult to put down, without a doubt an excellent read for anyone" Read more

"...Thoroughly entertaining and hard to put down." Read more

5 customers mention ‘Length’3 positive2 negative

Customers are mixed about the length of the book. Some mention that it's mercifully short, while others say that it is too short.

"Short and very easy to read. Very whitty" Read more

"...It was a rollercoaster of events but it felt a little cut short at the end. It just seemed to end very suddenly." Read more

"...The only redeeming factors are that it was cheap and the book is mercifully short...." Read more

"...The story is great of course, just too short...." Read more

Don't leave Amazon without it!
5 out of 5 stars
Don't leave Amazon without it!
About as brilliant as British satire gets. Douglas Adams remains one of my all-time favourite authors. His boundless creativity and imagination is a true inspiration for me. Especially as I am an author myself! The book remains the best version of the tale. The BBC Radio show and the 2005 movie are good, but the book is the original (and best) voice.
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Top reviews from United Kingdom

RD
5.0 out of 5 stars Wish I'd read it sooner.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 22 June 2024
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Remember watching the TV adaptation 40 years or so ago and always fancied reading the book. It hasn't disappointed. Humour still holds up all these years on. Who wouldn't want to meet and chat to Marvin! Must get on and read the remaining books in the series.
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Kevin Lawrence
5.0 out of 5 stars 5* but reading the book is better.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 16 June 2024
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Personally I think the book is better if you actually read it rather than listen to it. Stephen Fry's narrative was good but I think if they had different people for the different characters it would have been better. But worth a listen to.
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Mrs Helen S Leecy
4.0 out of 5 stars Crazy Loons!
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 4 July 2019
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Wow, this was a crazy looney toons book! I listened to this an audiobook as part of the Pink and Dizzy reading challenge, and I have to say I’m so glad I did it this way rather than reading the book. Stephen Fry is just brilliant; he does all the different voices just as he does through the Harry Potter books. Zaphod Beeblebrox sounded like Gilderoy Lockhart from ‘The Chambers of Secrets’; he did the same voice for these characters, so that was funny.
There were so many genuine laugh-out-loud moments; I didn’t expect to enjoy it as much as I did. My mind did wander a little in places, however, but this didn’t spoil the book, and I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything vital.
The mind of Douglas Adams is certainly one to be admired with all the crazy, insane madness he came up with. It was just so out there! I can certainly see why this has become a classic. I now also understand the reference of the answer to the universe being 42! I had heard this many times before reading, so it was nice to finally put this into context.
I’m very keen to read or listen to the follow-on books, however, they have been narrated by Martin Freeman, so I really hope he manages to do them as much justice as Stephen Fry did.
13 people found this helpful
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Neasa MacErlean
5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful journey into the absurd
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 13 February 2023
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I laughed out loud in the first chapters of this delightful book. Towards the end, I was a bit less taken by it (as it seemed to go on with a bit of a looser plot); and I am unlikely to read any of the sequels. The way that Adams puts the Earth in a humble context within the Universe is one of the great achievements of the book. It turns out that the government of the Universe sees our world as a tiny globe in the path of a planned new astro-motorway, and so destroys it. (This happens very early on, so this is not a spoiler.) More powerful species than humans also get their comeuppance. For instance, one of our galaxy's great fighting forces suffered a terrible military defeat when "due to a terrible miscalculation of scale...[its] entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog". Adams was a Literature graduate and you can see how he borrows brilliantly from Jonathan Swift (who also wrote of extraordinary journeys in "Gulliver's Travels") and other writers who used voyages as a metaphor for living.
2 people found this helpful
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Martin Jones
5.0 out of 5 stars The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Back
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 23 October 2017
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I’ve been rereading some of the science fiction that I enjoyed at school, just to see how the future has treated it. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy made a huge impression on me in 1978. The original BBC radio shows were on late at night. I’d listen sitting on a dark gold velour sofa, in subdued 1970s light cast by a ridiculously tall, scarlet lamp decorated with amber flowers. I recorded each show, carefully pressing Record and Play together on a cassette deck. When the book came out at the end of 1979 I bought it immediately.

Feeling nervous thirty nine years later, I downloaded a copy of Hitchhiker’s to my iPad and started to read…

It was like meeting an old friend again; but it wasn’t all about nostalgia. At school, I just went for a ride. This time, as we flew along, I had a poke about in the book’s engines. It might seem presumptuous to claim knowledge of how those engines work, but I think it has something to do with exploiting quirks in the amusing contradictions of an infinite universe.

The nature of the Hitchhiker power is there at lift off, in the first chapter. Arthur Dent faces a local council official who has arrived with bulldozers to knock down Arthur’s house to make way for a by-pass. Immediately big and small things start mirroring each other. It is a big deal to Arthur Dent that the local council want to build a bypass through his house. Arthur’s predicament, however, is insignificant compared to the threat posed by unpleasant aliens called Vogons who are planning to build a hyperspace bypass through Earth. The threatened destruction of Earth seems a big deal, until, in turn, you remember how Earth is described as the book opens – an utterly insignificant blue-green planet in the backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral Arm of the Galaxy. Against this background, you start to question the difference between big and small.

All of the humour and wisdom of Hitchhiker’s then spins out from this paradoxical colliding of opposites set up at the beginning. After the Vogons move their bulldozers through Earth, a rescued Arthur Dent tries to come to terms with what’s happened. He can’t feel the loss of Earth, since the event is just too overwhelming. The thing that really hits him is the loss of McDonald’s hamburgers.

Later in the book, for reasons I won’t go into, Arthur visits a chamber of hyperspace, thirteen light seconds across. This truly is a place revealing the odd nature of the scale of things.

“It wasn’t infiniy, in fact. Infinity itself looks flat and uninteresting. Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity – distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless. The chamber into which the aircar emerged was anything but infinite, it was just very very very big, so big that it gave the impression of infinity far better than infinity.”

Ironically, with any immensity, a quality of smallness must be involved. This combination gives the sense of a long journey coming right back to where it started. I really enjoyed the comfort of that message. You could go back to sit on that velour sofa. At the same time you could take a typically 1970s kind of journey where you’re standing by a road sticking your thumb out, not entirely sure where you might end up. I once hitched in Scotland, and found myself dropped off in the middle of nowhere, north of Inverness. There was snow on the ground and doubt in my mind about whether I would get another lift before hypothermia set in. I took the advice on the cover of the Hitchhiker’s Guide - Don’t Panic. I might have been in the middle of nowhere, but relatively speaking I wasn’t really far from home. The Guide’s advice remains as relevant now as it ever was.
23 people found this helpful
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Lee Frost
3.0 out of 5 stars Science Fiction Royalty....Just Not For Me
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 10 April 2024
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I have had this on the TBR for so so LONG, the expectations being very high, as this is considered a Sci-Fi must read.
It just fell a little flat for me, I'm probably going to get some hate for this but it just wasn't as funny as I was expecting. I think I'd built this up too much and was never going to live up to the hype.
There's moments of absolute genius, and some genuinely comedy gold, but there's also too much over description of really pointless things...but I guess that's how Arthur Dent must've felt lol!!
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Kindle Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Amazing Book
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 28 April 2024
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I heard about this book in school and was recommended it. Tbh, I had made the best decision as this book was in S Tier, no question! Would recommend
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Roma Watson
4.0 out of 5 stars Arrived on time
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 17 September 2023
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Still reading the book
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Top reviews from other countries

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Mike James Ross
5.0 out of 5 stars A true classic
Reviewed in Canada on 4 March 2024
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One of my favourite books of all time. So funny! And the movie (with Mos Def!) is also pretty good!
One person found this helpful
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Darlan
5.0 out of 5 stars Muito bom o livro
Reviewed in Brazil on 14 September 2021
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Sem dúvida nenhuma é um ícone geek. Achei o livro bastante interessante e original. Para os leitores não muito hábeis com o inglês pode ser bem difícil de ler pois, não há uma estória contínua para ajudar no entendimento dos termos. Tem algumas tiradas engraçadas, mas não leia esperando morrer de rir. Mas em resumo aconselho a leitura por ser um clássico.
3 people found this helpful
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Tommaso Dini
5.0 out of 5 stars Tutto ok
Reviewed in Italy on 2 April 2024
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Tutto ok
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yarp
4.0 out of 5 stars great writing, pretty bad edition.
Reviewed in Sweden on 6 October 2023
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First I think someone should correct the review below saying the book was separated, incase someone gets confused. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was of course a single volume to which there are four sequals with different titles, and of course there are editions which collect all five under the title of the first.
The review doesn't seem to mention that the one he bought claimed to be a collected edition, but that research he suggests should lead most people to expect that if it is not mentioned to contain give books then you are getting the first book in a single volume (not "separated", but not collected with the others).
I don't say any of this in mean spirit, just incase anyone misunderstands that review to assume the FIRST book was divided in five here.

Anyway. the story is great :) excellent. possibly "essential" reading, and it seems to be all here. I bought the Mass Market Paperback editions of the original trilogy (OF THREE) published by Del Ray and, as I should have expected, they aren't so great. very thin covers, very narrow borders which make it a little uncomfortable to read and mean that where you have to open it so wide the spine probably won't last many readings as the books themselves seem to be made pretty cheaply.
it's not terrible and not bad for half the price of the standard (much nicer) paperbacks, but if you want editions that will last to be read many times, I'd go for the pricier editions. I'm only deducting a single star as they're not terrible and of course the contents of the book are 5 star without question!

If like me you are only interested in the first three books, then Gollancz has some nice (and not too chunky) hardback editions for around the same price as the current main paperbacks as part of their excellent SF Masterworks collection, and it seems they have just released a new edition of this first book in their latest style with new art, so I am assuming the other two will follow in the not-too-distant future. I'm going to return these flimsy paperbacks and collect these new Gollancz editions as they come out (but they are very unlikely to have either 'So Long and Thanks for All the Fish' or 'Mostly Harmless' in that same line, so if you're a collector type who wants them all uniform, best go for the nice paperback box set :) )
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Dani
5.0 out of 5 stars Todo un clásico, muy divertido
Reviewed in Spain on 29 August 2022
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Si no te lo has leído aún no entenderás muchas cosas sobre la ciencia ficción y la cultura de hoy, es muy divertido y merece mucho la pena leerlo, da igual si tienes 15 o 40 años
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