Don't panic!

Recently a lot of universal dust has been raised in honour of the events surrounding the 30^th anniversary of the first publication of Douglas Adams’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. Like other science fiction and fantasy novels these books have attracted a cult of followers. At the Hithcon convention in London people were invited to delight in a bit of escapism and attend in their bathrobes and with towels.

The novels are infused with their own bizarre metaphysics and jargon which never fail to be revived in any text alluding to them . They inspires so much sympathy worldwide that even a Nasa LCROSS Lunar mission, sent to find water on the moon, felt compelled to make a parallel between itself and a sperm whale dislocated in space. A twitter feed was sent from the hurtling satellite to the adoring masses speaking in the words of the whale – "And what's this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round ... it needs a big wide sounding name like 'Ow', 'Ownge', 'Round', 'Ground'! ... That's it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it'll be friends with me?"

The intimate equilibrium in the imagination of the fans has also been troubled recently by an intruder, Eoin Colfer, who had undertaken the task of carrying on the series after the death of the original author. The fear of the original characters mutating into strangers is so pressing that angry followers have made protests against this undertaking.