Life, the Universe and Everything

Life, the Universe and Everything is the third book in the five-volume Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy science fiction sequence by the British writer Douglas Adams. Its title refers to the answer to life, the universe and everything, which earlier books in the series had already supplied as a number.

The books were later gathered into collected volumes, which is how many readers have encountered the sequence. Each volume can be read on its own, though the jokes build on the books before it.

Adams wrote the sequence as a comedy that treats the largest questions as administrative problems, and the third book keeps to that method: an absurd explanation for the universe is offered, a small cast is inconvenienced by it, and the plot proceeds from the joke rather than towards it. The four books were later collected, first as A Trilogy in Four Parts and then in a complete edition, and the sequence itself grew past the four volumes that title describes. The story began life as an outline for a Doctor Who serial that the BBC rejected, and it was adapted for radio in 2003, with the author appearing through a recording made before his death.