There are too many Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy editions. I ranked them.

Recently I revisited Douglas Adams'  Hitchhiker Trilogy as part of a book club. And we meant 'Trilogy' literally -- we were  only committing to read the first three books. I was nervous that they wouldn't hold  up because that's what happens when you revisit things from your adolescence, but...  no this stuff has aged like a fine Janx spirit. So, I went overboard and decided to read  all five books... plus Starship Titanic, And Another Thing, both Dirk Gently's,  The Salmon of Doubt, and Don't P

anic. I'm working on a full review / personal  reflection-type essay, but, those are hard, and while I'm figuring out exactly  what I want to say about The Books, I just want to talk about "the books!"  The cover art, the layouts, the reprints, the presentation. I hope it's a worthwhile  thing to discuss because there certainly seems to be a hell of a lot of them. Used bookstores will pretty reliably have at least one copy of the first five but  it seems to be a different copy each time, and I h

ad no idea if the publishers were just  occasionally changing the cover art or actually revising content. A technically correct  but ultimately useless answer: it depends. There are in fact so many prints that  a comprehensive list would be both impractical to make and boring. So in what I  hope is a practical compromise I've tried to be definitive about the UK paperbacks by Pan  Macmillan; the original UK hard covers; the US releases by Random House (all through various  subsidiaries) and the 1

980s Pocket Books editions. The many Omnibus versions out there are  out of of scope. Afterwards I'll cover some selected editions from other publishers,  including some non-English translations. And, mostly for thumbnail purposes I'm  going to rank them on a tier list! Now this is the version I grew up with: the  mid-90s Ballantine editions. Strong artwork but definitely not the best paperback edition. We'll  get to that. But, this print is the one I'm most sentimental about. However, this is w

here it all  started. Released by Pan in the UK in 1979 with cover art by Ian Wright working for Hipgnosis. The Hipgnosis Design Group is best associated with Storm Thorgerson, who will be appearing  later. Wright has had his own accomplished career. There's some great documentaries and articles  on his work but I haven't been able to find anything talking about this image. This cover  has grown on me but it's kind of hard to talk about because of its non-objectivity. When looking  online for th

is cover it seemed like none of the images were of good quality and it turns out it's  because the art is intentionally out of focus. "I think The Hitchhiker's Guide to  the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is blurry, that's the problem. It's not  the photographer's fault." Stuart Wilson, an artist with Pan Macmillan,  who designed some later covers himself, wrote a great blog covering several  of Pan's editions. Wilson states the blurred image represents the Infinite  Improbability Drive. I haven't foun

d anyone else asserting this and I'm  kind of skeptical but I want it to be true because it would give some symmetry  to another one of my favorite sci-fi satires: "They've gone to plaid!" Note the appearance of the words "Don't  Panic" written in friendly letters on the reverse. Whether that counts as large  or not I'll leave to you to decide. In a forward written for the 2009 Pan editions,  Russell T. Davies of Dr. Who fame commented on how much he loved the "paperbackiness"  of this book. My

modern sensibility tends to think of the hard cover as the real one  but these books were meant to be consumable; accessible. This almost feels like a pamphlet  compared to the American paperbacks that I'm used to which have a smaller footprint but  are thicker. I love the original order form for the BBC album on the back here. In "Don't  Panic", Adams commented on how many people sent in the form despite the fact that it  meant you had to sacrifice the last chapter. Inside, the font is clean an

d easy to read. Extra impressive given that this copy is about  43 years old. They're not all this good. The cover art to the sequel, 1980s The Restaurant  at the End of the Universe, at first sight might seem like a copout but this does a lot with very  little. Instead of a solid black or a generic star field background we have glowing galaxies  in the background. This art is by Chris Moore, another prolific artist; his specialty is in  sci-fi book covers and like Wright before, I haven't been

able to find any discussion of this  image specifically. Being the '90s kid that I am, I can't see an image like this without being  reminded of the Hubble Deep Field. Whatever the source, this cover conveys that deep space  feel that's essential to the series. I really like the cursive neon restaurant sign;  makes me feel nostalgic for a decade I can't even remember. And finally: the star.  A small detail but in the book, Milliways, the titular restaurant has a star-shaped  layout. I love when

cover art seems random at first but gains meaning as you read. Looking  at these two examples I want to talk about the role of cover art: it's an advertisement for  the book. Especially in the pre-internet era, it was supposed to catch your eye across the  aisle on a bus or on someone's coffee table. Ideally I also want the cover to give you  an idea of the setting and especially the tone without spoiling plot specifics. That's  hard, and I think these two do pretty good job. With that in mind,

let's look at 1982's Life, the  Universe, and Everything. It's funny how something can be so familiar and yet uncanny. This is a pop  top, otherwise known as a pull tab, from some kind of aluminum can. If hearing me explain that makes  you feel like I'm insulting your intelligence, please understand, I'm insulting myself, because  for months I was only like 90% sure that this is what it was. I've never encountered a pop top  shaped exactly like that until last month when I noticed it at a popula

r International foods  chain, and now of course I regret not getting a picture because it was on something weird  like canned BBQ sauce or something. Anyway, unless this is supposed to be the tab from Arthur  Dent's lost and found can of Greek olive oil, this image has absolutely nothing  to do with the rest of the book. Beyond the cover, a notable artifact from the  writing process; according to Don't Panic: during writing Adams lost a few chapters,  as in somehow he misplaced the only hard cop

ies. He recovered them when they were  dangerously close to publication time; they'd already locked into a final page count.  So the only way they could get the chapters into the book was to sacrifice the ads. And we can  see the text goes right to the final page. So, in a way, Douglas Adams accidentally created an  early instance of ad blocker with this book. I don't actually dislike this cover. I just don't  love it like I love these two. No in order to cross the boundary to genuine dislike, w

e have  to go to So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. For the first three books hardbacks with  different covers were published by Arthur Barker in the UK. Here, Pan did both  versions starting with the hardback. "The English cover was all black with a  lenticular picture that changed from a dinosaur into a walrus (and vice  versa) stuck on the front. There are no dinosaurs or walruses in So  Long and Thanks for All the Fish." Adams saw the design while writing and tried to  make it relevant. In

an early pitch he described an "ultra walrus with an embarrassing past"  but that didn't make it into this or any other Adams book, sadly. I'm glad they didn't try  to stick a lenticular cover on a paperback. That locked them into using only one of  the two pictures and I prefer the walrus, so Pan gets a smidgen of credit for selecting  the better bad option for the paperback. Remember what I said about tone? This is  by far the most optimistic and upbeat of the books. This book is a romance di

sguised  as a Sci-Fi, and we have an all black cover and a small --as best I can tell, stock photo  -- of an animal that seems incongruous at the start and remains so after you finished. This  looks like the cover to a $3 VHS you'd have found in a drugstore bin in 1993 featuring  public domain clips with a special Intro by David Attenborough... and I definitely want to  watch that now. But it doesn't fit this book. It's not all bad though. Two glorious  design choices were made. I said I love th

e typesetting on Hitchhiker. Here they  use a thin sans serif font. I always find fonts like these more inviting to read.  And instead of a blank line or row of asterisks whenever they have to do  a POV jump it uses this double fish graphic. Both of these elements disappeared  after the '90s and they are sorely missed. What I have to say about the Mostly Harmless  paperback only makes sense if I talk about the hardback first. As with Fish, the  hardback released before the paperback, this time p

ublished by William Heinemann Ltd.  For reasons unknown, Pan did not reproduce this cover art but they clearly took notes. I think the fact that they both feature a pink arrow is a giveaway. Now, I have definitely  overthought this. That goes without saying, but I'm saying it. In my overthinking, I've  concluded: this is funny, and this is not. This is funny for the same reason the coyote  falling off a cliff and fading into nothingness before we see a tiny dust cloud is funny. A  quote attribut

ed to Mark Twain defines comedy as “tragedy plus time.” I'd like to amend that to  “tragedy plus distance”. Hey, we're all general relativists here, we know they're the same  thing. The more you trivialize and minimize Earth the better suited it is to the tone of  the series. Where Sagan sees a “pale blue dot”, Adams sees an “utterly insignificant blue and  green planet.” This tiny cartoon Earth dwarfed by the arrow pointing it out means so much more  than... THIS. And because we have a cartoon

Earth, I appreciate the abstract star field that  looks almost like a splatter painting. This also seems to be the origin of the  “increasingly inaccurately named” tagline that shows up on later prints. So with all that  context... the paperback. Yep, it's the Earth. If I were to rank these individually, I'd put  Hitchhiker in A tier. Starting with the second book, Adams kept insisting (more strongly after  every book) that “this was the last one,” so the fact that there's no thematic consistenc

y  between these editions is not a factor. I'd rank Restaurant, a little lower: weak A strong B  maybe. Life and Mostly Harmless are solid C tier, not bad, just not special. And, helped with  the good design choices on the interior, ‘I Am The Walrus’ here gets  a D. All together: B tier. I'm going to go much faster and be much snarkier  with the UK hard covers. I'm sure in the UK in 1985 they were available in any bookstore but  today in the US they're a little hard to come by, and I don't own a

ny of these other than Mostly  Harmless, so I can only talk about the cover art. Best I can say about Hitchhiker is it possibly  inspired the similar but better artwork for the US hard cover, but probably not; the “thumbs  up” is the most obvious imagery to go with the word “Hitchhiker.” What we have looks like  a photographed glove overlaying some generic satellite thing, which isn't remotely similar  to anything in the book. I wanted to give some benefit of the doubt to the apparent cheapness 

of this cover by saying Adams wasn't too well known yet and the book wasn't guaranteed to  be a hit, but this wasn't printed until 1980! The paperback and the BBC album were doing  well and the sequel was on the way. This to me looks like someone got the assignment  at 9:00 a.m. and had a noon lunch date. Restaurant: this is two years before  Cheers. Based on not a lot of research, this seems like the hardest one to find today. It  looks like it's supposed to give the impression of a pencil ske

tch, but parts of it look like a  photocopied picture with elements drawn over it, or maybe like something from a 1960s pulp serial  mashed together with the Star Wars Cantina. Life, the Universe, and Everything: I like this  one. Some nice detailing on the artwork for the robot arm. First time readers might assume this is  Marvin; you don't know about the Krikkit bots yet, and once you learn about them, this cover takes  on a more sinister meaning. The subtle blue on black star field behind the

title is a nice touch  – I almost missed it. I aspire to own this one. The only thing I have to say about Fish is: if I  were the benevolent dictator of book publishing, I would ban lenticular covers. At least  Pan chose to keep the same dimensions of the Arthur Barker books, which cannot be  said for Heinemann with Mostly Harmless, which is annoying but I can't bring  myself to speak ill of this cover. Based solely on the art, the original  UK hard covers: D tier. D+ if you're splitting hairs.

Mostly Harmless gets  the plus. Preview of things to come: Mostly Harmless is the one  that makes or breaks the set. The US hard covers were published by Harmony  books. The first four got a paperback published by Pocket Books which used the same art  as Harmony, but with different labeling, and sometimes cropped to fit a compressed form  factor. I'm not going to bother ranking these separately. But, before we talk about any of the  art in detail, we need to talk about this guy: his name is Cos

mic Cutie (rather presumptuous  in my opinion). Named “Jeremy Pacman” in the UK, in reference to British journalist and broadcaster  Jeremy Paxman. U.S. publishers added him, apparently thinking a mascot would help consumers  realize these books were part of the same series, which on its own is not the worst idea  ever, but I never cared for this guy. I see him and I think “silly,” “slapstick”...  “irreverent” maybe, but it doesn't fit with my mental picture of the irony and wit that Adams  wrot

e with. But what did Douglas Adams think? “I hate the little green blob and have  spent years locked in arguments with my publishers with me trying to get  rid of the obscene little thing. I’ve finally secured its demise  with the new Ballantine editions.” Might as well mention my second bone to pick with  Mr. Wilson: Cosmic Cutie is not meant to depict a Vogon. For that matter, fans have speculated  that he might be a planet or the Great Green Arkleseizure. He's a mascot, and that's it.  Okay,

I don't want to be too hard on Mr. Wilson; he seems to be an artist, first and foremost,  and I wouldn't be surprised if he were given the task to write this blog as a side project  with limited time. This is ultimately just marketing copy and I can't fault an artist too  hard for delivering less than perfect marketing. For whatever it's worth, there's  something unsettling about this thing laughing at me when it can't  see me. I mean would it kill ya… Huh. Somehow that might be worse. Now, afte

r all that: I really like the US cover.  Inspired by the art of Terry Gilliam, according to the Wilson article, and I believe him this  time. It may be a bit of a cheat but by invoking the art style associated with Monty Python, it  successfully communicates the tone in a way the mascot does not on his own. I mean if someone put  a Kill-o-Zap cannon to my head and said “Summarize Hitchhiker’s in less time than it takes to say the  title!”... “Uh… Monty Python in space!” is about the best I can d

o. I like the blue star field,  and the weird colors on the planets. This artwork looks of its time but I wouldn't call it dated.  I feel like it managed to go right from trendy to retro and I think the publishers feel the same  way, because of all the covers and layouts we're going to talk about, you can still buy this  one! This is a 1980 book club edition, but you can buy this, new, from U.S. retailers today. The  footprint is a little different, and the copyright page clarifies that this is

actually the 25th  anniversary edition. There are at least two small changes to the text, that we are NOT going to go  into right now because that's easily its own hour long can of worms, but the point is, Random House  and its subsidiaries have resisted the urge to plaster “25th Anniversary Edition” or some other  blurb on the cover. Keep that in mind for later. In an economic model where nothing is sacred, I  appreciate the decision not to mess with this one. And then... this is what we call r

esting on  our laurels. They knew the series was a hit, they knew this would sell, they shelled out  for real artwork last time, and for the sequel, they slapped the title and the  mascot on a black background, and called it good enough. If the person who did  the UK hard cover for Hitchhiker had a lunch date, they had a 10:00 smoke break for this one.  There are some digital multicolored doodads here that kind of imply a star field. Just like  the two different UK Mostly Harmless covers, betwee

n the impression of a star field and  the cursive book title, clearly these artists had seen the UK cover and were trying to match  its vibe, but there's no sophistication here. This is better. Not excellent, but better. Back  to a colored gradient and a painted star field. I- is Cutie picking his nose at me? I don't  care, moving on. I'm not positive if this planet is meant to depict something from the  book? It clearly isn’t Earth because we've got four moons. I like to imagine it's the  float

ing party planet specifically because of the swirl right here. That's the storm cloud  created by the rival carpet cleaning companies. For Fish... let's quickly go back to Don't Panic: “The American cover, marginally more logically, showed some leaping dolphins. There are no  dolphins in So Long and Thanks for All the Fish, but there are more dolphins than  there are walruses or dinosaurs.” I think this Neil Gaiman guy  has some potential, he's funny. Cutie's got a handkerchief this time, adding

  evidence to the idea that he was picking his nose on the last cover. Or maybe that's his towel.  And that dolphin is giving some serious side eye. Like it knows something I don't. Of course in this  universe the dolphins do know something we don't so, benefit of the doubt, it was intentional?  There's just one thing: this book is mis-sized compared to the rest of the US books, on both  editions. Less so on the paperback but... why? And finally, a third variation on a theme.  Of all the details

to get hung up on, Earth is not that big a deal! Yes, part  of the book is set on Earth. You know how many other books are partially set on  Earth? All five of them! And... Oh my God, here comes Eoin Colfer with a steel chair: all  six of them! That's impressive considering it gets destroyed in chapter three of  Hitchhiker. Would you like to guess how many chapters of Mostly Harmless take  place on Earth? Five. In Restaurant? Six. This book has so much rich imagery:  the sandwich maker; the pol

e sitter; the Perfectly Normal Beast; Planet Rupert; the  Grebulons; the two Trillians; astrological signs; a malevolent updated Guide that takes the  form of a holographic multi-dimensional bird! And this is what it all comes down to  for them? Unlike the two British editions, this image is abstract enough that maybe  this is one of the non-Earth variations that Arthur visits. Maybe it's Nowwhat (no  it's not). Um... Cutie's gotten over his cold, and he's a tourist now, so I think he's  suppose

d to be annoying even in context? Uh, the sparkles around Earth could represent the TV  and radio activity that the Grebulons pick up. I like the nebulae around the edges. Mostly  Harmless really makes or breaks the set. On the whole, I'd rank the US covers a  bit weaker than the British originals, at a C. The UK covers represent the  bottom of the top, and the US covers, the top of the bottom. If This Were A D&D game,  I'd be accused of metagaming. ‘Cause I am. Sue me. When I first ran into one

of these at my  favorite used bookstore, I looked at the cover art, digested the fact that it was  printed in Britain, looked at the font, and put it back. Because I didn't get it. I get  it now. I call these these “the Quads.” These are Pan's first reprints of the “trilogy of four”,  which started production in 1987 and ran well into the 90s. I have a mix of prints here;  you can see Pan's logo update on the spine. This is the first set of prints meant to have  cohesive theming across all the

books. Recall, Adams kept on insisting each of these books  was the last. By the time Fish was published, I think they believed him, so there's no Quad  copy of Mostly Harmless, and... how would you? Always the odd one out. If they had made one,  it would probably have been just four Earths. Once you have these books arranged in the  right orientation, each of the four possible rotations yields a different photo. We have the  Starship Heart of Gold, where an illustrator clearly took the descript

ion of it looking like  a running shoe way too literally. We have a fish; I'm honestly not sure if it's supposed to  represent the Babel Fish or just “thanks for all the fish.” “Don't Panic” on a towel, and finally,  an Adams self-portrait. From the image credits: “fish from image bank, spacecraft by Chris  Foss, towel photographed by Peter Williams, and Apple computer self-portrait by the author.” The fact that these covers are made up of an  original painting, a photo of an original prop, a st

ock photo, and an early example of  digital art with Adams’ personal involvement: it's perfect. Mixed media, order from chaos. These  are just reskins of the originals by the way, they even preserved the sans serif font and  the page break graphics for Fish, which leads me to my only real criticism of this run: for  reasons unknown, the print on the first three is needlessly heavy. The serifs are smeared together  on some words, almost creating the impression that they're underlined. It's not un

readable, but  I'd be willing to bet sustained reading would be hard on the eyes. These covers are almost  forgotten; not mentioned in the Wilson article, there's not a lot of copies online but still  enough that I wouldn't exactly call them “rare”, they're just not in demand. What really impresses  me about these is that I've come to admire them despite this not at all being my aesthetic. These  don't really look like sci-fi; they're very busy and bright and clearly not from many of the last  t

hree decades. And yet I think they're great. A tier; so close to S but, that font in the first  three. It affects readability, and that's bad. When Adams celebrated the demise of Cosmic  Cutie in the new American paperbacks, he was talking about these. Printed by Ballantine  Books, for me, this is homecoming. I can't look at these covers objectively, and I'm acknowledging  that. Mid 90s CG rendering at its cheesy finest, featuring the “42 Puzzle” as the new mascot of  sorts. The 42 Puzzle first

appeared in the 1994 Illustrated Edition. In addition to there  being 42 nodes, the number is represented at least three other ways in the puzzle, which I  admittedly can't see unless I'm staring at a key. I feel foolish that prior to researching this, I  hadn't realized that there were in fact 42 dots, nor that the mountain spells “42”. I don't like  cover spoilers, but this is subtle enough. Before I knew what the dots meant, I interpreted them  as representing the Heart of Gold passing throug

h every point in the universe. The mountains,  I interpreted as Slartibartfast’s fjords. You know what I just realized? This font is  Papyrus. Today, this is the second most hated font next to Comic Sans, made worse by the fact  that it's come to be associated with stereotypical and culturally insensitive applications. There's a  great video essay I'm going to link about it but, this is 1995; it predates the cliché. Although  designs and, I would argue, good designs like this one are part of why

it became popular  enough to become a cliché. These covers were all printed in 1995 I'm not sure why, but it  took another 4 years for them to get to Fish, when they stepped up their game; this cover is  textured, and while we have dolphins on the cover, they're approaching the fishbowl, which is implied  to be their exit portal. This works. I think it's great how these were obviously developed from  scratch, with no direct references to any of the editions that came before them. I can't wait t

o  see what they're going to do with Mostly Harm-- SON OF A-- I hate that I even had this thought, but my first  instinct was to see if these went into print after Douglas Adams had passed. Nope, 2000, and they  added texturing just like with Fish. You know how I said I never liked the mascot? The Pocket  Paperbacks were no longer being sold in 1999 or 2000. These were on the shelves at Borders and  Waldenbooks and the fledgling Amazon that would kill them. Younger Torren thought this thing was 

invented for this book only, and... you still see stuff like this with new paperbacks: this cover  blurb reminding you that “this is the author of (insert most recent bestseller).” This whole set  hypes the fact that “Douglas Adams wrote Mostly Harmless,” so when I finally got to this book  and it looked different, and more important-- (I think I'm going to leave that in) ...looked different and more importantly, had  a very different tone, I just felt confused and let down. My opinion of the b

ook  has improved substantially as an adult. Credit where it's due, this is the  first compact paperback of Mostly Harmless for the US market. And  Ballantine did keep the footprint the same across all five books,  unlike Pocket a decade earlier. In the 90s, Ballantine also released a line of  trade paperbacks. These are larger and printed on higher quality paper and combine the fragility of  a standard paperback with the bulk of a hardback at a price that's a little closer to the latter.  This

edition of Hitchhiker came out in 1997, and... does the phrase “the left hand doesn't  know what the right hand is doing” come to mind? You mean to tell me that the same  company that made these covers in `95, let this happen on their watch just two years  later? See, up until now, whenever there's been an obvious cover art downgrade between editions,  I assumed it had to do with the publishers not wanting to license copyrighted artwork, especially  if they had artists in-house. But that's not a

n issue here; these are both Ballantine,  they own this! For a zany sci-fi franchise, you know what font is worse than Papyrus? Times  New Roman. And it's not even aligned right, look at how the bottom of the lettering  intersects the picture. The curve on the ‘S ‘is cut off. If you've been wondering why I  seem so hung up on fonts, it's because of this edition. It's like they were aiming for prestige  but instead it just looks like a newsletter. The deep space artwork, I generally like.  No ide

a if it was intentional but the dark space here on “Life” is consistent with  the descriptions of Planet Krikkit. I wonder how many of the tchotchkes actually  depict something from the book? No. Yes, I guess. No. No. Hey! In Mostly Harmless, the  updated Guide cover actually says “Panic”. It's not a panic button, but I'll give it to them. The  Mostly Harmless cover makes or breaks the set. When dealing with digital art, it's  sometimes hard to remember what the standards were in a given era? Bu

t by the mid  90s, we knew how to composite a 3D object onto a flat background. I say that because the  dolphin and the panic button look okay, but look at this plate on Restaurant: the  peas cast a shadow! Also I'm assuming this suitcase on Hitchhiker is a reference to  Cutie’s suitcase on the original Mostly Harmless cover? Just a little jab for those  of us who realize “no one's ever truly gone.” And... now I'm going to break the fourth wall. I wrote the initial copy of this  script about fiv

e months ago, and got sidetracked like always. Then I was  wasting time on Facebook (but I repeat myself) and the almighty algorithm recommended to me  “Utopian Scholastic designs from a pre-911 world.” I didn't join the group. But, I did  immediately Google a bunch of images and... I want to try to explain exactly what kind  of nerve these images hit, but, I figure if you're in my demographic I probably don't have  to explain, and if you're not in my demographic, no amount of explanation is goi

ng to help. We  tend to characterize nostalgia as something fun, so it can be packaged and resold to us, but  nostalgia, as it was originally understood, was closer to a sickness. And if I see  one or two of these images, it's neat, but if I see a bunch of them, it causes heartache.  And of course I read on some of the trends that define Utopian Scholastic, and basically got  that it's a kid-friendly academic Fraserbane. What the hell is Fraserbane? It's a portmanteau of “urbane” and “Frasier”. 

Serif fons and beige and stuff that looks sophisticated and refined but not flashy  so you can pretend you're being modest, with lots of classical imagery. My immediate  impression is that I don't really like Fraserbane, but then again it does explain why my entire  adult life, I've wanted to own a meter-wide brown and white globe with an octagonal  wooden rim around the equator that can hold a tumbler glass despite the fact that I  don't drink. And also why I want every room to have a needless

ly ornate analog clock. These  aren't my ideas! They're detritus from marketing executives who spontaneously combusted  when I was 12 and I inhaled the fumes. So, I love the mass market paperback covers,  and I hate the trade paperback covers. If I understood the assignment: this is Fraserbane,  and this is Utopian Scholastic. It suddenly makes so much sense. The Papyrus font is even  more out of place then in that case but, that was going against the grain at the time,  because I'll say it agai

n, Papyrus was not yet a cliché. The CGI on the mass market paperbacks,  whether intentional or not, stands in for the focus this aesthetic tends to have on geometric  forms. We have perfect spheres, and we have a chair made out of simple unadorned polygons  with no texturing. These dolphins are more like a holographic impression of a dolphin, you  can even see some edges on it. Meanwhile, I think the biggest problem with the Fraserbane aesthetic  is that it implies a level of seriousness that m

akes it hard to be goofy or quirky. I wonder  if that factored into the decision to use a more neutral suitcase here instead of the Cutie?  Granted, Utopian isn't exactly humorous either, but it's wholesome and optimistic, and that  kind of techno optimism is what I felt when I read these, and what Adams seems to have felt  for the last decade and a half of his life. I said I couldn't be objective,  feel free to yell at me. In spite of Mostly Harmless not matching the rest  of the set and the pr

esence of Papyrus, I'm going to put the Ballantine Mass Market  paperbacks in the A tier. The trades? There was definitely a better way to set the  title. I'm going to give these a weak C. Worse than the Harmony covers, but still  better than four fifths of the UK hard covers. In September, 2001, Douglas Adams passed away  unexpectedly. All that follows would have been created without the possibility of input from  Adams, with the possible exception of this set. I'm not sure, it all depends on h

ow far ahead  discussions began, but I really hope he got to see this art. Released in 2002, by Pan’s  Picador imprint, these are the UK's first trade paperbacks. If someone put together a focus  group specifically to try to sell me something, they might have aspired to create something  like this. Pan started with Hipgnosis in 1979, and for the first Hitchhiker release of the 21st  century, they went to Hipgnosis founding member, the legendary Storm Thorgerson. Thorgerson has  probably had a ha

nd in two or three of your favorite album covers. These aren't his most  famous works, but they mean the most to me: as a Rage Against the Machine fan who was bummed  about their breakup, I appreciate his artwork on Audioslave’s first album, and Dream Theater has  been my favorite band for about 15 years and he created (albeit with mixed reception) the  Falling into Infinity cover. And I'm not just pointing this out because these are a few of my  favorite things; it'll come back around. These ar

e Chekov’s poll sitters right here. Oh, one of the  things he and Dream Theater fought over? Fonts. Thorgerson was the most famous name attached to  this design, but it was a group effort. Peter Curzon, Jessica Chaney and Rupert Truman  were involved as well. The result was this beautiful box set. Even still in the box I'm  already excited. It's the little things like Adams’ names spelled out across the spines. We  have consistent and thoughtful theming across all five books. This double circle

design that  connects each book to the next; the Quads walked so the Picador covers could run. And they ran, if  you'll forgive the pun, circles around everything that came before them. Or honestly, since. Yeah  it's a crime that these ever went out of print. I kind of want someone arrested. Am I overselling  these? Yes. Am I going to keep going? Also yes. It's hard to do a piece of art that looks  comedic without looking silly. Nonetheless I think this captures the tone of the series.  The unre

garded yellow son of the former Earth and the longed-for cup of tea that Arthur never  gets (until the second book). Something serious, majestic, quite literally cosmic, next to  something ordinary. The winding dark gray and black twisting roadway suggests the  hyperspace bypass that'll never be built, and of course the school of goldfish stands in for  Babel Fish. A new reader would not be able to make any sense of any of those details, but the art  looks pleasing enough to stand on its own. An

d, after reading, every one of these details gains  meaning, but no major plot spoilers at first glance. And he didn't go for the obvious:  there's no 42, no thumbs up, no towel. On Restaurant, we have... I think  it's the Golgafrinchan gin and tonic (that tastes like a whiskey soda)  with an almost subliminal Earth in the background. The background  is Disaster Area’s stunt ship, and... okay I don't know what this ninja star  space-window thing is... is that the dome at Milliways opening up to

show you the end of the  universe? I don't know, someone let me know. On life, the Universe, and Everything,  the disco ball is the flying party, and Italian food is part of the  Starship Bistromath, and we have the wicket gate. This is the first Life cover  to bother to include a Cricket reference. The fish cover uses actual fish on the  background, no dolphins! Inside the circles, we have a loose interpretation  of Wonko the Sane's “Asylum”, the background texture to Mostly Harmless...  is a s

andwich! Arthur Philip Dent: halfway between the sandwich and the stars. Oh, and  you see the pole sitter? It's reused from this album cover. I think Storm went through a pole  sitting phase. See, I told you it came back. Adams' name is written in this retro looking  kind of synthwave font, while the book titles themselves look like an 80s computer terminal. The  layout and the font on the inside is consistent across all five books. The only ad is a single,  text only referral to the publisher's

website. No forwards, no sample chapters, we have the  copyright page, the book, and a single ad. Quick review of how we got here, just to  highlight how significant this is. The original UK paperbacks have no consistent theming;  same with the UK hardbacks, plus Mostly Harmless is substantially bigger. In the US, Fish is too  small in both form factors. Pan never released Mostly Harmless when they did the Quads, nor did  Pocket in the US, it took 8 years for the US to get a mass market paperba

ck of Mostly Harmless,  but they didn't re-theme the cover. The US trade paperbacks from 97, and this Picador set from 02,  are the first truly unified Hitchhiker sets. And the Picador set is so many light years beyond the  US books, I hate even mentioning them together. Okay, lest you think I can only gush about these  books, I have a small gripe. The first three books use a different image for each of the two circles.  The final two use the same image obscured by something, like we're looking

through binoculars.  On Hitchhiker, I imagine the teacup continues past the edge of the page. But I don't feel like  I'm missing anything by not seeing it. I'm not looking through something at the teacup, I'm  just looking at a teacup. Whereas on Fish, I feel like I might be missing a detail on the Asylum  here. Still these are the tiniest of issues. Also, these versions (at least in the first  book) contain about half a dozen... revisions? Deviations?... from the original text. We're  talking r

eally small stuff here. I keep alluding to this, but I think text revisions are  a fascinating, if incredibly pedantic subject for a different video, but I'll give two quick  examples. On the final page of Hitchhiker, Zaphod is trying to bang his brains into shape  with Pangalactic Gargle Blasters. Earlier versions say “brain.” This is a tiny improvement, as Zaphod  does in fact have two brains. A change that I think doesn't help though: in chapter 3, as Ford  leaves the pub, the barman “checks”

his throat, rather than “clears” it. These changes mostly  carry forward into later Pan editions. This is one of the many reasons that I hope  Adams had some involvement with this set, being released so close to his death. Did  he know about the revisions? Did he care? It should go without saying, but Storm and  co. did an outstanding job here. S tier. In 2005, Pan released a Commemorative Edition  paperback, resurrecting the original covers. I actually bought this print of Life by accident,  b

ecause I failed to notice the literal fine print and the postage stamp-sized thumbnail. That's on  me... and I sneaky-sneaked a commemorative copy of Mostly Harmless in earlier. I'm okay that they  reprinted them, in fact I'm happy they did, but I dislike the simulated wear and tear. This right  here is not the cover being warped; it's printed that way! There's also a very fine impression of  a crease in the corner, that's printed as well. Look, the march of time is inevitable. If  anyone ever a

ctually, you know, reads these, they're going to get wear and tear! They're  going to get artifacts for real! Why fake it? I'm pleasantly surprised that they used the  original Pan logo in the corner. Usually when a company rebrands, they engage in a campaign  to mercilessly erase all signs of any earlier trademarks. They did change it on the spine, and  the spine is white, not black, but from a head-on photo, this is what the 80s print looked like.  These have the same footprint as the original

s, but it's not a reskin, the font is slightly larger  and the page counts are different. Makes me wonder if “Fish” kept the font and graphics. Someone let  me know. I mentioned Adams' case of accidental ad block in the original version of Life. Obviously  that precedent could not be allowed to stand, so we have this time capsule of an ad right  here: a printout of the Pan Macmillan website, navigation tabs and all, circa 2005.  Thanks to the resurgence of vinyl, this actually feels more dated t

han the order  forms for the radio series in the original. With these reprints, we say goodbye to the  original UK mass market paperbacks. We have a US trade paperback, a US mass market paperback,  and a UK trade paperback. From here on out, everything is just a reskin. They have the  same ISBNs, even the same typos. To add to the confusion, individual titles within a set  haven't always been refreshed together. Related, I noticed this little artifact  on the Amazon eBook preview: it'll often sh

ow you one cover,  before quickly flipping to another. Historically, Ballantine Books, and imprint of  Random House, has been associated with fantasy. Another Random House imprint, Del Rey, has played  a similar role in sci-fi. I'm not sure what happened behind the scenes, but the franchise  slowly transferred from Ballantine to Del Rey, with this awkward middle period where  the books show both imprints. Spoiler: Del Rey has never made a good cover.  Feel free to tell me how I'm wrong. In 2005,

these covers were released, featuring a  black and white photo of Adams over a monochrome shape, and a trinket in the corner, but only for  the latter four titles. These images are better associated with the audiobooks read by Martin  Freeman, who played Arthur Dent in the movie, which I mention because I think this helps  explain why Hitchhiker never got the refresh. Before the movie came out, Hitchhiker  got a new audiobook read by Steven Fry, and it originally used the movie cover. Then,  af

ter the movie, Freeman read the other four books, and that's where these covers come from.  Just to add to the confusion, all five of the unabridged books were read by Adams himself in  the 90s for the BBC. For those playing at home, the audiobooks featuring this photo of Douglas  Adams are not read by Douglas Adams. This little rectangle with an object representing the book  isn't particularly special on Restaurant, Life, or Fish, but this one: that's Trillian! More  accurately, Tricia McMillan

, the version who never left Earth, and she actually looks like  like how the book describes her, without being glammed up or having her skin lightened. Say it  with me: Mostly Harmless makes or breaks the set. I'll collectively put these  four books in the C tier, but Mostly Harmless is an A. Further evidence  that these were meant to promote the audiobooks, after a while they reverted back to the originals.  If you try to buy a new trade paperback today, this is what they're still selling afte

r  26 years, making these, second only to the Harmony cover for the first book, the longest  lived artwork representing this franchise. As for Hitchhiker, the book got  the tiniest revision in 2009, which I've been cheating and that's what I've  been showing you since the beginning. This is the year Eoin Colfer’s “And Another Thing” came  out, and a three-page forward by Colfer was added, and a printed decal advertising it  was added to the cover. I already mentioned my fondness for Russell T. D

avies’  forward for Pan. Colfer's is, um... look, in The Salmon of Doubt, there's a reprint  of a forward that Adams himself wrote, in which he spends his requisite word count  just snarking about how much it sucks to get conned into writing a forward. And, uh, I think  Colfer should have heeded Adam's warning on this one. On the mass market paperback side... I may  need something stronger than tea for this... It's the movie cover. F tier, moving on. Okay okay okay okay… Replacing a decent cover

design with a movie  poster is a pet peeve of mine. But let's give it a fair shot. A movie poster has many of the same  roles as a book cover. It's an ad. And I want some hint of setting and tone, and bonus if it gains  more meanings after having read, or in this case, watched it. Arthur has his thumb up... that never  happens; it's an electronic thumb, and Ford does it. Okay, that's being intentionally obtuse --  Arthur is a galactic Hitchhiker by the book’s end, even if he got that way by tag

ging along with an  experienced Hitchhiker who is not on the cover. But wait, why is Marvin hitchhiking? I may not  even realize he's an android, I mean it looks like they're in space, so maybe he's an alien  or someone in a space helmet. Whoever he is, it looks like he and Arthur are buddies.  And they're standing in space? Earth isn't destroyed yet, but Marvin's here, so maybe  that's the reconstructed Earth at the end, but then why is Arthur trying to hitchhike away  from it? As for the tone,

I guess this looks like a lighthearted adventure story, which  fits the tone of the movie but not the book, but this is on the book... I was  right the first time, F tier. Okay there's one cool thing about this,  and it's the only reason why I own it: there's about a 100 pages of behind  the scenes info added to this, including a section by executive producer  Robbie Stamp. Uh, it's informative and due to Stamp’s obvious fondness for Adams, it's at  times touching. Stamp's tale of the developme

nt hell the movie went through dovetails nicely  with accounts in The Salmon of Doubt. The latter has the infamous email from Douglas  Adams sent to Disney, and Stamp fleshes out that anecdote from his point of view. This copy  is the only official way to obtain that account, and that is the only reason in my opinion  why a collector might want this copy. The UK did their own movie tie-in, and they  used this cover. This is more more vague but that works to its advantage because at least  I don'

t feel like it's lying to me. D tier. The movie tie-in in was short lived, and  when it came time to reskin the books again… That's right, he's back baby! And as if it wasn't  bad enough, it's the freaking tourist version from Mostly Harmless. Two colors, two uninspired block  fonts, and a slap in the face to the author's wishes. Okay, I can make a very meager possible  defense of this. I was starting High School right as online book shopping was starting to take  over. There'd be between two an

d five books a year we were expected to purchase. I have many  memories of walking into Barnes & Noble or any of their now defunct competitors to look for my  next piece of required reading. Every now and then you get a book with a cover so famous it never  changes, but usually, you get something like this: a title and an author where most of the creative  expression (if you can call it that) comes down to the fonts and color palette, and maybe you get  a little mascot or icon. This is how affor

dable copies of “serious lit-ra-ture” tends to be  sold. The publishers know full well there will be little impulse purchasing; people are buying these  books because they need to. So, in the mid 2000s, with the author having passed away and the  reputation of the book well solidified as a much-loved and highly influential work, this  barebones presentation makes a bit of sense. I feel like this is a weak explanation because,  fans though we may be, I don't think it's getting assigned in a lot o

f English classes. It's  well-written popular fiction. Based on this cover alone, I'd probably throw it in the D  tier. It's uninspired and out of touch with the late author's wishes. But, this isn't the only  book. This is a continuation of the same reskin, and it's worse than you think. We now have three  different fonts and two different color schemes. For the series name, the author name, and the  book title. Depending on which print you have, the franchise title at the top may be this  flat

version, or it might be this 3D version, which is from the movie, adding another layer of  confusion. Why is the series title 3D but the rest of it's 2D? And look at these book titles! I call  these the “Twilight Zone” covers, because this jagged uneven capital lettering reminds me of the  title cards the original Twilight Zone. And there it works, but because of that association this  reminds me of campy horror. And as if we needed more unflattering reminders of The Twilight  Zone, check out t

he item they use for Life: it's a big eyeball. There could be covers I  don't like, or that I find lazy, and I usually put those in the D tier. To be F tier, you have  to do harm. Lying to me is a good way to do it. Being so ugly that I wouldn't want someone  to see it on my coffee table is another way. Folks, these covers are harmful. These are F tier. Okay that's enough of Del Rey's  madness for now. Time to be positive. Right after I deliver another equally apoplectic  albeit much shorter ran

t against Pan because... what the hell? When they decided it was time to  move on from the Storm covers, they went with these designs by Crush, so-called I assume because  it describes what they did to our spirits. The first prints of these books had a bare star field  cover and came with a sticker sheet with various icons from the series that you could put whatever  you want on, so every copy would be unique. Every sticker is going to peel off eventually. You  know that spot you inevitably get

when you buy a used book that's been on the shelf for awhile  and you have to remove the sticker with rubbing alcohol or something? Yeah imagine the entire  cover inevitably turning into that. After that had run its course, they just released these  copies with no stickers, but the same design. This seems like a real life example of the kind of  committee-driven groupthink that Adams frequently lampooned. Before Crush went with the sticker  idea, early concept art shows examples that, while stil

l inferior to the Storm covers,  look like actual book covers. This to me feels like the worst kind of compromise.  On a bad day you could maybe persuade me to make these F tier as well, but they have  one saving grace: I really like the extras. I extolled the virtues of the Storm covers for  having no supplemental material, but a frivolous gimmick is the best these things can hope for. A  different author wrote a forward for each book: Davies for Hitchhiker; Terry Jones for Restaurant;  Simon B

rett for Life; Neil Gaiman for Fish; and Dirk Maggs for Mostly Harmless. We also  have things like newspaper clippings and Adams’ correspondence with publishers. There's just  enough to secure this set's ranking in the D tier. All right, things are finally looking  up. In 2016, Pan released a new set, with cover designs by Stuart Wilson. I've  been hard on Wilson – I like what he did here. Here's what Wilson says of his own approach: “I wanted the jackets to feel like a  collector's edition or a

special edition, with a sophistication to the  design. It felt important to convey that Hitchhikers is not just a  Sci-Fi cult read, but a modern classic.” I think he succeeded. I get the minimalism and  the simple color palettes. Restaurant menu, cricket ball, bubbles (with  no Dolphins). But how about the book that makes or breaks  the set? Let's take a look at-- Yeah. That's the one. Nothing's going to  beat Storm overall but, this is the best individual cover for Mostly Harmless. This is  c

learly inspired by the original cover, but it surpasses it. Earth is gloriously trivialized;  the arrow is everything. It implies magnitude and direction. It could be the Grebulons  taking aim at Earth, or maybe Arthur, Ford, Random, and both Tricias converging on Earth.  The dark blue sprayed edges are a nice touch, and the forwards introduced by Crush have stayed.  I think they're going to stay for a long time. Ah, Mr. Wilson: A tier. Wilson and his colleague Justine Anweiler  continued their

work with this minimalist Babel Fish cover. Some background: this was  part of a promotion Pan did to celebrate their 70th Anniversary. Few colors,  simple shapes, the same all-lowercase font for all the books. So with all that  context, this maritime flag-looking fish: beautiful. Within the confines of the project  I'd easily rate this in the A tier; compared to all the other Hitchhiker covers though, I'm  going to give it a C. Average, no harm, no foul. In 2017, Del Rey finally retired the Fra

serbane  cover (for Hitchhiker only), and transitioned to the Towel cover. In 2021, this 42nd anniversary  graphic was added, and this remains the trade paperback retailing in the US today. Twine  Graphics out of Tennessee is credited for the towel embroidery. At this point I'd expect  an image like this to be entirely digital, so I like that it's a practical photograph.  I know I dunked on this form factor earlier, but if I pretend just to be a normal person  for 5 seconds and think about sitti

ng down and, you know, reading the book... these are  actually pretty nice. The compactness of a standard paperback can be challenging: you  always bend the spine, and hardbacks have no bend factor. My obligatory complaint: the digital  watch on the reverse is the wrong size compared to the texture of the bath towel it's supposedly  sitting on. Oh well, it's still B tier. Low B, though... I mean, it's a towel. That says 42.  Twice. Still, probably my favorite Del Rey cover. Speaking of which… Th

is is Del Rey's latest reskin of the mass market  paperback. A further cartoonified version of the Cutie continues to mock us. A very heavy “bubble”  font has been applied; the same 42nd anniversary sticker that grace's the trade paperback has been  added on. And we have a series of sticker-like icons placed randomly across what looks like  a blurry star field background. But it could just as easily be, I don't know, fireflies or the  inside of a Champaign glass or something. Yeah, in case I'm n

ot laying it on thick enough, I think  Del Rey copied the Crush covers. That's right, some of Del Rey's best covers look suspiciously  like Pan's worst. Regarding their choice of icons, Del Rey did not do a terrible job, except on  the first book. Like, 42 is so ubiquitous now, maybe it doesn't even count as a spoiler.  I let it slide on the towel cover because they made it almost look like it could have  been incidental, but a naive reader looking at this cover knows it must mean something. And

  the mouse... that sort of tells you the ending. Just... why do you have to use iconography  from act 3? Do a bulldozer and a petunia. The rest are a bit better. Take the Restaurant  cover: when you haven't read the book, you see steak and tea and you assume it has something  to do with the restaurant. Then, you find out the steak is from the Ameglian Major Cow, that's a  memorable scene. And in Act 1, Arthur accidentally DDOS’s the ship trying to get his cup of tea,  and it actually works! Tha

t's right, nobody can beat the Storm covers, but Restaurant is the  only book where Arthur actually gets his tea, and freaking Del Rey is the only publisher to get  it right! Zaphod’s fortuitous Kill-O-Zap pistol and the Chesterfield sofa on Life are good,  and Fish has the fishbowl... and the dolphin. And, Mostly Harmless makes breaks the set: it's  got a sandwich, great. What- what's a bathroom door for? Oh, okay... not a lot of books try to  remind you about the protagonist’s frequent flying

habit if you know what I mean, but I respect it.  But then, spoiler I guess, near the end of the book they do a variation of “Elvis is not dead, he  just went home.” They don't say his name, possibly for legal reasons, but they make it very obvious.  They call him the King. It's more a joke than a plot point, but this icon ruins the punchline.  Think about how the series has used names: we have a cat named The Lord, and a man who lives in  the Asylum, and this very book hides the identity of the

Sandwich Maker (for like a chapter), so  you have this buildup about entering the domain of The King and it turns out it's Elvis Presley,  and that's the joke; not anymore, thanks guys… And they could have paid tribute to  the scene without ruining it! Like, use a vinyl record or something.  D tier, just like Crush. The UK also chose to commemorate the 42nd  anniversary, bringing us to the current iteration of Pan’s box set. Once again, Wilson  designed, and again he writes about the process: “

The brief I was given was to make the new  anniversary set of covers more accessible and approachable. We soon decided that an  iconic image and striking typography was the way forward. I wanted the images to have  a duality to them, and also a surreal edge.” Well, not quite my favorite, but I think they're  really, really good. The novel font that's blocky and sci-fi and friendly is a great choice  and I much prefer it to Del Rey's bubble font. I also like how the lettering unmasks a  star fiel

d. I don't know if this reference is intentional or even has relevance in the UK,  but the solid background color kind of reminds me of the “Complete Idiot’s Guide” or the “For  Dummies” books that were popular in the 2000s, and I like the idea of Hitchhiker's  Guide as a Sci-Fi take on that. I think my personal favorite of these covers  is So Long and Thanks for All the Fish. The Earth in the fishbowl, awesome. But how  does the set maker-or-breaker do? A TV, which Tricia appears on and tries t

o edit video  on. The two dots imply the Grebulons watching us back, very nice. That's a new take. Of course,  the forwards added in the 2009 editions remain. Pan seems to be all in on this design, with  Adam's entire bibliography getting this treatment, even Dirk Gently. Nice move on giving The  Salmon of Doubt a salmon-colored background. I can nitpick of course, I don't know what's  up with the soda can on the Restaurant cover, although now we have an instance of the  earliest set and the lat

est set featuring a non-sensical pop top. And Hitchhiker... I  like the image of the galaxy in the tea cup, but it just reminds me of the Storm cover.  And that's not a bug, it's a feature: “Like the reboot of a backup second Earth, all of these covers actually refer back to and  take inspiration from Storm Thorgerson covers.” I'm of the opinion that when presenting  something artistic to your audience, you should never intentionally remind them  of something better. If you can't beat Storm, don

't remind me of him. Also,  this is on the publisher but, these corner quotes that brag about how many  copies they've sold? I think we're well past the need for that, guys. Still, really  strong effort: A tier. I wish I owned it. We've come to our final entry from  the main publishers: this hard cover, with illustrations by Chris Riddell.  This is an exciting one to end on: this is, to my knowledge, the first time the  British text has been sold in American retail stores. This book is published

by Pan in the  UK and republished by Del Rey in the US. So if you think the cover is suspiciously good for  Del Rey, it's ‘cause Riddell illustrated it, and Pan hired him. Although I'm glad the Harmony  hard cover has been left alone all these years, this is the first time Random House has  re-released the standalone book in hard cover format. This is the only product line where  new books are still coming out. Restaurant is available in the UK, and I hope we're getting  a US release. Heck, I w

ant him to do all five. Riddell's specialty is characters, which  I'll admit makes some of these illustrations a bit superfluous. Like, is the enjoyment really  enhanced by a bust of Eccentrica Gallumbits? But I like Eddie, the character profiles and especially  the still life of the fancy dress party in Islington and even though his forte is characters,  kudos to Riddell on the “dead” ship with Marvin face down in the dirt, and for creating my  favorite impression of the Starship Heart of Gold.

Published in 2021, this is a worthy celebration  of the 42nd anniversary. And they showed restraint in not stamping it on the front cover, again,  thank you Pan. The cover art itself is... the least important part of all this. They're  all in on that non-existent teacup, I see. I haven't had a chance to check out Restaurant  yet, and final judgment depends on later books, including whether they all get done or not, but  based just on this first book, solid B tier. Since I'm here, Eoin Colfer’s 

And Another Thing. Hard cover: I like the ship. B tier. Paperback... it's  the title. Like, D, I guess? I don't know. I've got some more stuff to say but, since  I'm out of books I own to talk about, we're done with the live video  portion. So, if you'll join me… Hey… Okay, back in my normal recording location,  with a better mic setup and sound control and easier ability to punch and retakes if I say  something really stupid. Speaking of which, I mispronounced Chris Riddell's  name in the film

ed portion: it is “Rih-dell” not “rye-dell”,  that's the high school from Grease. I feel kind of bad about what I said about  Crushed. These covers still aren't my favorite, but even after editing down the original take,  I feel like I was too vitriolic. Carl Rush, the founder and namesake of the company, is clearly  a skilled and passionate artist. There's really something about learning the name of a human  being behind a brand that makes it hard for me to bash them without flinching. Don't an

yone tell  me the names of anyone at Del Rey whatever you do. All right, some miscellaneous book cover details  and then we'll review our final late entries. Quick possible points of interest: I mentioned  the 25th anniversary hard cover of Hitchhiker having a smaller footprint than the other  hard covers. I didn't realize at the time of recording that it, and So Long and Thanks  for All the Fish, share the same footprint. I neglected to mention the original American trade  paperback of Mostly H

armless: it's literally the same as the hardback, but with paperback  binding. I don't have any details to add. I do have details to add about my pet favorite  cover: this image has been leading a strange double life. Turns out, there was a trade  paperback of Hitchhikers only featuring the 42 Square image, designed by Cathy Colbert with  art itself by Kai Krause. These artists are not credited at all in the mass market paperbacks,  what kind of crap is that? This edition only carries the Ballan

tine imprint, and still has  the same ISBN as the later books that replaced it. The image itself is framed by this jagged  black border, presented more like a poster. I have mixed feelings about that. And the  font on the book title is NOT Papyrus. This just deepens the mystery as  to why Random House Let its rival children go with these covers,  but it adds some evidence to the idea that the Ballantine / Del Rey  co-branding had something to do with it. Very briefly, I want to review the Americ

an trade  paperback line because it's very (I would say, needlessly) complicated and I possibly worsened  it by breaking chronology in the filmed portion. 1995: Hitchhiker only, featuring the  42-square cover, branded by Ballantine. Starting in 1997, all five books, featuring the deep space picture with a CG  icon, co-branded by Ballantine and Del Rey. Around 2005, Restaurant; Life; Fish; and Mostly  Harmless are reskinned with the audiobook covers, co-branded by Ballantine and Del Rey.  These c

overs have a matte finish, whereas the original covers are glossy. Some unknown date in the 2000s, the  deep space covers are reinstated. 2009: Eoin Kolfer’s forward is  added to Hitchhikers, and a decal advertising it is added to the cover. 2017: Hitchhiker’s is reskinned with the towel cover, matte finish, only branded  by Del Rey. Colfer’s forward remains. And, sometime after 2020, the 42nd anniversary  decal is added to the towel cover. Okay, with those loose ends tied up, time to talk  abou

t something new. Macmillan's children's books, a Pan imprint, produced this run of the first  three books. If the date on StoryGraph is accurate, these prints may have been competing  against the Crush editions. I haven't been able to find out much about these, but the covers have  a solid black background with a block letter title and a single icon. We've seen that approach, on  both sides of the Atlantic, done better: D tier. I made a one-off allusion to the 1994 Illustrated  Edition. I had pl

anned to try to talk about this one as best as I could with images I could  find online, but in researching I stumbled upon this video from the YouTube channel Good  Ol’ Groovy Jake, and they do a much better job talking about not only this but but every  illustrated edition of Hitchhiker. Check it out. I've decided I'm not going to rank this on  the tier list. It's so different from anything else on here, even the other illustrated  editions. So, it gets an N/A, with honors. The Folio Society i

s a small employee-owned  independent publisher in London. They make illustrated editions of classic works and treat  every step of the process as a celebration of the art. I don't want to go into it too much  more, lest this sound like an ad. And worse yet, an ad for a product I can't personally  vouch for because I don't own any of these these. Things are expensive. But,  you're paying a team of artists for a handcrafted product. Cloth bound, and they  tell you the name of the font they used!

The fact that the Folio Society  made editions of Hitchhiker at all, much less all five books, is miraculous  enough. But they actually did it twice. The original run of standalone books, which you  can still buy, features a handful of black and white illustrations by artist Jonathan Burton. The  first three books also contain different forwards, making Terry Jones the first person to  write a forward for two different books. This was followed by a limited edition  box set that sold for almost $

900 USD, now and presumably forever out of  stock. In addition to new covers, the set advertises 30 new black and white and  five full color page spreads. This is sounding like an ad again. It seems so silly to  rank these covers next to paperbacks, but I'm not going to do two N/As in a row. So, the  box set that all fits together in an arrangement that reminds me of The Little Prince (and Mario  Galaxy): A tier. And the standalones depicting Marvin; Max Quordlepleen emceeing the end of the  uni

verse; an ending spoiler for the third book; the dolphins fleeing Earth (see if you must  put dolphins on the Fish cover, that's how you do it) and Random Dent... man, it's lonely at the  top. And that's why Storm needs a friend! S tier. The Folio Society is not the only deluxe  publisher to celebrate Hitchhiker’s. Gollancz, which is an imprint of Orion... I think? I hate  corporate mergers and spin-offs so much. Anyway, their “SF Masterworks” line has paid tribute  to the first three books. I'v

e kind of soured on these covers as this project has worn on.  I don't care so much about the art style as I do the content. The Restaurant cover is flat  out horrifying, and what makes me really upset about this is, that's Zaphod on the cover! He  carries a full third of the book and I think he deserves a cover spot! But this reminds me of Sam  Rockwell in the movie mixed with a car accident. On Hitchhiker, something about the shape of this  guy's head... I just automatically place Rowan Atkins

on's face on the reverse. Like, I expect  this thing to somehow animate, turn around, and it's Mr. Bean refereeing a football match  before reporting on the falling whale like it's a weather bulletin. As for Life... yeah, don't talk  to me about life. D tier. There's a newer cover of just Hitchhiker’s. It's quaint, I guess. C tier.  I had these rated higher in the earlier drafts. All right, at long last, I want to talk  about some of my favorite non-English cover art. There are an overwhelming a

mount of  translations to various degrees of completion. I ended up settling on three sets, in three  different languages that I wanted to showcase. First up, this German translation, with  what looks like paper collage art. Like if Eric Carle did The Very Hungry Editor-in-chief.  Interesting take on the Krikkit Bots. I'm going to dock it a point for the Fish cover, though...  F-[dolphin sound]-in’ dolphins. And... okay, Mostly Harmless never seems to translate.  But in the German, it seems like

they didn't even try to get close. I'm relying on free  internet translators here but the title is essentially “To Rupert and Back.” That's  a good title, especially if you interpret Tricia as the protagonist, although it breaks  the pattern of there being no proper nouns in the book titles. And of every book taking  its title from a phrase in the first book. Italian: from Mondadori publishing, these  delightfully unhinged covers are endearing in their complete refusal to show anything related 

to space or sci-fi at all. I'd believe you if you told me this was the theatrical poster for a  European dub of any Bogart film. I'm specifically thinking of In a Lonely Place. Restaurant  turns into a propaganda poster advertising your local boardwalk hot dogs and tattoo parlor,  while Boeing's troubles continue unabated. I don't know why I'm hung up on this after seeing  the Restaurant cover but... there are no toasters in Life, the Universe, and Everything. A bit  of the inspiration for this

leg of the project: about a decade ago, some website or  other introduced me to the wild world of Polish movie posters. if you've never  browsed these collections, you owe it to yourself. What you'll notice immediately  is that everything is a little surreal, a little grotesque (or a lot grotesque) and often  appears to have nothing to do with the subject matter. We've seen a lot more homogenization in  the post Cold War era. I'm getting similar vibes with these non-English European translation

s. I  don't feel right judging or ranking these in the same way. You may have noticed I didn't put  the German covers on the tier list either. I was going to say I find something kind of  sinister about the toaster, and as I was writing this my wife walked in and said “it  has a goofy smile” and now I can't unsee it. All right, we’ve still got two more  books. What can we learn on our modest multicultural journey-- good god, that is  horrifying. At least it's not a dolphin. And, for Mostly Harml

ess, or should I say  “Practically Innocuous” we have a pinball machine. What the hell does that say on the  scoreboard? “Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Winner.” I have been thinking of reaching back  out to my old therapist. Maybe it's a sign. Okay, I'm not going to put the  Italian covers on a tier list, but I will put them on their  own Bob's Burgers tier: “They're Wow!; Woohoo!; Way  hot!; Weird!; and What the huh?” Finally, allow me to share with you the  glory of the Spanish book covers. Fro

m Anagrama publishing... first off, based on  what's on their website, it seems no culture escapes the tyranny of the movie poster. Then  again, this is available online at Walmart, right now, so it's not exactly obscure. I'm not  really sure what constitutes a complete set, so we're going to do them all at once, or else  we'd be up all night to get through these. Ignoring the movie cover, we have the  original trilogy in helmets, marred by the first non-english appearance of Cutie. We have the 

Robo-hitchiker again... I love this image. As do I love Wade Ripple from Elemental’s cameo on the  Restaurant cover. Genuinely curious, I wonder if there was a linguistic reason for them to use the  phrase “the end of the world” here in the title instead of “the end of the universe.” Like, here's  the word “Universe” in the title of the next book. speaking of which, uh, I know the Krikkit  robots were depressed but, damn! Way to be bleak and give away the plot. They've really got me  curious as

to what they're going to do for Fish… Well, it's uh, not a dinosaur,  a walrus, or a dolphin. And… [laughing]what am I… Remember when I said Mostly Harmless never  translates? They really tried. “Earth Report: Fundamentally Inoffensive.” Look, I really  wonder how well Adams’ unique command of the English language translates into any language.  Does the line “The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don't” hit at all  the same in Spanish? I don't know anywhere near enough Span

ish to make any declarations  one way or another, but to my American ear, in this specific case, translating the  Spanish back to English, the idea that disinterested aliens describes the Earth as merely  “inoffensive” and then after 15 years of research, updated it to “fundamentally inoffensive”, leaving  just a bit of wiggle room for it to be, in fact, a little offensive, is much funnier than the  original. And that clown, man, saying “Happy, Happy!” We have two anachronistic accidental  appea

rances of Pharrell Williams in the Spanish books. I know I'm blurring the lines  between meaning and coincidence, but still, how'd we manage to get so lucky? Oh, and  I'm just going to declare these otherwise non-functional geometric solids behind the clown  herald a return of the Utopian Scholastic design paradigm. I'll say it one last time: Fundamentally  Inoffensive really makes or breaks the set. And, if you've stuck with me this far,  even if you disagree with my rankings, I hope you found

this presentation...  fundamentally inoffensive. Hasta luego, and thanks. Some quick credits and shout outs: the ISFDB  Wiki and StoryGraph both proved invaluable in helping me track down all these different  editions, and in some cases get ISBNs and publisher names. In addition to citing  the Stuart Wilson article extensively, I also want to shout out this piece  by graphic artist Kathryn Rosa Miller, and also members of the “Don't Panic”  subreddit... thanks a lot everybody! See ya.