 .autoparagraph@ 	Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end ofC the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow  sun.B 	Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-three million milesH is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descendedC life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital  watches are a pretty neat idea. ? 	This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: C most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the A time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of > these were largely concerned with the movements of small greenG pieces of papaer, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small ( green pieces of paper that were unhappy.@ 	And so the problem remained; lots of people were mean, and most; of them were miserable, even the ones with digital watches. A 	Many were increasingly of the opinion that they'd all made a big ? mistake coming down from the trees in the first place. And some D said that even the trees had been a bad move, and that no one should ever have left the oceans.< 	And then, one Thursday, nearly two thousand years after oneD man had been nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be to beA nice to people for a change, a girl sitting on her own in a small A cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized what it was that had been C going wrong all this time, and she finally knew how the world could F be made a good and happy place. This time it was right, it would work,0 and no one would have to get nailed to anything.? 	Sadly, however, before she could get to a phone to tell anyone ? about it, a terrible, stupid catastrophe occurred, and the idea  was lost forever.  	This is not her story. = 	But it is the story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and  some of its consequences. @ 	It is also the story of a book, a book called "The Hitchhiker'sH Guide to the Galaxy" -- not an Earth book, never published on Earth, andD until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.( 	Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.: 	In fact, it was probably the most remarkable book ever toA come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor -- of ( which no Earthman had ever heard either.= 	Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly < successful one -- more popular than the "Celestial Home Care? Omnibus," better selling than "Fifty-three More Things to Do in 1 Zero Gravity," and more controversial than Oolon B Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters, "Where God Went@ Wrong," "Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes," and "Who is This God Person Anyway?" ? 	In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern B Rim of the Galaxy, the "Hitchhiker's Guide" has already supplantedA the great "Encyclopaedia Galactica" as the standard repository of G all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains A much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores ? over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects. 6 	First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has theC words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover. 