This sequel to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams is a story about Arthur Dent, a man rescued by Ford
Prefect from an earth scheduled for destruction. An old friend Ford happens to be an alien who works as a researcher for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Zaphod Beeblebrox, former president of the universe, is contacted by the ghost of his great-great-grandfather who orders him to search out the one who truly runs the universe.Then in a flash of light Zaphod is stranded on the planet home of the Megadodo Publishing Company, maker of the Hitchhiker's Guide, along with Marvin the manically depressed robot who has the largest brain in the universe. All the while Ford, Arthur, and Trillian (an earth woman Arthur once met and Zaphod took along for the ride) are all on The Golden Heart, a spaceship that can jump anywhere in the universe via its improbability drive, but had now brought them to an unknown random spot. Having to use a teleporter with no guidance system to escape burning up in a sun Arthur and Ford are marooned on an earth like planet with no evidence of space traffic to escape by. We eventually learn how and why the earth and man came to be andthe Question to the Answer to life the universe and everything. Turning the witty wildness of a seemingly random writing nature into a rather complex interwoven plot, this second book in the series is best read in sequence, but is well justified as an excellent
science fiction stand alone.