The book begins with Arthur Dent, hitch-hiking randomly through the galaxy, arriving at (as the book's blurb describes it)
"the last place in the Universe in which he would expect to find anything at all, but which 3,976,000,000 people will find oddly familiar" - namely Earth, continuing on exactly the same as before it was destroyed, except that the dolphins are gone. After getting dropped off on the planet by a spaceship, Arthur Dent walks along a road in the rain. While walking, he notices a porsche driving by, and is deeply surprised. After all, Porsches only existed on Earth, and wasn't Earth destroyed by Vogons? After walking for awhile, he successfully hitchhikes in a car driven by Russell. In the backseat with him is Russell's sister, a beautiful woman who is unconscious. Arthur learns that this woman goes by the name Fenny even though her real name is Fenchurch (though Arthur doesn't learn her full name until much later in the novel). Not able to stay in the car much longer (the brother acts like a bastard), Arthur is dropped off at a pub, a pub which he knows pretty well. At the pub he hears the voices of an obnoxiously annoying man, and his familiar dog. After this event, Arthur knows for sure he is on Earth, and ventures to find his home and see what had happened to it. Returning to his miraculously undemolished home, Arthur finds that in his
absence he has received an enormous pile of junk mail and a decorative fishbowl inscribed with the words So Long, and Thanks. He wonders why the planet he is standing on still exists, seeing how it was blown up by the Vogons. Also for some reason only a few
months have passed on Earth, even though he has been travelling for the equivalent of eight years. After cleaning himself up and shaving off his beard, Arthur returns to the village pub, and explains his absence of the last several months by having been away in California.