H is for Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

It's always interesting to know how someone first came up with the concept of a long-running series. It's frequently something particularly random.

The idea for The Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy first came to Douglas Adams as he was lying drunk in a field. It was 1971, and Adams was stargazing one night in a field in Innsbruck, Austria. He was strapped for cash, hitch-hiking from London to Istanbul with a stolen copy of Ken Welsh’s Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Europe. Adams later admitted to Welsh, “I got frantically depressed in Innsbruck ... When the stars came out I thought that someone ought to write a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy because it looked a lot more attractive out there than it did around me." The radio series that kicked off the franchise first aired in 1978.