The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

A race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings once built a gigantic supercomputer called Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.
For 7.5 million years Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two - and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was. This computer was called Earth.
Sadly, however, just before the critical moment of readout, the Earth was unexpectedly demolished by the Vogons to make way - so they claimed - for a new hyperspace bypass, and so all hope of discovering a meaning for life was lost - for ever.
Or was it? Arthur Dent and Tricia McMillan (Trillian) are the only two earthlings to escape (by different means) from Earth before it was destroyed, and now they are drifting somewhere in the inky blackness of space with their friends Ford Prefect and Zaphod Beeblebrox in Heart of Gold, the most beautiful and revolutionary starship ever built.
read by Stephen Moore