What to read next
Books Like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Don’t panic. There are other ways off the planet.
Arthur Dent is trying to keep the council from demolishing his house. The notice, he’s told, was on display in a locked filing cabinet in a disused restroom. Then Earth turns out to be in the way of a bypass, too. Arthur leaves with a towel and a guidebook that tells him not to panic.
We looked for narrators willing to put an emergency on hold for a digression. We also wanted a few good traveling companions, which is how we ended up with a hologram you wouldn’t want to share a room with.
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01Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
by Douglas AdamsAdams can spend a surprising amount of time on Dirk’s hat before deciding it would look better on a bedside lamp. That’s the voice to follow if the best parts of Hitchhiker’s were the bits where the narrator wandered off. Here there’s a murder to solve, and the Electric Monk and the ghost are part of the case. Give yourself time to see how it all fits.
02Good Omens
by Neil Gaiman & Terry PratchettAziraphale and Crowley have spent long enough on Earth to want to keep it. The trouble with calling off Armageddon is that someone has misplaced the Antichrist. Even in Eden, Aziraphale sounds like an employee wondering how he’ll explain where the flaming sword went. Expect footnotes and a much busier cast than Arthur had to contend with.
03Red Dwarf: Infinity Welcomes Careful Drivers
by Grant NaylorFor an Arthur Dent sort of hero, take Dave Lister. A pub crawl strands him on one of Saturn’s moons, so he signs on with a mining ship to get home. Three million years later, one of the few beings left to talk to is Rimmer, his dead bunkmate, who can still get on his nerves as a hologram.
The arguments have the timing of a sitcom. The novel starts the story over and gives the crew more history, so you can begin here without seeing the show. The ending carries straight into the next book.
04Will Save the Galaxy for Food
by Yahtzee CroshawTeleportation has ruined the market for star pilots. One former hero makes what he can ferrying tourists, who interrupt his tales of past glory to complain. The intercom button sticks, so he gets to hear what they think of him in private, too. Croshaw’s pilot is a more caustic guide to the galaxy than Adams’s narrator, and he sees a way to get paid by borrowing somebody else’s name.
05Redshirts
by John ScalziOn the starship Intrepid, the junior crew have figured out that a prestigious away mission can get you killed. Ensign Dahl starts comparing notes. Where Arthur has to make sense of official procedure, Dahl has to work out what kind of story he’s in. The opening has grisly deaths and strong language, and three shorter stories follow the main adventure.
06The Humans
by Matt HaigAn alien takes a Cambridge mathematician’s place and finds that we have an extraordinary number of rules about when to wear clothes. This is the quieter pick, especially once he starts paying attention to the man’s family.
07Space Opera
by Catherynne M. ValenteEarth can avoid extermination by finishing anywhere above last in a galactic song contest. The aliens have drawn up a shortlist of suitable musicians. Most are dead, which is how the job falls to the surviving members of a glam-rock band.
Read this for the narrator who can fit a civilization of sentient gases all named Ursula into an aside. Valente takes longer, louder detours than Adams, and there’s real grief over the bandmate who won’t be coming back for the reunion.
08The Road to Roswell
by Connie WillisFrancie comes to Roswell for a wedding and gets abducted in her neon green bridesmaid dress. Her captor looks like a tumbleweed with tentacles and needs her to drive. Take this one for screwball company in a crowded car, with some romance along the way.
09Columbus Day
by Craig AlansonSkippy has the bearing of a god and the shape of a beer can. The fun is hearing Joe Bishop talk back to him. Pick this one if you’re in the mood for military science fiction. You’ll spend some time with the troops before Skippy turns up.
10The Kaiju Preservation Society
by John ScalziJamie Gray takes a job in animal conservation and finds out that the animals have nuclear reactors inside them. There’s still food to put out for a conference. The coworkers make for friendlier company than the officers in Redshirts. The book is set during the pandemic, and Scalzi gets in a few pointed jokes about the Trump administration.
Start with Dirk Gently for another evening with Adams’s narrator. If you’ve been picturing what the Vogons would do with a televised song contest, go straight to Space Opera.
Another guide to try
Books like
Starter Villain
by John Scalzi
Funny books about running an evil empire (badly), from the boss’s chair to the bottom of the org chart.
Funny Fantasy and Sci-Fi11 picks
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