My first exposure to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy was the radio show, via a set of third-generation cassette tapes. It's my favorite version, even though it sometimes makes me think of Oxford students sitting around wherever Oxford students sit around in their college, drinking gin-and-tonics and trying to out-clever each other. I still have the tapes and they're still mostly harmless audible, but fortunately a friend gave me the show on DVD a couple of years ago.

Over the last several years I've been working my way through the original Doctor Who series. Douglas Adams was the story editor during the Fourth Doctor years, and wrote a couple of episodes. I laughed like a mad thing when the Doctor, taken prisoner by space pirates, told a fellow prisoner, "Don't panic."