Apologising for the inconvenience : defamiliarisation and displacement in landscapes in The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Abstract

This thesis sought to examine worldbuilding in science fiction, and to establish whether a single driving force, named a strange attractor could be identified in an author's constructed secondary world. A theory of worldbuilding was constructed from the existing theory and applied to Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy in the following media: Radio, Book, Television, Film, Illustrated Book, and Game. Worldbuilding is the central theme of Hitchhiker's, making the series perfect for studying worldbuilding, particularly through the landscapes of Earth, spaceships, and alien worlds. The strange attractor identified in Hitchhiker's was determined to be a particular joke: namely that life is meaningless, and any search for meaning will ultimately end in farce. Hitchhiker's is a series which revels in demonstrating its constructedness, and it is this authorial focus on worldbuilding which was used to understand Adam's subcreation.