ABSTRACT
The end of the world seems so absurd it verges on the comical. It is perpetually imagined, while it remains unknown. The ‘end’ is as much a conceptual state as it is a reality: cycles begin and end causing life and death. Douglas Adams’ famous ‘trilogy’ of five novels grapples with the cosmic dilemma of ‘the end of the world’ largely through the humour of satire, irony, and parody. What happens when the Earth and everything living on it no longer exist? Adams’ answer is simple: ‘Don’t panic’ (1979, 53). For Adams, a British writer, expanding out into the universe presented a creative way to answer some of the weighty questions back on Earth, notably how humans have allowed the Earth to be systematically destroyed. The first and most prominent book of the series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1979), is a ‘story of that terrible, stupid catastrophe and some of its consequences’ of when the Earth was annihilated (Adams 1979, 2). Even though Adams’ novel is not the primary focus here, it aptly bookends this chapter, as well as concluding the book, because of its relevant theme of narrating catastrophe through irony.
