Adams’s creation also went intergalactic in October last year. As Nasa’s LCROSS lunar mission spacecraft travelled towards the moon at more than 9,000 kilometres per hour, it tweeted in the words of the existential sperm whale from the first novel: “And what’s this thing coming toward me very fast? So big and flat and round … it needs a big wide sounding name like ‘Ow’, ‘Ownge’, ‘Round’, ‘Ground’! … That’s it! Ground! Ha! I wonder if it’ll be friends with me?” Then it crashed into the moon.