And Another Thing... (novel)

And Another Thing... is the sixth and final installment of Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy of six books". The book, written by Eoin Colfer, was published on the thirtieth anniversary of the first book, 12 October 2009, in hardback. It was published by Penguin Books in the UK and by Hyperion Books in the US. Colfer was commissioned to write the book by Adams' widow Jane Belson.

After writing five Hitchhiker books, Adams had felt the need to continue the story: "I suspect at some point in the future I will write a sixth Hitchhiker book...", and "People have said, quite rightly, that Mostly Harmless is a very bleak book. I would love to finish Hitchhiker on a slightly more upbeat note, so five seems to be a wrong kind of number; six is a better kind of number."

In referring to the Dirk Gently book he was then working on, Adams said, "A lot of the stuff which was originally in The Salmon of Doubt really wasn't working." Adams had planned on "salvaging some of the ideas that I couldn't make work in a Dirk Gently framework and putting them in a Hitchhiker framework... and for old time's sake I may call it The Salmon of Doubt." However, Adams died in 2001 without having written the sixth book.

Unlike the previous Hitchhiker's sequels, the title is not a quotation from the first novel, but taken from the third chapter of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish, where it appears in the following passage:

The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying 'And another thing...' twenty minutes after admitting he's lost the argument.

And Another Thing... starts where Mostly Harmless ends, with Arthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Trillian, and Arthur and Trillian's daughter Random standing inside Club Beta, while the Earth is about to be destroyed by the Vogons.

Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, assigned to destroy all humans, hears rumours of a colony of Earthmen, and he sets off in the warship Business End to destroy them, while Arthur attempts to get Wowbagger to stop the Vogons.

On the Earth colony Nano, the stereotypical Irish leader Hillman Hunter is seeking applicants to be the planet's god, who would keep Hillman in charge due to divine providence. Meanwhile, Prostetnic Jeltz's son, Constant Mown, is having rather "un-Vogonly" thoughts, including an enjoyment of poetry and sympathy for humans. Wowbagger and Random start arguing, and Wowbagger drugs and imprisons Random. Afterwards, Trillian and Wowbagger fight, but they share a kiss at the end of the argument. Random is less than impressed with her mother's and Wowbagger's actions, and complains about it to Ford. Random steals Ford's company credit card.