The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Meets Discworld In This Sci-Fi Comedy Releasing Today

Published Nov 10, 2026, 2:00 PM EST Cher Thompson is a Senior Staff Writer at Screen Rant, where she covers everything from explosive reality TV moments to cast interviews about the twists and turns of scripted dramas. With a background in creative writing, marketing, and teaching, Cher knows how to spot both the storytelling genius and the guilty pleasures in pop culture. Her work blends wit with insight, making readers feel like they’re chatting with a friend who just happens to know way too much about TV. While sci-fi novels have never been short of stories that strike a humorous chord with readers, there are a few standouts in the genre that have a lighter appeal than others, like Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy or Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, along with this new release. Though many of the elements that come with sci-fi fiction tend to be deeper and darker than the average story, readers often get the trade off that sci-fi novels have a specific sense of humor, one that indulges in chaos to explore a novel's larger ideas. Both Adams and Pratchett bring that irreverent quality to their writing, as does Andrew H. Murray. Murray, whose novel Everything Happens So Much, debuts today, November 10, has built a world where absurdity and philosophical observations are able to co-exist, in a similar vein to Adams, Pratchett, and some of sci-fi's best. While the combination of serious and silly is often tough to balance, sci-fi authors have long been able to do so with imaginative world building, unconventional humor, and stories that have genuine emotional stakes unfolding as things unravel. Bringing Pratchett's distinctive approach to fantasy and Adams' sense of observation together, Everything Happens So Much is able to create something special. While Murray's focal point in Everything Happens So Much, Esme Good, may be a fairly ordinary character, the way in which her story takes shape is reminiscent of the greatest sci-fi comedies of all time, bringing the absurdist multiverse comedy to life. Everything Happens So Much Sees Escapism Go Horribly Wrong Hachette Murray's novel, Everything Happens So Much, focuses on Esme Good, a fairly ordinary young woman whose life has become defined by its pure lack of excitement. Esme's dead-end job leaves her with a standard life in an unremarkable city, and her circumstances leave her looking for more. Hoping for an escape from the bleak monotony of her everyday life, Esme finds herself indulging in The Elsewheres, potions that allow her to disappear from her life into alternate versions of herself for brief 15 minute intervals. The alternate realities allow Esme to feel some sense of excitement, if only for a few moments. While the idea of alternate realities may be affirming for some, visiting other versions of herself leaves her concerned that she's living her worst possible life. As Esme moves through balancing her everyday with doses of alternate realities, she finds herself at the center of an incident that makes her markedly more important in her own universe, with consequences that ripple out to her alternate realities. Murray's distinctive voice gives Esme's journey, which ultimately finds her in uncharted territory fulfilling a prophecy, an ironic tilt that ensures readers are never entirely certain about what's coming next. Murray Brings The Absurdist Humor Of Adams & Pratchett Into The Modern Era Although there are high-level comparisons to be made between Everything Happens So Much and Hitchhiker's Guide because of their elements of a cosmic journey, the bigger comparisons between Murray's style and Adams' has to do with their shared sense of humor. Murray's moments of absurdity stand out against the larger implications of the story, and while they have shared sensibilities, are vastly different than the ways that Adams' weaves his own absurdist humor throughout Hitchhiker's Guide. Murray, who has openly shared that he was influenced by Adams, is able to take his own style and infuse it with a similar absurdist quality. Everything Happens So Much isn't just inspired by the humor and the journey of Adams' most famous novel, but also takes Terry Pratchett's Discworld into the mix. With genuine slapstick humor written into Esme's journey, Murray was able to find himself inspired by elements of Pratchett's strange and delightfully funny universe, infusing them into the narrative in his own way. With a combination of alternate reality fiction and a sense of humor that stands out among the more serious sci-fi titles of the current era, Murray's Everything Happens So Much puts the genre on an exciting new journey.