YMMV / The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Trilogy

• Unintentional Period Piece:
  • The book is centered around an electronic book. This book was a standalone one-purpose device that acted as a database for everything that was known about the galaxy. It would be supplanted by newer editions periodically making the version that Arthur and Ford traveled with obsolete very early in the series (Ford's version did not contain the update on Earth's entry). This indicated that the book was more like an old-style electronic dictionary. Today, such a device would be supplanted by a multipurpose device such as a smartphone or tablet with access to a galactic version of the internet. And the guide itself would either be an application software or better yet, a website (such as Wikivoyage). By So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish (1984), the Guide periodically updates itself over the SubEtha. The idea that such a device would constantly update itself (ie, download the latest version of any entry once you wanted it) was still too futuristic for even Adams to realise, though.
  • The book's very first line says that Earth was populated by ape-descendants "who still thought digital watches were a pretty neat idea". When the book was first published, they were pretty neat, but as of the new millennium, it sounds ridiculously dated. (The radio adaptation of the later books [2003-4] replace them with "novelty ringtones"...which is also a bit dated now. During discussions of the comic book adaptation [1993], Adams defended the original line on the grounds he felt digital watches were just fundamentally pointless, and the line worked as well as a description of an unnecessary technology we all take for granted as an exciting novelty.)