Hello, and welcome to Alpha Book Club! If this is your first time joining us, you’re in for a real treat. Alpha Book Club is, as the title suggests, an interactive book club hosted by Nerdist Editor-in-Chief Rachel Heine (that’s me!), host of the Nick Animation Podcast and many of Geek & Sundry‘s Twitch shows, Hector Navarro, and from SourceFedNERD and GeekBomb, the incomparable Maude Garrett. Every Wednesday at 6:15pm PST, we gather together online with our fellow bookworms to discuss a section of that month’s chosen book.

Like any good book club, ABC features rousing discussion about characters, themes, tone, and style, fan casting or comparing potential film adaptations, questions from the audience, and of course, copious amounts of wine. Usually, you can only watch Alpha Book Club by signing up to be an Alpha member, but for the entire month of February, we’re bringing you our latest book, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, for free on the Nerdist YouTube channel!

Above you’ll find our first discussion of the month, where we dive into the history of Douglas Adams’ legendary book series, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and read the first nine chapters of the book. In those chapters, we meet our forlorn hero Arthur Dent, his curious alien friend Ford Prefect, the charmingly nefarious President of the Galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox, and his mysterious human companion, Trillian. We also dissect the differences between American and British humor, reminisce on the 2005 film, and predict what we think will happen next.

Join us next week where we read Chapters 10 – 19, drink some more wine, and wax poetic on the many various uses for a towel in space. And if you have any book recommendations for us, you’re in luck: every month, we also let the club decide what we’re reading next… So send us your ideas @JoinTeamAlpha using #AlphaBookClub!

Alpha Book Club airs every Wednesday at 6:15pm PST on Alpha (and YouTube for the month of February!).