The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series
by Douglas Adams
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (1979), The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (1980), Life, the Universe and Everything (1982), So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish (1985)
Gertrudis Leheureux
House: Ravenclaw
Arthur Dent starts out as your garden variety guy and is given a chance to look at things from a completely different perspective which eventually helps him understand the meaning of the number 42. It's also the funniest book ever written. And though written 30 years ago before internet was even a dream, the series is as timely and scientifically advanced today as it was then.
Hero
Arthur Dent
Plot Summary
The Earth is destroy by the Vogon fleet to make way for an intergalactic by-pass just when Arthur Dent's house is about to be destroyed by a rather conventional bulldozer to make way for a British-type by-pass. Arthur is saved from becoming a part of the cosmic dust by his friend Ford Prefect who has been stranded on Earth for 15 years waiting to hitchhike a ride off the planet by any passing spaceship. They are picked up by the kitchen staff on one of the Vogon destruction ships, get tossed off the ship into space, and then get picked up by the Spaceship Heart of Gold, recently stolen by the president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox, which crosses from point to point through space using the Improbability Drive. Arthur turns from being "this shallow, just-like-everybody-else-kind-of guy" into a person with depth and character.