C'mon, where's your sense of adventure?

Welcome to "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the movie of Douglas Adams' award-winning jaunt around the stars, which opens nationwide today.

Quick story line: Arthur Dent, hapless Englishman, wakes to find his house south of London scheduled for demolition by the local council to make way for a highway. Twelve minutes later, a Vogon space fleet arrives in the sky on behalf of the Galactic Hyperspace Planning Council, an altogether different outfit.

The fleet commander, a large chap (green, of course) with an unfortunate skin problem, announces their intent to construct a hyperspace expressway.

"Regrettably, your planet is scheduled for demolition. The process will take slightly less than two of your Earth minutes."

To soften the blow, the Vogon adds "Have a nice day."

Dent, helped by his mysterious friend Ford Prefect, hitches a ride on the Vogon spaceship, Earth explodes and the fleet careens away into the starry void.

And so the adventure begins: Luckily for Dent, Prefect is actually an alien from the star Betelgeuse, who's been masquerading on Earth as an out-of-work actor. His real job is as field researcher for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a sort of electronic encyclopedia for space travelers.

To help the duo tackle the Great Questions of Life — among them, why are folks on Planet Earth so miserable and to figure out where the heck they are — Adams invents a menagerie of characters: Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, smooth-talking president of the galaxy; the splendidly-named Slartibartfast, a sort of galactic fjord designer; Humma Kavula (played with quiet charm and 13 legs by John Malkovich); and Marvin, a depressed robot, for whom women in bikinis "do absolutely nothing."

"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," the first in a series by British author Adams, was first serialized as a play on BBC radio in 1978. The series' huge popularity led to Adams publishing the book soon after (sales have topped 15 million). As plans for a movie were under way in 2001, Adams died from a heart attack at 49.

Maui resident Douglas Trumbull — inventor, sci-fi lover and independent filmmaker — met Adams shortly before he died to discuss working on the Hitchhiker movie. Trumbull, who is credited with the special effects for "2001: A Space Odyssey," and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind," did not work on the movie but did share ideas with the author. At the time, Trumbull was developing a virtual film set, one in which actors could be superimposed in real time instead of during post-production editing.

"Douglas was very impressive and excited about how new technology could be incorporated into his movie," Trumbull said by phone from from Maui.

"The challenge of making science fiction movies really is a combination of theatricality, satire, whimsy, symbolism and fun; they must be scientific and representative of space travel, but not too literal. Douglas understood that perfectly."

Last month, Trumbull visited the Subaru Telescope on Mauna Kea to prepare for his next movie, which he says "must be grounded in real science."

"Being with UH astronomers who are looking at light coming from within 20 percent of the time of the Big Bang is a wonderful experience," Trumbull said. "Space is an intensely spectacular and beautiful place to learn about who we are and where we are heading."