The name of our puppet theatre group, came from the phrase “Don't Panic” on the cover of a guide book/device, from Douglas Adams’ novel “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”.
The novel explains that this was partly because the device "looked insanely complicated" to operate, and partly to keep intergalactic travelers from panicking.
We use “Don't Panic” as our name for exactly the same reasons. Partly for us, because we have to remember not to panic, in front of every difficulty we have to face, –that is looking insanely complicated- in many different stages of our work… And partly to keep the spectators from panicking!
Arthur C. Clarke said Douglas Adams' use of "don't panic" was perhaps the best advice that could be given to humanity.
A description, as in “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy”, of the guide.
[… It is also the story of a book, a book called The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy-not an Earth book, never published on Earth, and until the terrible catastrophe occurred, never seen or even heard of by any Earthman.
Nevertheless, a wholly remarkable book.
In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor - of which no Earthman had ever heard either.
Not only is it a wholly remarkable book, it is also a highly successful one-more popular than The Celestial Home Care Omnibus, better selling than Fifty-three More Things to do in Zero Gravity, and more controversial than Oolon Colluphid's trilogy of philosophical blockbusters Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?
In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitch Hiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly in accurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.
First, it's slightly cheaper; and secondly it has the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover….]
