Starship Titanic is a computer game designed by Douglas Adams and made by The Digital Village, set in Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy universe, before the action of his five-part "trilogy". It takes place on a starship of the same name (an early attempt at using the Infinite Improbability Drive) which has undergone "Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure" and crash landed on Earth on its maiden voyage (in an allusion to the 1912 disaster involving the real-world RMS Titanic). A computer game is a game composed of a computer-controlled virtual universe that players interact with in order to achieve a defined goal or set of goals. ... Douglas Noel Adams (March 11, 1952 – May 11, 2001) — also known as Bop Ad or Bob after his illegible signature, or by his initials DNA — was a British comic radio dramatist and author, most notably of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy (HHGG or H2G2). ... The Digital Village (TDV) was a digital media company based in Covent Garden, London WC2 in the United Kingdom. ... The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy originated as a 1978 radio comedy series written by Douglas Adams. ... The Infinite Improbability Drive is the spaceship drive for the starship Heart of Gold in the science fiction story The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. ... Earth, also known as the Earth or Terra, is the third planet outward from the Sun. ... 1912 is a leap year starting on Monday. ... The New York Herald reports the disaster. ...

The player acts the part of a human that goes onboard to help fix the ship, and must solve puzzles to collect the parts of the onboard computer, Titania. Once all the parts are collected and placed in the correct place, Titania comes alive and talks. A puzzle is a problem or enigma presented as entertainment; that is written down, acted out, etc. ...

One of the most fascinating parts of the game is the conversation engine used to talk with the robot staff onboard the ship. Players type what they wish to say into the Personal Electronic Thingy (PET) at the bottom of the screen. The robot's response appears as text in the PET and is also spoken. The conversation engine works by combining relevant pre-recorded speech.

A book entitled Douglas Adams's Starship Titanic has been written by Terry Jones based on the game. Critical reaction has been lukewarm; the general consensus is that the novel reads like a poor imitation of Adams' style. Terry Jones Terence Graham Parry Jones (born February 1, 1942) is a British comedian and writer. ...

Starship Titanic and Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure were first mentioned in Life, the Universe and Everything, the third book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy "trilogy". Life, the Universe and Everything (1982, ISBN 0345391829) is the third book in the five-volume Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy science fiction trilogy by Douglas Adams. ... The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy originated as a 1978 radio comedy series written by Douglas Adams. ...

A space cruise ship called Titanic is also present in the Futurama TV-series episode A Flight to Remember, where its destiny was to be sucked into a black hole. Futurama is an animated United States cartoon series (March 28, 1999-2003) created by Matt Groening (who also created The Simpsons). ... This is a list of episodes of Futurama episodes in broadcast order, from broadcast season 2. ... This article is about an object in astrophysics. ...