Here’s my mini-essay on the first two chapters.

Chapter 3 starts with the Vogon ships gliding unnoticed toward Earth, zoomed way out into space. “On this particular Thursday, something was moving quietly through the ionosphere many miles above the surface of the planet; several somethings in fact, several dozen huge yellow chunky slablike somethings, huge as office blocks, silent as birds.”

Zoom in a little; nobody on Earth knows the ships are there.

A little more, to Ford Prefect, the only exception to the nobody.

Ford is holding a Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic and a towel.

Then we get the Guide entry on towels, concluding with the iconic line, “Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There’s a frood who really knows where his towel is.”

Transition paragraph brings together all the previous zoom levels. “Nestling quietly on top of the towel in Ford Prefect’s satchel, the Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matic began to wink more quickly. Miles above the surface of the planet the huge yellow somethings began to fan out. At Jodrell Bank, someone decided it was time for a nice relaxing cup of tea.” (I finally bothered to Google Jodrell Bank — it’s a Centre for Astrophysics.) Here we have a callback to Ford’s possessions. We get a sense of increasing urgency, contrasted with quietness and tea that indicates nobody is noticing. We are inside Ford’s satchel, up in space, and at a human level, oblivious. Three different levels of knowing, all in one paragraph. And we can feel the dramatic irony here — we know the tea-drinkers are about to bite it, and we hope that Ford will notice in time, and we’re wondering what the deal is with the huge yellow somethings but we get that they are somehow menacing.

Now we’re back to Ford and Arthur in the bar. Ford tells Arthur to drink, and spends lavish amounts of money on beer and salted peanuts because the world is about to end. Another zoom-out: every being in the universe, under times of great stress, emits a signal that conveys how far they are from the place of their birth. The bartender senses this and starts to believe Ford, who reacts by laughing and being glib. Great character moment for Ford, who is being uncharacteristically serious before this, and needs someone to take him seriously so he can fall back into his role of being wild and crazy. This dynamic will be replayed with Zaphod, where Ford is unwillingly cast into the role of being the serious guy because Zaphod takes up all the zaniness in the room.

Zoom out, but not as far, for a quick three sentences in two paragraphs. The yellow ships start to sink lower; Ford knows they are there, and this isn’t how he wanted it.

Arthur is making a fuss over his house being knocked down, providing comic relief in a chaotic scene. Arthur yells at Prosser until he notices Prosser and his men are looking up, and then Arthur looks up too and panics.

Here’s the end of the world:

“Whatever it was raced across the sky in its monstrous yellowness, tore the sky apart with mind-boggling noise and leaped off into the distance leaving the gaping air to shut behind it with a bang that drove your ears six feet into your skull.
Another one followed and did exactly the same thing only louder.
It’s difficult to say exactly what the people on the surface of the planet were doing now, because they didn’t really know what they were doing themselves. None of it made a lot of sense — running into houses, running out of houses, howling noiselessly at the noise. All around the world city streets exploded with people, cars skidded into each other as the noise fell on them and then rolled off like a tidal wave over hills and valleys, deserts and oceans, seeming to flatten everything it hit.”

A little more nonsense — the Vogon leader turning the Earth into an acoustically perfect instrument and complaining that the plans had already been on display in Alpha Centauri for fifty Earth years, and then the world is gone.

“There was a terrible ghastly silence.
There was a terrible ghastly noise.
There was a terrible ghastly silence.
The Vogon Constructor Fleet coasted away into the inky starry void.”

Adams loves to use these strings of adjectives without commas. He only uses commas for lists and subordinate clauses.

A lot happens in this chapter. And the omniscient point of view lets us see it from every angle. We’ve already seen into a lot of character’s heads — Prosser, haunted by his angry forebears; Arthur, nursing a hangover; Ford, preparing to leave the Earth; and for a moment the bartender, sensing Ford’s distress. We’ve seen the world as it might be captured in the Hitchhiker’s Guide; we’ve seen it from space, the only humans to know about the coming disaster; we’ve seen Arthur annoy people at the bar and squelch in the mud.

Chapter 4 is when we meet Zaphod, learn that his presidency is a front for — something, which only six people in the universe know — and watch him steal the Heart of Gold. Trillian is introduced briefly and we get the hint that their relationship frustrates both of them. Again, we bounce back and forth between facts about the universe told in encyclopedic style, and action happening in real time. First paragraph has Zaphod riding on a boat; then the next five or so paragraphs tell us about Damogran and the Heart of Gold, alternated with the boat still skimming across the water. Then we start bouncing between Zaphod’s personality and appearance, and the backstory of his presidency. This paragraph gives us a quick portrait of Zaphod:
“Zaphod Beeblebrox, adventurer, ex-hippie, good-timer, (crook? quite possibly), manic self-publicist, terribly bad at personal relationships, often thought to be completely out to lunch.”
Throughout, Adams gives us a physical portrait and a quick character sketch as soon as anybody significant is introduced. The level of detail acts as a signal of the character’s importance. At this point it seems like Ford and Zaphod are the most significant characters, followed closely by Arthur, with Trillian as a side character.
There’s not a lot of action in this chapter, but the action that does happen is dramatic. The chapter has the same pacing as Zaphod’s speech to the press. Lots of hanging about, followed by a massive theft.