Forget Wikipedia. The definitive app for fiction masquerading as fact will be available on your iPad in September.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy app recreates the guide central to Douglas Adams’ universe as laid out in the original 1970s radio series, books, TV series and the movie.

That means you’ll learn a lot about towels, dressing gowns and Babel fish, but not so much about the upcoming provincial elections.

Adams’s literary agent for 20 years, Ed Victor, “has been trying to get this off the ground for a long time because he saw it as a natural thing to do, a natural extension of the work,” Simon Jones, the voice of the novel’s main character, Arthur Dent, and the new voice of the app, told the Toronto Star in a phone interview from New York.

“As I never cease to say with some satisfaction and some sadness, Douglas was way ahead of his time with the Guide. Well, it is a prototype iPad isn’t it, really? What a pity he wasn’t here to see it.”

Adams died of a heart attack in May 2001. He was 49.

Adams was ahead of his time when it came to computers, racing against Stephen Fry to bring one of the first Apple computers home to the U.K.

He was also one of the first to design a computer game that users could control by typing in rudimentary commands. The 1984 Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy game was impossible to complete and had a tendency to lie as you tried to track down a cup of tea while bulldozers aimed for your home.

“There are many people still scared by the experience of trying to get a Babel fish in their ear,” Jones said of the game.

But don’t expect your iPad to start fibbing as you press your finger to the app. The guide is so far strictly limited to the alternative universe used on the radio and in the books and the movie.

“It will have animated bits and text entries and you will know all about the Babel fish and the Vogons and the towels and there will be interactive features they say,” Jones said.

“I imagine you might be able to put in your own suggestions or comments there must be some editor at the end otherwise it’s going to be a download of nonsense… I really don’t know I’m waiting to see it as well,” he added.

The app is being developed by Vancouver’s Hothead Games and will be exclusively available on iPhones and iPads.

“We imagined Megadodo Publications designing an interface for an iPhone and iPad that would provide ready access to all the most useful Hitchhiker's information,” Joel DeYoung, the app’s producer, wrote to the Star.

The app could also soon be seen on a London stage, when the remaining actors from the Guide tour the U.K. next year.

“A bit of cross-pollination is always a good thing. I was rather hoping, if we approached them discreetly, Apple would give us all iPads to read the script off. They don’t endorse anything much, but this is Douglas’s baby and they were fond of him,” Jones added.

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And it can’t hurt Apple’s sales that Douglas Adams’ fans are a fiercely dedicated lot. When the Guide’s actors assembled in 2009 for a one-night show to launch the sixth Hitchhiker’s book, 2000 people amassed, most of them in bathrobes.

“They are going on to the third and fourth generation, I’m appalled to say,” said Jones. “I have people coming up to me saying, ‘My grandfather introduced me to this’ and I say, ‘Hold on a minute, how old do you think I am? Well, how young are you, well, how old is your father?’ ”