Races and species in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Encyclopedia
This is a list of races, fauna, and flora (as well as creatures without category) featured in various incarnations of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
.
song claims that "Aldebaran's great, OK", but the Aldebarans are better known for their liqueurs (sold at Milliways), and fine wines (as Trillian prepared for Zaphod after deactivating all the Heart of Gold kitchen synthomatics).
at the end of .
abruptly dies of thirst in the penultimate chapter of the book due to a briefly mentioned plumbing problem earlier on. Bartledanian literature is renowned, and its books are notable for being exactly one hundred thousand words long. Netball
is a popular sport among the people of Bartledan despite the fact that no one cares about winning.
. Thankfully, during the concert, an improbability field flipped over the Rudlit Desert, transforming it into a paradise, and cured the Belcerebons of telepathy. A Disaster Area spokesman said that this was "a good gig".
. They die because Marvin the Paranoid Android
causes their ship to commit suicide by sharing his overly pessimistic view of the Universe with it. This in turn renders their space suits, which are remote controlled by the ship, unusable. This proves fatal because they cannot breathe in the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea. However, in the TV series the police are simply humanoids and able to breathe the air.
as "The best cooks and the best drinks mixers, and they don't give a wet slap about anything else." In most versions of the story, they help galactic hitchhikers board Vogon Constructor Ships "partly because they like the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons."
s are the second most intelligent creatures on Earth, just above humans and below mice. They tried in vain to warn humans of the impending destruction of the planet. However, their behavior was misinterpreted as playful attempts to punch footballs, and whistle for tidbits. Their story is told in .
After millennia of battle the surviving G'Gugvuntt and Vl'hurg realised what had actually happened, and joined forces to attack the Milky Way in retaliation. They crossed vast reaches of space in a journey lasting thousands of years before reaching their target where they attacked the first planet they encountered, Earth. Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy states that this sort of thing happens all the time.
In the film's epilogue guide entry, the phrase is stated as: "I wouldn't want to go anywhere without my wonderful towel," which in this case applied not just to the tongue of the Vl'hurgs, but to that of the G'Gugvuntts as well. Also, the time it took before the joint attack on our galaxy commenced was shortened so that the two species settled their few remaining differences immediately after the aforementioned offensive remark. In , any remark that the text parser does not understand has a chance of triggering a story arc involving the player's poorly chosen words travelling to the negotiation table and becoming the aforementioned insult.
Soon after they managed to get rid of these people - including all the telephone sanitizers - the entire remaining population was wiped out by a plague contracted from a dirty telephone.
The survivors who left on the spaceship eventually did crash onto Earth
, as planned. They managed to possibly wipe out the primitive, but wise, population of original inhabitants, thus corrupting Deep Thought's 10-million-year plan to discover the Ultimate Question to the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. They are presumed to be the ancestors of modern humans.
Ancient Golgafrinchan culture included a sect known as 'the great circling poets of Arium', who would abuse travellers, circle them and throw rocks at them. Afterwards, they would recite an epic poem which usually involved the rescue of a beautiful monster from a ravening Princess by five sage Princes on four horses. The second, much longer part of the poem details the arguments the princes held over who was going to have to walk back.
During the centuries-long spaceflight
the Grebulons were all in suspended animation
with their memories saved to the ship's computer (which was struck by an asteroid
influenced by Guide Mark II). With the loss of the backup
, after the robots carrying it also fell out of the hole made by the asteroid, the Grebulons awoke with no idea where they were going or who they were. What little instructions they could extract from the wrecked computer told them to "land" somewhere and "monitor" something, so they landed on Rupert and monitored the television
transmissions from Earth
.
Trillian later reveals that the Grebulons are a missing reconnaissance fleet from the war that she was meant to cover (which never happened because the Grebulons never arrived with their respective army).
and Zaphod
attempted to steal an Admiral's flagship from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. According to the Guide
, the Haggunenons "have the most impatient chromosomes in the Galaxy. Whereas most species are content to evolve slowly and carefully over thousands of generations, discarding a prehensile toe here, [...] hazarding another nostril there, the Haggunenons would have done for Charles Darwin
what a squadron of Arcturan Stunt Apples would have done for Sir Isaac Newton. Their genetic structure is based on the quadruple sterated octohelix...." Their tendency to evolve almost instantaneously has the downside of discarding one deficiency for another. For example, when they reach for sugar for their coffee, they may evolve "into something with much longer arms, but which is probably perfectly incapable of drinking the coffee." They resent stable species, and wage war on them in their horribly beweaponed chameleoid black battle cruisers.
The Haggunenon Admiral turned out to have been sleeping on his flagship in the form of a chair while Ford, Arthur, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin returned it to its proper time and place at the vanguard of an invasion fleet. It then evolved into a copy of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, from which Ford and Arthur were able to escape, but which ate Marvin, Trillian and Zaphod. Those three later made their escape when the admiral evolved into an escape capsule.
This monster also appears in the "Dungeons and Dragons Epic Level Handbook" as the Hagunemnon. Like their Hitch-hiker's counterparts, they too are unstable shapeshifters with a deep loathing for non-shapeshifting lifeforms.
shade of the colour blue.
Little is known of them, except that one participated in the construction of the starship
Heart of Gold. At the launching ceremony one was temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism
. This is probably analogous to the ceremonial multicoloured lab coats worn by the rest of the team.
The race is mentioned only in , written specially for that series by Douglas Adams in the mid-1990s.
as the organic components in the computer designed by Deep Thought.
Interestingly, although the term "humanoid" is applied to many races throughout the galaxy, "humanity" refers specifically to the qualities of humans.
Viltvodle VI with more than fifty arms each. They are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented aerosol
deodorant
before the wheel
.
Many races believe that the Universe
was created by some sort of god
or in the Big Bang
. The Jatravartid people, however, believe that the Universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. They live in perpetual fear of the time they call "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief" (their version of the End of the Universe). The theory of the Great Green Arkleseizure is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI.
(A similar concept was used in the short story "God's Nose" by Damon Knight
.)
For , Douglas Adams
created a new character called Humma Kavula, a cyborg missionary (from the chest down) whose apparent mission is to spread the religion of the Jatravartids. The Jatravartids are only seen on screen during two brief (and poorly lit) shots, though their discarded aerosol cans are found all over their planet's surface. "Caveman"-style illustrations of the Jatravartids feature in one episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series
.
is a racial memory of the events of the Krikkit Wars. The story of these events is told in .
is the only survivor. There he becomes the planet's Sandwich Maker. The Lamuellans are led, more or less, by Old Thrashbarg, the tribe's priest to Almighty Bob. Other residents of the village include Kirp, a fisher, Grarp the Baker, Strinder the Tool Maker, and Drimple the Sandwich Maker's apprentice. The planet is also home to Perfectly Normal Beasts and Pikka Birds. The complete story is found in .
They are very mysterious and seem to show up whenever something important happens, which is seen the most in the third book:Life, the Universe, and Everything.
In the first book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is revealed that they have been asleep waiting for the galaxies' economy to improve, but were awakened prematurely to rebuild the Earth after its destruction by Vogons.
They are the race who built the Earth, at the request of the Mice. However, in the film, the Mice and the Magratheans are the same species.
are the physical protrusions into our dimension of a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings who commissioned construction of the Earth to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything. As such, they are the most intelligent life form on that planet.
In their home dimension, a popular sport is Brockian Ultra-Cricket, a horribly violent game which involves hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away, before apologising from some distance - often through a megaphone. However, it is completely unrelated except in name to the earth sport of cricket.
In an attempt to deal with the problems their violent nature created, the Silastic Armourfiends passed a law that anybody who had to carry a weapon as part of their normal work (including policemen, security guards and primary school teachers) must spend a minimum of 45 minutes each day punching a sack of potatoes. It was hoped that this would allow them to work off their surplus aggression. This plan worked only until someone had the idea to simply shoot the potatoes (leading to the shooting of many things), and the Silastic Armourfiends were excited about their "first war for weeks."
During one of their more unpleasant wars, the Silastic Armourfiends asked the great computer Hactar to design the ultimate weapon for them. When Hactar asked what they meant by "ultimate", they responded "Read a bloody dictionary" before jumping back into the fray. The computer complied, creating a hand-held bomb which would connect the core of every major sun via hyperspace, destroying the entire universe. The Silastic Armorfiends attempted to use the bomb to blow up a munitions dump, but fortunately Hactar, shocked by the idea (the first to be able to do so) and unable to conceive of any occasion when the use of the real thing would be justified, introduced a small flaw in the weapon to prevent it from going off, hoping it would be glossed over after sober reflection. The Silastic Armourfiends disagreed with this reasoning, and pulverised Hactar, before thinking better of it and destroying the faulty bomb as well.
Eventually, after smashing the hell out of the Strenuous Garfighters of Stug and the Strangulous Stilletans of Jajazikstack, the Silastic Armourfiends found an entirely new way of blowing themselves up, which was of great relief to the Garfighters, the Stilletans, and the potatoes.
It is a universal translator
which simultaneously translates from one spoken language to another. It takes the brainwaves of the other body and what they are thinking then transmits the thoughts to the speech centres of the host's brain, the speech heard by the ear decodes the brainwave matrix. When inserted into the ear, its nutrition processes convert unconscious sound waves into conscious brain waves, neatly crossing the language divide between any species.
The book points out that the Babel fish could not possibly have developed naturally, and therefore both proves and disproves the existence of God
:
Arthur Dent
commented only 'Eurgh!' when first inserting the fish into his ear. It enabled him to understand Vogon Poetry - not necessarily a good thing.
Boghogs are tiny, vicious creatures with unaccountably thin and leaky skins. Boghog meat is almost completely inedible and is the primary source of food for the settlers on NowWhat.
The language of the boghogs consists of biting each other very hard on the thigh and thus was never learned by anybody else.
steals the Heart of Gold. A Damogran Frond Crested Eagle incorporated the first two pages of Zaphod Beeblebrox's speech into its nest, which it built out of paper mâché, and "was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of." Apparently the Eagle had heard of survival of the species and wanted nothing to do with it.
answered that this expression can be read as either referring to a horse (Latin name Equus caballus), or a separate horse-like alien species, or both.
, but it is never said whether or not these are the same or different dragons.
, who dropped a speaker bomb into a volcano crater where the flaybooz were enjoying a static electricity festival.
Contrary to an almost universal norm, it is the male flaybooz who nurtures the young. A full-grown flaybooz can fit up to fifty young in his pouch, but generally there is only room for a couple, as males like to carry around a small tool kit in case of emergencies, maybe a few beers, and a copy of Furballs Quarterly. From .
The local Lamuellans capture the beasts and kill them for their meat. The method uses similar techniques to a matador
but also requires use of the Pikka Birds to get their attention. The best of the meat is eaten straight away while the rest is salted and stored for consumption until the next migration. It was consumed on its own until the arrival of the Sandwich Maker
and is now always placed between two slices of bread.
. On his first encounter with a Pikka Bird, Ford Prefect is disturbed by its physical similarity to the bird-shape taken by the sentient Guide Mark II.
(Pica pica is the Latin name for the magpie
).
of Traal, and will eat anything, especially Vogon grandmothers. The beasts are impossible to kill. To deal with a beast, one should wrap a towel
around one's own head. This creature is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it assumes that if someone cannot see it, then it cannot see the person. Despite this, the Guide did state, erroneously, that "ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for (rather than of) visiting tourists" in its article on the planet Traal. This led to deaths of those who took it literally. The guide's editors avoided lawsuit by summoning a poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty
, and therefore prove that their claim, the nicer one, must be true. This led to life itself being held in contempt of court for being neither beautiful nor true, and subsequently being removed from all those present at the trial.
In , the Bugblatter Beast asks its victims their names before killing them, and carves the names on a memorial outside its cave. The game also describes the Beast as having Lasero-Zap eyes, Swivel-Shear Teeth, and several dozen tungsten carbide Vast Pain claws forged in the sun furnaces of Zangrijad, all implying that it is a cyborg.
According to the radio scripts, the Beast's eyes can turn red, green, then a sort of mauvy pink.
In , the Guide has an entry on what to do if you face certain, unavoidable death at the claws of a Bugblatter Beast: the same method for "What to do if you find yourself trapped beneath a large boulder with no means of escape" from . The entry is this: "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer."
In the movie, the Vogons apparently have a Bugblatter Beast trapped inside a metal box, about the size of a shipping container
. The Beast is never seen (apart from a large green eye), but the box is continually shaking back and forth. The Vogons use it to execute people who are convicted of crimes such as kidnapping the President, and as such Tricia McMillan was nearly fed to it.
s' homeworld. Vogons eat the crabs, "smashing their shells open with iron mallets." They cook the crabmeat with the native trees. Although the Vogons migrated to the Megabrantis Cluster, the political hub of the Galaxy, every year the Vogons import twenty-seven thousand scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs from Vogsphere and "while away a drunken night smashing them to bits with iron mallets."
Their name originates from slapstick comedy
, which involves exaggerated physical violence.
From
collected in can be made to grow into a fruit-bearing tree. The fruit gives its eater a glimpse of future foresight (necessary for winning said game).
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
.
Aldebarans
The popular anti-teleportTeleportation
Teleportation is the fictional or imagined process by which matter is instantaneously transferred from one place to another.Teleportation may also refer to:*Quantum teleportation, a method of transmitting quantum data...
song claims that "Aldebaran's great, OK", but the Aldebarans are better known for their liqueurs (sold at Milliways), and fine wines (as Trillian prepared for Zaphod after deactivating all the Heart of Gold kitchen synthomatics).
Altairians
Advanced species known for their intense hatred of rabbits. It will take less than thirty of their dollars a day for hitchhikers to see the universe; so long as said hitchhikers avoid buying fruit drinks at Ursa Minor Beta nightclubs, which cost sixty Altairian dollars.Amoeboid Zingatularians
The Amoeboid Zingatularians appear as a stellar replacement in the long-running comedic play No Sex Please, We're BritishNo Sex Please, We're British
No Sex Please, We're British is a British comedic play written by Alistair Foot and Anthony Marriott, first staged in London's West End in 1971. It was unanimously panned by critics, but still ran for nearly a decade to packed audiences...
at the end of .
Bartledanians
Inhabitants of the planet Bartledan. The people of Bartledan are similar to humans, but do not breathe. Due to their view on the Universe - that the Universe is what the Universe is, take it or leave it - they have no desires, dreams or hopes, to the point that the protagonist of a Bartledanian novelStory within a story
A story within a story, also rendered story-within-a-story, is a literary device in which one narrative is presented during the action of another narrative. Mise en abyme is the French term for a similar literary device...
abruptly dies of thirst in the penultimate chapter of the book due to a briefly mentioned plumbing problem earlier on. Bartledanian literature is renowned, and its books are notable for being exactly one hundred thousand words long. Netball
Netball
Netball is a ball sport played between two teams of seven players. Its development, derived from early versions of basketball, began in England in the 1890s. By 1960 international playing rules had been standardised for the game, and the International Federation of Netball and Women's Basketball ...
is a popular sport among the people of Bartledan despite the fact that no one cares about winning.
Belcerebons
The Belcerebons of Kakrafoon Kappa had an unhappy time. Once a serene and quiet civilization, a Galactic Tribunal sentenced them to telepathy because the rest of the galaxy found peaceful contemplation contemptuous. Ford Prefect compared them to Humans because the only way Belcerebons could stop transmitting their every thought was to mask their brain activity (or its readability) by talking endlessly about utter trivia. The other approach to dampening telepathic communication was to host concerts of the plutonium rock band Disaster AreaDisaster area
A disaster area is a region or a locale heavily damaged by either natural hazards, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, technological hazards including nuclear and radiation accidents, or sociological hazards like riots, terrorism or war. The population living there often...
. Thankfully, during the concert, an improbability field flipped over the Rudlit Desert, transforming it into a paradise, and cured the Belcerebons of telepathy. A Disaster Area spokesman said that this was "a good gig".
Blagulon Kappans
Blagulon Kappans are methane-breathing life forms from Blagulon Kappa, which only appear in the books as the sophisticated police that attack Zaphod BeeblebroxZaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams who based him on his Cambridge contemporary, Johnny Simpson....
. They die because Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin the Paranoid Android
Marvin, the Paranoid Android, is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams. Marvin is the ship's robot aboard the starship Heart of Gold...
causes their ship to commit suicide by sharing his overly pessimistic view of the Universe with it. This in turn renders their space suits, which are remote controlled by the ship, unusable. This proves fatal because they cannot breathe in the thin oxygen atmosphere of Magrathea. However, in the TV series the police are simply humanoids and able to breathe the air.
Dentrassis
Dentrassis are the best cooks and the best drink mixers in the universe. The Vogons can now afford them by being professionally bad tempered. Described by the character Ford PrefectFord Prefect (character)
Ford Prefect is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. He is the only character other than the protagonist, Arthur Dent, to appear throughout the entire Hitchhiker's saga.-Name:Although Ford had taken great care to blend into Earth...
as "The best cooks and the best drinks mixers, and they don't give a wet slap about anything else." In most versions of the story, they help galactic hitchhikers board Vogon Constructor Ships "partly because they like the company, but mostly because it annoys the Vogons."
Dolphins
DolphinDolphin
Dolphins are marine mammals that are closely related to whales and porpoises. There are almost forty species of dolphin in 17 genera. They vary in size from and , up to and . They are found worldwide, mostly in the shallower seas of the continental shelves, and are carnivores, mostly eating...
s are the second most intelligent creatures on Earth, just above humans and below mice. They tried in vain to warn humans of the impending destruction of the planet. However, their behavior was misinterpreted as playful attempts to punch footballs, and whistle for tidbits. Their story is told in .
G'Gugvuntts and Vl'hurgs
Two species which existed in the distant past, a very great distance from the Milky Way galaxy. The G'Gugvuntt were enemies of the Vl'hurgs, and these strange and warlike beings are on the brink of an interstellar war, because of an insult uttered by the G'Gugvuntt leader to the mother of the Vl'hurg leader. Resplendent in their black-jeweled battle shorts, they were meeting for the last time, and a dreadful silence filled the air as the Vl'hurg leader was challenging the G'Gugvuntt leader to retract the insult. At the precise moment, the phrase "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle" (muttered by Arthur Dent to himself, which for some strange reason was carried by a freak wormhole in space back in time to the farthest regions of the universe where the G'Gugvuntts and the Vl'hurgs lived) filled the air over the conference table, which in the Vl'hurg tongue was the most dreadful insult imaginable. It left them no choice but to declare war on the G'Gugvuntts, which went on for a few thousand years and decimated their entire galaxy.After millennia of battle the surviving G'Gugvuntt and Vl'hurg realised what had actually happened, and joined forces to attack the Milky Way in retaliation. They crossed vast reaches of space in a journey lasting thousands of years before reaching their target where they attacked the first planet they encountered, Earth. Due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was swallowed by a small dog. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy states that this sort of thing happens all the time.
In the film's epilogue guide entry, the phrase is stated as: "I wouldn't want to go anywhere without my wonderful towel," which in this case applied not just to the tongue of the Vl'hurgs, but to that of the G'Gugvuntts as well. Also, the time it took before the joint attack on our galaxy commenced was shortened so that the two species settled their few remaining differences immediately after the aforementioned offensive remark. In , any remark that the text parser does not understand has a chance of triggering a story arc involving the player's poorly chosen words travelling to the negotiation table and becoming the aforementioned insult.
Golgafrinchans
The Golgafrinchans are a race from the planet Golgafrincham that appears in , and . In their ancient history, they tricked the most useless third (the middlemen) of their population to get on a spaceship and leave the planet, by spreading rumours of the horrific fates their planet was doomed to soon undergo, such as being eaten by a gigantic mutant star goat, or collapsing into the sun. The plan was to get them to crash on a "harmless" planet, thus losing any capacity for space travel; they would then be out of everyone's hair.Soon after they managed to get rid of these people - including all the telephone sanitizers - the entire remaining population was wiped out by a plague contracted from a dirty telephone.
The survivors who left on the spaceship eventually did crash onto Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
, as planned. They managed to possibly wipe out the primitive, but wise, population of original inhabitants, thus corrupting Deep Thought's 10-million-year plan to discover the Ultimate Question to the Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. They are presumed to be the ancestors of modern humans.
Ancient Golgafrinchan culture included a sect known as 'the great circling poets of Arium', who would abuse travellers, circle them and throw rocks at them. Afterwards, they would recite an epic poem which usually involved the rescue of a beautiful monster from a ravening Princess by five sage Princes on four horses. The second, much longer part of the poem details the arguments the princes held over who was going to have to walk back.
Grebulons
The Grebulons are a race that appears in . They are observing the Earth, but do not know why.During the centuries-long spaceflight
Spaceflight
Spaceflight is the act of travelling into or through outer space. Spaceflight can occur with spacecraft which may, or may not, have humans on board. Examples of human spaceflight include the Russian Soyuz program, the U.S. Space shuttle program, as well as the ongoing International Space Station...
the Grebulons were all in suspended animation
Suspended animation
Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use...
with their memories saved to the ship's computer (which was struck by an asteroid
Asteroid
Asteroids are a class of small Solar System bodies in orbit around the Sun. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones...
influenced by Guide Mark II). With the loss of the backup
Backup
In information technology, a backup or the process of backing up is making copies of data which may be used to restore the original after a data loss event. The verb form is back up in two words, whereas the noun is backup....
, after the robots carrying it also fell out of the hole made by the asteroid, the Grebulons awoke with no idea where they were going or who they were. What little instructions they could extract from the wrecked computer told them to "land" somewhere and "monitor" something, so they landed on Rupert and monitored the television
Television
Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...
transmissions from Earth
Earth
Earth is the third planet from the Sun, and the densest and fifth-largest of the eight planets in the Solar System. It is also the largest of the Solar System's four terrestrial planets...
.
Trillian later reveals that the Grebulons are a missing reconnaissance fleet from the war that she was meant to cover (which never happened because the Grebulons never arrived with their respective army).
Haggunenons
The Haggunenons of Vicissitus Three were encountered in the when FordFord Prefect (character)
Ford Prefect is a fictional character in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by the British author Douglas Adams. He is the only character other than the protagonist, Arthur Dent, to appear throughout the entire Hitchhiker's saga.-Name:Although Ford had taken great care to blend into Earth...
and Zaphod
Zaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams who based him on his Cambridge contemporary, Johnny Simpson....
attempted to steal an Admiral's flagship from the Restaurant at the End of the Universe. According to the Guide
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
, the Haggunenons "have the most impatient chromosomes in the Galaxy. Whereas most species are content to evolve slowly and carefully over thousands of generations, discarding a prehensile toe here, [...] hazarding another nostril there, the Haggunenons would have done for Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
what a squadron of Arcturan Stunt Apples would have done for Sir Isaac Newton. Their genetic structure is based on the quadruple sterated octohelix...." Their tendency to evolve almost instantaneously has the downside of discarding one deficiency for another. For example, when they reach for sugar for their coffee, they may evolve "into something with much longer arms, but which is probably perfectly incapable of drinking the coffee." They resent stable species, and wage war on them in their horribly beweaponed chameleoid black battle cruisers.
The Haggunenon Admiral turned out to have been sleeping on his flagship in the form of a chair while Ford, Arthur, Zaphod, Trillian and Marvin returned it to its proper time and place at the vanguard of an invasion fleet. It then evolved into a copy of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal, from which Ford and Arthur were able to escape, but which ate Marvin, Trillian and Zaphod. Those three later made their escape when the admiral evolved into an escape capsule.
This monster also appears in the "Dungeons and Dragons Epic Level Handbook" as the Hagunemnon. Like their Hitch-hiker's counterparts, they too are unstable shapeshifters with a deep loathing for non-shapeshifting lifeforms.
Hingefreel
A race with only a very small mention, at the start of Chapter 1 of . Hailing from Arkintoofle Minor, they built spaceships powered by bad news, which is the only thing that travels faster than light. Their ships were very fast, but didn't work particularly well, and were extremely unwelcome wherever they arrived.Hooloovoo
A Hooloovoo is a hyperintelligentSuperintelligence
A superintelligence, hyperintelligence or superhuman intelligence is a hypothetical entity which possesses intelligence surpassing that of any existing human being...
shade of the colour blue.
Little is known of them, except that one participated in the construction of the starship
Starship
A starship or interstellar spacecraft is a theoretical spacecraft designed for traveling between the stars, as opposed to a vehicle designed for orbital spaceflight or interplanetary travel....
Heart of Gold. At the launching ceremony one was temporarily refracted into a free-standing prism
Prism (optics)
In optics, a prism is a transparent optical element with flat, polished surfaces that refract light. The exact angles between the surfaces depend on the application. The traditional geometrical shape is that of a triangular prism with a triangular base and rectangular sides, and in colloquial use...
. This is probably analogous to the ceremonial multicoloured lab coats worn by the rest of the team.
Hrarf-Hrarf
Hrarf-Hrarf are a race of beings whose lifespans flow backwards in linear time. Their lives begin at death, and end "in a really quite extraordinarily pleasant birth." They are also described as the "only race known actually to enjoy hangovers, because they know it guarantees that a tremendously good evening will ensue."The race is mentioned only in , written specially for that series by Douglas Adams in the mid-1990s.
Humans
Humans are bipedal creatures from Earth, and the third most intelligent species on that planet, surpassed only by mice and dolphins. Originally thought to have evolved from proto-apes, humans may in fact be descendants of Golgafrinchan telephone sanitizers, account executives, and marketing analysts who were tricked out of leaving their home planet to arrive on the planet ca. two million BC. These Golgafrinchans apparently displaced the indigenous cavemenCaveman
A caveman or troglodyte is a stock character based upon widespread concepts of the way in which early prehistoric humans may have looked and behaved...
as the organic components in the computer designed by Deep Thought.
Interestingly, although the term "humanoid" is applied to many races throughout the galaxy, "humanity" refers specifically to the qualities of humans.
Jatravartids
Jatravartids are small blue creatures of the planetPlanet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
Viltvodle VI with more than fifty arms each. They are therefore unique in being the only race in history to have invented aerosol
Aerosol spray
Aerosol spray is a type of dispensing system which creates an aerosol mist of liquid particles. This is used with a can or bottle that contains a liquid under pressure. When the container's valve is opened, the liquid is forced out of a small hole and emerges as an aerosol or mist...
deodorant
Deodorant
Deodorants are substances applied to the body to affect body odor caused by bacterial growth and the smell associated with bacterial breakdown of perspiration in armpits, feet and other areas of the body. A subgroup of deodorants, antiperspirants, affect odor as well as prevent sweating by...
before the wheel
Wheel
A wheel is a device that allows heavy objects to be moved easily through rotating on an axle through its center, facilitating movement or transportation while supporting a load, or performing labor in machines. Common examples found in transport applications. A wheel, together with an axle,...
.
Many races believe that the Universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
was created by some sort of god
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
or in the Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
. The Jatravartid people, however, believe that the Universe was sneezed out of the nose of a being called the Great Green Arkleseizure. They live in perpetual fear of the time they call "The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief" (their version of the End of the Universe). The theory of the Great Green Arkleseizure is not widely accepted outside Viltvodle VI.
(A similar concept was used in the short story "God's Nose" by Damon Knight
Damon Knight
Damon Francis Knight was an American science fiction author, editor, critic and fan. His forte was short stories and he is widely acknowledged as having been a master of the genre.-Biography:...
.)
For , Douglas Adams
Douglas Adams
Douglas Noel Adams was an English writer and dramatist. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a television...
created a new character called Humma Kavula, a cyborg missionary (from the chest down) whose apparent mission is to spread the religion of the Jatravartids. The Jatravartids are only seen on screen during two brief (and poorly lit) shots, though their discarded aerosol cans are found all over their planet's surface. "Caveman"-style illustrations of the Jatravartids feature in one episode of the Hitchhiker's Guide TV series
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series)
The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, is a BBC television adaptation of Douglas Adams's The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy broadcast in January and February 1981 on BBC Two...
.
Krikkiters
This race of quiet, polite, charming and rather whimsical humanoids caused the most devastating war in the history of the Galaxy (with over two "grillion" casualties). Their homeworld, Krikkit, is surrounded by a black cloud, so they had no knowledge of the universe outside their world. When a spaceship crashed on the surface of Krikkit, the inhabitants quickly stripped it of its secrets and used them to create their own "flimsy piece of near-junk" craft, Krikkit One. Upon reaching the outer edge of the dust cloud and seeing the galaxy for the first time, the people of Krikkit marvelled at its beauty before being gripped with fear of it and casually deciding to destroy it, famously remarking "It'll have to go." The Earth game of cricketCricket
Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...
is a racial memory of the events of the Krikkit Wars. The story of these events is told in .
Lamuellans
Lamuellans are a humanoid race from the planet Lamuella. It is on this planet that a passenger starship crashes, and Arthur DentArthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
is the only survivor. There he becomes the planet's Sandwich Maker. The Lamuellans are led, more or less, by Old Thrashbarg, the tribe's priest to Almighty Bob. Other residents of the village include Kirp, a fisher, Grarp the Baker, Strinder the Tool Maker, and Drimple the Sandwich Maker's apprentice. The planet is also home to Perfectly Normal Beasts and Pikka Birds. The complete story is found in .
Magratheans
They are sentient beings that live on planet Magrathea. In the past during the time of the Galactic Empire, they created and sold planets to rich customers.They are very mysterious and seem to show up whenever something important happens, which is seen the most in the third book:Life, the Universe, and Everything.
In the first book The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy it is revealed that they have been asleep waiting for the galaxies' economy to improve, but were awakened prematurely to rebuild the Earth after its destruction by Vogons.
They are the race who built the Earth, at the request of the Mice. However, in the film, the Mice and the Magratheans are the same species.
Mice
MiceMouse
A mouse is a small mammal belonging to the order of rodents. The best known mouse species is the common house mouse . It is also a popular pet. In some places, certain kinds of field mice are also common. This rodent is eaten by large birds such as hawks and eagles...
are the physical protrusions into our dimension of a race of hyperintelligent pan-dimensional beings who commissioned construction of the Earth to find the Question to the Ultimate Answer of Life, the Universe, and Everything. As such, they are the most intelligent life form on that planet.
In their home dimension, a popular sport is Brockian Ultra-Cricket, a horribly violent game which involves hitting people for no readily apparent reason and then running away, before apologising from some distance - often through a megaphone. However, it is completely unrelated except in name to the earth sport of cricket.
Oglaroonians
Natives to the small forest world of Oglaroon, Oglaroonians have taken what is a fairly universal trait among sentient species (to cope with the sheer infinite vastness of the universe by simply ignoring it) to its ultimate extreme. Despite the entire planet being habitable, Oglaroonians have managed to confine their global population to one small nut tree, in which they compose poetry, create art, and somehow fight wars. The consensus among those in power that any trees one might observe from the outer branches are merely hallucinations brought on by eating too many oglanuts, and anyone who thinks differently is hurled out of the tree, presumably to his death.Poghrils
An exceptionally pessimistic race from the star system of Pansel. Due to the Heart of Gold's Infinite Improbability Drive causing a wave of improbability when passing through the system, two-hundred and thirty-nine thousand lightly fried eggs landed on the surface of their home planet, unfortunately too late to save the vast majority, who had already succumbed to famine, though one did manage to survive for two further weeks, before dying of cholesterol poisoning.Shaltanacs
The Shaltanacs are a race from the planet Broop Kidron Thirteen, who had their own version of the Earth phrase, "The other man's grass is always greener." Although, given their planet's horticultural peculiarities, theirs was, "The other Shaltanac's joopleberry shrub is always a more mauve-y shade of pinky russet," and so, the expression fell into disuse, and the Shaltanacs found they had little choice but to become exceptionally happy and content with their lot, which surprised everyone else in the galaxy, who had not realised that the best way not to be unhappy is not to have a word for it.Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax
The Silastic Armourfiends were an insanely aggressive race who lived on the planet Striterax approximately twenty billion years ago "when the universe was young". They were extremely keen on fighting – one of the best ways to deal with a Silastic Armourfiend was to lock him in a room by himself, since he would beat himself up sooner or later. They wrecked the surface of their planet in constant wars, and the whole population lived within bunkers deep below the surface.In an attempt to deal with the problems their violent nature created, the Silastic Armourfiends passed a law that anybody who had to carry a weapon as part of their normal work (including policemen, security guards and primary school teachers) must spend a minimum of 45 minutes each day punching a sack of potatoes. It was hoped that this would allow them to work off their surplus aggression. This plan worked only until someone had the idea to simply shoot the potatoes (leading to the shooting of many things), and the Silastic Armourfiends were excited about their "first war for weeks."
During one of their more unpleasant wars, the Silastic Armourfiends asked the great computer Hactar to design the ultimate weapon for them. When Hactar asked what they meant by "ultimate", they responded "Read a bloody dictionary" before jumping back into the fray. The computer complied, creating a hand-held bomb which would connect the core of every major sun via hyperspace, destroying the entire universe. The Silastic Armorfiends attempted to use the bomb to blow up a munitions dump, but fortunately Hactar, shocked by the idea (the first to be able to do so) and unable to conceive of any occasion when the use of the real thing would be justified, introduced a small flaw in the weapon to prevent it from going off, hoping it would be glossed over after sober reflection. The Silastic Armourfiends disagreed with this reasoning, and pulverised Hactar, before thinking better of it and destroying the faulty bomb as well.
Eventually, after smashing the hell out of the Strenuous Garfighters of Stug and the Strangulous Stilletans of Jajazikstack, the Silastic Armourfiends found an entirely new way of blowing themselves up, which was of great relief to the Garfighters, the Stilletans, and the potatoes.
Algolian Suntiger
The tooth of an Algolian Suntiger is part of the mix for a Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster. It "spreads the fires of the Algolian suns deep into the heart of the drink."Arcturian Megadonkey
An animal featured in the proverb "to talk all four legs off an Arcturian Megadonkey", and also served grated at a dinner on the planet Magrathea.Arcturian Megagnat
A creature from Kakrafoon. It is mentioned during a description of the many uses of towels whereby you can "huddle beneath it for protection against the Arcturian Megagnats under the stars of Kakrafoon."Babel fish
"The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like, and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix."It is a universal translator
Universal translator
A universal translator is a device common to many science fiction works, especially on television. First described in Murray Leinster's 1945 novella "First Contact", the translator's purpose is to offer an instant translation of any language...
which simultaneously translates from one spoken language to another. It takes the brainwaves of the other body and what they are thinking then transmits the thoughts to the speech centres of the host's brain, the speech heard by the ear decodes the brainwave matrix. When inserted into the ear, its nutrition processes convert unconscious sound waves into conscious brain waves, neatly crossing the language divide between any species.
The book points out that the Babel fish could not possibly have developed naturally, and therefore both proves and disproves the existence of God
Existence of God
Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others. In philosophical terms, arguments for and against the existence of God involve primarily the sub-disciplines of epistemology and ontology , but also of the theory of value, since...
:
Arthur Dent
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
commented only 'Eurgh!' when first inserting the fish into his ear. It enabled him to understand Vogon Poetry - not necessarily a good thing.
Boghog
The Boghog is the only native animal of planet NowWhat, "all other having long ago died of despair".Boghogs are tiny, vicious creatures with unaccountably thin and leaky skins. Boghog meat is almost completely inedible and is the primary source of food for the settlers on NowWhat.
The language of the boghogs consists of biting each other very hard on the thigh and thus was never learned by anybody else.
Damogran Frond Crested Eagle
A Damogran Frond Crested Eagle inhabits Damogran, a desert planet where Zaphod BeeblebroxZaphod Beeblebrox
Zaphod Beeblebrox is a fictional character in the various versions of the humorous science fiction story The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams who based him on his Cambridge contemporary, Johnny Simpson....
steals the Heart of Gold. A Damogran Frond Crested Eagle incorporated the first two pages of Zaphod Beeblebrox's speech into its nest, which it built out of paper mâché, and "was virtually impossible for a newly hatched baby eagle to break out of." Apparently the Eagle had heard of survival of the species and wanted nothing to do with it.
Equinusian packbeast
At the beginning of , the voice of The Book describes any attempts to appeal to the better nature of the Vogons as "flogging a dead Equinusian packbeast." Director Dirk MaggsDirk Maggs
Dirk Maggs, a freelance writer and director working across all media, is principally known for his work in radio, where he evolved radio drama into "Audio Movies," a near-visual approach combining scripts, layered sound effects, cinematic music and cutting edge technology. He pioneered the use of...
answered that this expression can be read as either referring to a horse (Latin name Equus caballus), or a separate horse-like alien species, or both.
Fuolornis Fire Dragon
A majestic creature that, despite having breath like a rocket booster and teeth like a park fence, was revered in the land of Brequinda for the mystifyingly sexy way in which it flew about the fragrant night skies, along with their tendency to bite anybody who didn't revere them. So sexy were the dragons that they would induce mass exodus to private quarters when crossing the full moon. Although generally peaceful, they nonetheless managed to bite and burn other people quite a bit; behaviour which led eventually to their extinction and use in making hamburgers. The most current edition of the Guide has yet to mention this crucial fact, much to the disappointment of hitchhikers. Also according to the Guide, most of Brequinda now seems to contain restaurants selling the dragon meat burgers, possibly indicating that some find the meat tasty. Dragons are shown as part of the defense system of the godly planet of Asgard in by Eoin ColferEoin Colfer
Eoin Colfer is an Irish author. He is most famous as the author of the Artemis Fowl series, but he has also written other successful books. His novels have been compared to the works of J. K. Rowling...
, but it is never said whether or not these are the same or different dragons.
Flaybooz
Flaybooz are small, gerbil-like creatures. Though flaybooz have no ears, they are extremely sensitive to vibration and can actually explode in extreme circumstances. Thor, the Asgardian and sometime rock god, held the record for spontaneous flaybooz detonation when he debuted his new tune “You Wanna Get Hammered?” from a chariot in orbit around Sqornshellous Delta. The record had previously been held by intergalactic rock stars Disaster AreaDisaster area
A disaster area is a region or a locale heavily damaged by either natural hazards, such as tornadoes, hurricanes, tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, technological hazards including nuclear and radiation accidents, or sociological hazards like riots, terrorism or war. The population living there often...
, who dropped a speaker bomb into a volcano crater where the flaybooz were enjoying a static electricity festival.
Contrary to an almost universal norm, it is the male flaybooz who nurtures the young. A full-grown flaybooz can fit up to fifty young in his pouch, but generally there is only room for a couple, as males like to carry around a small tool kit in case of emergencies, maybe a few beers, and a copy of Furballs Quarterly. From .
Greater Drubbered Wintwock
According to , these are no longer found on the planet Stegbartle Major in the Constellation Fraz.Mattress
Mattresses are friendly, dim-witted, docile creatures capable of speech. They are all called Zem and live in the swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta. Many of them are slaughtered, dried out, and shipped around the Galaxy to be slept on by grateful customers, though they do not appear to mind this, one noting that since they are all called Zem they never know which of them have been killed anyway. Many of the movements they make, such as gupping and willomying, are so unique that etymologists have driven themselves half-insane tracking down new words for them.Perfectly Normal Beast
The Perfectly Normal Beasts are a species that migrate across the Anhondo Plain on Lamuella twice a year (one direction in the spring then back again in the autumn). The migration takes about 8 to 9 days during which time they form a solid mass. They appear from thin air at one end of the plain then disappear again at the other. They are called Perfectly Normal Beasts because naming them normalizes the event of their migration and keeps people from worrying about its cause. It is likely that the Domain of the King was built to take advantage of this odd, mile-wide gap in the bi-yearly migration, situated as it is on a rather nice stretch of land that would otherwise be badly trampled every now and then (or, the space-time warp was specifically manipulated by the Domain's original builder as a matter of convenience).The local Lamuellans capture the beasts and kill them for their meat. The method uses similar techniques to a matador
Matador
A torero or toureiro is a bullfighter and the main performer in bullfighting, practised in Spain, Colombia, Portugal, Mexico, France and various other countries influenced by Spanish culture. In Spanish, the word torero describes any of the performers who actively participate in the bullfight...
but also requires use of the Pikka Birds to get their attention. The best of the meat is eaten straight away while the rest is salted and stored for consumption until the next migration. It was consumed on its own until the arrival of the Sandwich Maker
Arthur Dent
Arthur Philip Dent is a fictional character, the hapless protagonist and anti-hero in the comic science fiction series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams....
and is now always placed between two slices of bread.
Pikka Bird
The Pikka Birds are birds native to Lamuella. They are known for being surprised by ordinary everyday objects and events such as the sun rising but completely ignoring unusual events such as spaceships landing. They are accustomed to staring blankly at a few anonymous atoms in the middle of the air. They are also used to attract Perfectly Normal Beasts. According to Arthur Dent's description of them in and , their eggs make rather a good omeletteOmelette
In cuisine, an omelette or omelet is a dish made from beaten eggs quickly cooked with butter or oil in a frying pan, sometimes folded around a filling such as cheese, vegetables, meat , or some combination of the above...
. On his first encounter with a Pikka Bird, Ford Prefect is disturbed by its physical similarity to the bird-shape taken by the sentient Guide Mark II.
(Pica pica is the Latin name for the magpie
Magpie
Magpies are passerine birds of the crow family, Corvidae.In Europe, "magpie" is often used by English speakers as a synonym for the European Magpie, as there are no other magpies in Europe outside Iberia...
).
Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal
The Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal is a creature that hails from the planetPlanet
A planet is a celestial body orbiting a star or stellar remnant that is massive enough to be rounded by its own gravity, is not massive enough to cause thermonuclear fusion, and has cleared its neighbouring region of planetesimals.The term planet is ancient, with ties to history, science,...
of Traal, and will eat anything, especially Vogon grandmothers. The beasts are impossible to kill. To deal with a beast, one should wrap a towel
Towel
A towel is a piece of absorbent fabric or paper used for drying or wiping. It draws moisture through direct contact, often using a blotting or a rubbing motion. Common household textile towels are made from cotton, rayon, bamboo, nonwoven fibers or a few other materials.-Types of towels:* A bath...
around one's own head. This creature is so mind-bogglingly stupid that it assumes that if someone cannot see it, then it cannot see the person. Despite this, the Guide did state, erroneously, that "ravenous Bugblatter beasts often make a very good meal for (rather than of) visiting tourists" in its article on the planet Traal. This led to deaths of those who took it literally. The guide's editors avoided lawsuit by summoning a poet to testify under oath that beauty was truth, truth beauty
Ode on a Grecian Urn
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a poem written by the English Romantic poet John Keats in May 1819 and published in January 1820 . It is one of his "Great Odes of 1819", which include "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode to a Nightingale", and "Ode to Psyche"...
, and therefore prove that their claim, the nicer one, must be true. This led to life itself being held in contempt of court for being neither beautiful nor true, and subsequently being removed from all those present at the trial.
In , the Bugblatter Beast asks its victims their names before killing them, and carves the names on a memorial outside its cave. The game also describes the Beast as having Lasero-Zap eyes, Swivel-Shear Teeth, and several dozen tungsten carbide Vast Pain claws forged in the sun furnaces of Zangrijad, all implying that it is a cyborg.
According to the radio scripts, the Beast's eyes can turn red, green, then a sort of mauvy pink.
In , the Guide has an entry on what to do if you face certain, unavoidable death at the claws of a Bugblatter Beast: the same method for "What to do if you find yourself trapped beneath a large boulder with no means of escape" from . The entry is this: "Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far, which given your current circumstances seems more likely, consider how lucky you are that it won't be troubling you much longer."
In the movie, the Vogons apparently have a Bugblatter Beast trapped inside a metal box, about the size of a shipping container
Intermodal container
An intermodal container is a standardized reusable steel box used for the safe, efficient and secure storage and movement of materials and products within a global containerized intermodal freight transport system...
. The Beast is never seen (apart from a large green eye), but the box is continually shaking back and forth. The Vogons use it to execute people who are convicted of crimes such as kidnapping the President, and as such Tricia McMillan was nearly fed to it.
Scintillating Jeweled Scuttling Crabs
Scintillating Jeweled Scuttling Crabs live on the planet Vogsphere, the VogonVogon
The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series by Douglas Adams, who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project. Vogons are slug-like but vaguely humanoid, are...
s' homeworld. Vogons eat the crabs, "smashing their shells open with iron mallets." They cook the crabmeat with the native trees. Although the Vogons migrated to the Megabrantis Cluster, the political hub of the Galaxy, every year the Vogons import twenty-seven thousand scintillating jeweled scuttling crabs from Vogsphere and "while away a drunken night smashing them to bits with iron mallets."
Vegan Rhino
Little is known about Vegan Rhinos. They are mentioned once in The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy when, while having dinner on Magrathea, Zaphod asks Arthur to "try some Vegan Rhino's cutlet. It's delicious if you happen to like that sort of thing"Vogon Slapsticks
Vogon Slapsticks are odd creatures from . They originated, most likely, on the planet Vogsphere. In shape they look like rust-brown poles stuck into the ground with a rectangle on top, sometimes having a hand print inside it. Ford Prefect pulled one out of the ground, causing it to squeal in a high pitched frequency. It escaped Ford's towel and then slithered into the ground. They smack anyone who thinks or has an idea- thus accounting for the squashed appearance of the movie's Vogons and their lack of imagination-, then disappear back into the ground.Their name originates from slapstick comedy
Slapstick
Slapstick is a type of comedy involving exaggerated violence and activities which may exceed the boundaries of common sense.- Origins :The phrase comes from the batacchio or bataccio — called the 'slap stick' in English — a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in Commedia dell'arte...
, which involves exaggerated physical violence.
Fallian albino marsh worm
The Fallian albino marsh worm spends its life absorbing hallucinogenic gas from the marshes of Fallia. After it dies, it turns into a stiff-ish, cigarette-like object. Hitchhikers call these joysticks.- One puff and you feel blissfully happy. Love everybody, forgive your enemies, all that stuff.
- Two puffs make you curious about just about everything, including the horrible death that is probably coming your way for you to have lit this baby in the first place. This is going to be great, you tell yourself. I am about to experience an energy shift to a new plane of existence. What will it be like? Will I make new friends? Do they have beer?
- After the third puff, your brain explodes and you feel a little peckish.
From
Fluff
While not, strictly speaking, flora by itself, four bits of fluffFluff
Fluff is a noun for anything light, soft, or fuzzy and may also be:* Belly button fluff, also known as navel lint* A lightweight file manager using the FLTK user interface library and the default file manager in Tiny Core Linux-A brand or product:...
collected in can be made to grow into a fruit-bearing tree. The fruit gives its eater a glimpse of future foresight (necessary for winning said game).