Day: February 23, 2006

Wondering what Neil Gaiman meant when he wrote that the new Stephen Fry audiobook of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy reads like “an alternate universe version of the story,” I discovered this:

Together this dynamic pair began a journey through space aided by a galaxyful of fellow travelers: Zaphod Beeblebrox, the two-headed, three-armed ex-hippie and totally out-to-lunch president of the galaxy; Trillian, Zaphod’s girlfriend, whom Arthur tried to pick up at a cocktail party once upon a time zone; Marvin, a paranoid, brilliant, and chronically depressed robot; and Veet Voojagig, a former graduate student obsessed with the disappearance of all the ball point pens he’s bought over the years…

Veet Voojagig? A quick Google search reveals he probably was a minor character mentioned in one of the books somewhere. But, for the life of me, I don’t see how he wound up in the plot description, much less elevated to main-character status.

Is this some kind of weird parallel story, a la Orson Scott Card’s book Ender’s Shadow?

In this month’s issue of The Believer, Nick Hornby writes:

Every now and again you are reminded forcibly that the ability to write fiction or poetry is not necessarily indicative of a particularly refined intelligence, no matter what we’d like to believe; it’s a freakish talent, like the ability to bend a ball into the top corner of the goal from a thirty-yard free kick.

Can the film Bend it Like Beckett be too far behind?