Beware of the Leopard: the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy podcast

Mark and Jon Bounds are joined by Jon Hickman to finish rattling through the Gs, including a stop off at the Guide, and some very special found poetry.

Grebulons

The Grebulons were awoken from hyperspace sleep with no memories, after a meteorite struck their ship. They are thin and, under domestic lighting conditions, a sort of dim purplish green. They settled on a moon orbiting Pluto, and monitored Earth, believing astrology to be an exact science.

Grunthos the Flatulent

Grunthos the Flatulent is a Krian poet; the second-worst in the universe.

The Guide

The Guide is a sort of electronic book, that has several million entries in an index you “fast wind” through. Each item has a code, which you type in on a small pad. This scrolls the screen to the selected item.

The Guide has been played - in what we might consider canon - by Peter Jones, William Franklin, Rula Lenska and Stephen Fry.

Gunk

Gunk is a genre of music.This segment involves a lot of shouting.

G’Gugvuntt

The G’Gugvuntts are mortal enemies of the Vl’hurgs, who joined forces and went teaming across wormholes in space at the sound of Arthur Dent complaining about his lifestyle.

Links

Mark and Danny are joined by Jon Hickman to discuss who should end up on the B Ark and understand impossible sentences.

Golgafrincham Ark Fleet

A fictional fleet of ships, invented to allow the inhabitants of Golgafrincham to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population.

Googleplex Starthinker

A super-computer from the Seventh Galaxy of Light and Ingenuity, with the ability to calculate the trajectory of every single dust particle during a five-week Dangrabad Beta sand blizzard.

It was deemed, by Deep Thought, to be a meer pocket calculator in comparison.

Goosnargh

A special Betelgeusian word Ford Prefect used when he knew he should say something but didn’t know what it should be.

Great Circling Poets of Arium

These poets used to live in remote mountain passes where they would lie in wait for small bands of unwary travellers, circle round them, and throw rocks at them. It was one of their descendents who invented the spurious tales of impending doom which enabled the people of Golgafrincham to rid themselves of an entire useless third of their population.

Great Hyperlobic Omni-Cognate Neutron Wrangler of Ciceronicus 12, the Magic and Indefatigable

This computer could talk all four legs off an Arcturian MegaDonkey, but only Deep Thought could persuade it to go for a walk afterwards.

Greater drubbered wintwock of Stegbartle Major in the constellation Fraz

In Mostly Harmless, we learn that this bird is extinct.

According to the Internet, there is a photo on Flickr of a greater drubbered wintwock. Danny explains.

Links

The team are back for 2018, and continuing their mission to explore the Hitchhiker’s Guide universe in alphabetical order. This week, Danny Smith and Jon Bounds tackle the G section, and we reveal the results of our Hypothetical Slarti poll.

Geoffrey McGivern

In his time on the radio series, he’s played Ford Prefect, Deep Thought, a Frogstar robot, the Heart of Gold ventilation system, and a priest on Brontitall. He’s subsequently gone on to a successful career in TV, playing bit parts in scores of shows.

Geoffrey Perkins

A writer and radio producer, and worked with Douglas at the BBC for many years. He’s credited with a wonderful line about Adams: “Douglas was never ever on time with scripts, often only finishing them a couple of hours after the audience had gone home.”

As well as producing the Hitchhiker’s Guide series, he was also a director of Hat Trick Productions, which went on to produce some of the UK’s best TV comedies.

Globbering

The noise made by a live, swamp-dwelling mattress that is deeply moved by a story of personal tragedy. The word can also, according to the Ultra-Complete Maximegalon Dictionary of Every Language Ever, mean the noise made by the Lord High Sanvalvwag of Hollop on discovering that he has forgotten his wife’s birthday for the second year running.

God’s last message to his creation

It’s written in thirty-foot-high letters of fire on top of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains in the land of Sevorbeupstry on the planet Preliumtarn, third out from the sun Zarss in Galactic Sector QQ7 Active J Gamma.

Gogrilla Mincefriend

A man who rediscovered and then patented a device he’d seen in a history book called a staircase, after the continued evolution of the Sirius Cybernetics Happy Vertical People Transporters started sulking in basements because they weren’t being listened to.

Links

In a sort-of belated Christmas special, the full panel of Danny, the Jons and Mark watch series 1, episode 1 of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy TV show, and invite you to watch along.

The episode is available legally and for free courtesy of archive.org.

Cue the episode up, and when you hear Mark count up from three - or is it down from three? - hit Play. Now and again there’ll be a moment to pause, and if you’re playing the drinking game, see how far into the episode you get before everyone’s out of sync.

Thanks for joining us throughout 2017. We’ll be back in a couple of weeks with regular episodes, so until then, and as always, share and enjoy.

Mark Steadman, Jon Hickman and Jon Bounds continue their mission to discuss everything in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy canon, in alphabetical order. As well as the usual affair, we submit to yuletide cheer and discuss Christmas in the Hitchhiker’s universe.

Gagrakacka Mind Zones

The place Disaster Area come from. In other news, we discuss what a mind zone is.

Gail Andrews

A famous astrologer, who was berated by Tricia McMillan on TV, but who was gracious enough to come and see her, to find out why she, Tricia, was unhappy.

Galactic Eezeereed

A galaxy-wide written language. We come across it on the Golgafrincham B Ark, and it does handily solve the problem that the Babel fish can’t.

Garkbit

The waiter at Milliways, and is so unhip it’s a wonder his bum doesn’t fall off. Mark posits that Garkbit is a little stuffy for the kind of establishment that Milliways is purported to be.

Genuine People Personalities

GPP is a feature of a line of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation robots. Marvin is a personality prototype, so the panel examines the ramifications of going with a gen-1 Sirius Cybernetics product.

Jon Bounds has been writing again

Read two new pieces by Jon Bounds on our blog:

Get in touch

Share some of your GPP thoughts, by emailing [email protected].

Follow @ iamsteadman, @ jonhickman and @ bounder on Twitter.