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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has this to say about the planet of
Golgafrincham: It is a planet with an ancient and mysterious history, rich in legend, red,
and occasionally green with the blood of those who sought in times gone by to conquer
her; a land of parched and barren landscapes, of sweet and sultry air heady with the scent
of the perfumed springs that trickle over its hot and dusty rocks and nourish the dark and
musty lichens beneath; a land of fevered brows and intoxicated imaginings, particularly
amongst those who taste the lichens; a land also of cool and shaded thoughts amongst
those who have learned to forswear the lichens and find a tree to sit beneath; a land also of
steel and blood and heroism; a land of the body and of the spirit. This was its history.
And in all this ancient and mysterious history, the most mysterious figures of all were
, without doubt, those of the Great Circling Poets of Arium. These Circling Poets used to
live in remote mountain passes where they would lie in wait for small bands of unwary
travelers, circle around them and throw rocks at them.
And when the travelers cried out, saying why didn’t they go away and get on with
writing some poems instead of pestering people with all this rock-throwing business, they
would suddenly stop, and then break into one of the seven hundred and ninety-four great
Song Cycles of Vassilian. These songs were all of the extraordinary beauty, and even more
extraordinary length and all fell into exactly the same pattern.
The first part of each song would tell how there once went forth from the City of
Vassilian a party of five sage princes with four horses. The princes, who are of course
brave, noble, and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fought giant ogres, pursue exotic
philosophies, take tea with weird gods, and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening
princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their
wanderings are therefore accomplished.
The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings
about which one of them is going to have to walk back.
All this lay in the planet’s remote past. It was, however, a descendant of one of these
eccentric poets 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.
The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich, and happy lives until they
were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.
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