Lords and Ladies

26

Hodgesaargh is based on Dave Hodges, a UK fan who runs a project called The REAL Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. This is a computer database containing a couple of thousand entries (the project began in 1987) in the style of Douglas Adams’s Hitch Hiker’s Guide. Dave takes his Guide along with him to SF conventions and events, where he auctions off printed versions of the Guide in order to raise money for charity. This is why the Guide is not readily available, e.g. on the Internet.

One of the entries in the Guide concerns a computer virus called “Terry”, which, it says, “autographs all the files on the disk as well as any nearby manuals”.

In real life Dave Hodges works for a firm that keeps birds away from airports and other places. To this purpose he sometimes uses a falcon called, yes, Lady Jane, who bites all the time, which gave Terry the idea for the character Hodgesaargh.

Note that there exist at least two other “let’s write a Hitch Hikers Guide” projects on the Internet that I know of. One of these is the Project Galactic Guide, which can be reached on the Web through the URL: