Q is for Quentulus Quazgar

         (My A-Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Mythical and Imaginary Places.)

        The Quentulus Quazgar Mountains dominate the southern edge of the Great Red Plain of Rars, in the land of Sevorbeupstry, on the Planet Preliumtarn, which orbits the star Zarss, in the Grey Binding Fiefdoms of Saxaquine, beyond what used to be known as the Limitless Lightfields of Flanux, until the Grey Binding Fiefdoms of Saxaquine were discovered lying behind them.  And on the far side of the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains can be found God’s Final Message to His Creation, written along the crest of the mountain in thirty-foot high letters of fire, guarded by the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob.

        God’s Final Message to His Creation is a popular tourist destination, and the Lajestic Vantrashell of Lob is a little man in a strange hat who will sell you a ticket.  I could tell you what God’s Final Message to His Creation says, but I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise should you ever make it to the Quentulus Quazgar Moutains yourself.  For better or worse, today’s illustrations don’t include any spoilers either, because I couldn’t find any pictures of the scene.  The first is simply a photograph of the surface of Mars that I photoshopped a bit for more exotic space-pizzazz, and while the second does show Arthur Dent and Marvin the Paranoid Android, famous visitors to the area, it doesn’t include the Message.

        This place appears in my A to Z Challenge because I needed a Q, of course, but if it hadn’t been Q I would certainly have picked another of Douglas Adams’s locations (perhaps Magrathea, because what could be more appropriate for an alphabet of Fantasy Places than a planet devoted to building Fantasy Places?)  However, the Quentulus Quazgar Mountains are representative of the particular way that Adams imagined and used places in his Galaxy: they are not required to be logical or consistent, because there are hundreds of locations that are little more than throwaway lines, invented and tossed off for comic effect.  Adams’s galaxy is a “universe” in which a quirky concept or funny turn of phrase is all the justification needed, and such delightful and often ridiculous places abound in positively effervescent abundance.  Adams regales us with references to Arkintoofle Minor where the Hingefreel people built spaceships powered by bad news; beautiful Bethselamin where erosion is so bad that you have to get a receipt every time you go to the bathroom; evil Frogstar B which was entirely overrun by shoe shops; and Kria, the home of the second worst poetry in the Universe (jumping to first place after Earth is destroyed).  The swamps of Sqornshellous Zeta are where the best mattresses in the galaxy grow and flollop, and Viltvodle VI is the home world of small blue fifty-armed beings who live in perpetual fear of “The Coming of the Great White Handkerchief”… and so on.  This is a wholly different approach to world-creation, where instead of creating the world that best supports the story, the world is created every-which-way as the spirit moves, and if later it ends up being useful to the story, all the better.  That isn’t to say that Adams didn’t devise some of his locations more deliberately, such as the above-mentioned Magrathea, but it does represent a very different view of world-creation than the terribly serious and scholarly methods of, say, J.R.R. Tolkien and Middle-earth.

        The MORAL of Quentulus Quazgar:  Never let geographical improbability get in the way of a good story.

              OR:  We apologize for the inconvenience.

        So, how would you like to go hitchhiking around the galaxy for thirty Altarian dollars a day?

[Pictures: Tweaked Mars landscape, anonymous photo (Image from Vaisala);

I think this illustration is by Jonathan Burton for The Folio Society’s edition of So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams, but I’m not 100% sure, thank you Pinterest, scientifically designed to discourage any sort of credit or attribution being given to artists for their work (Image not from The Folio Society).]

Almost-quotations from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish by Douglas Adams, 1984.