Вогоны: Бюрократы и разрушители Земли из «Автостопом по галактике»

Fictional alien race in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

The Vogons are a fictional alien race from the planet Vogsphere in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy—initially a BBC Radio series by Douglas Adams—who are responsible for the destruction of the Earth, in order to facilitate an intergalactic highway construction project for a hyperspace express route. Vogons are slug like but vaguely humanoid, are bulkier than humans, and have green skin. Vogons are described as "one of the most unpleasant races in the galaxy—not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous", and having "as much sex appeal as a road accident" as well as being the authors of "the third worst poetry in the universe". They are employed as the galactic government's bureaucrats. According to Marvin the Paranoid Android, they are also the worst marksmen in the galaxy. They follow orders as they were told to and will not allow exceptions.

Guide Description:Here is what to do if you want to get a lift from a Vogon: forget it. They are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy. Not actually evil, but bad tempered, bureaucratic, officious and callous. They wouldn't even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders – signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters. The best way to get a drink out of a Vogon is to stick your finger down his throat, and the best way to irritate him is to feed his grandmother to the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal. On no account should you allow a Vogon to read poetry at you. Vogons are roughly human sized, although much bulkier, with green or grey skin. Their noses are above their eyebrows, which are either ginger (in the television series) or white (in the film). The film's commentary states that the idea behind the high flat noses was that they evolved both the noses and the severe bureaucracy from being repeatedly whacked by the paddle creatures under the sand on Vogsphere whenever they had an independent thought (in the film, the Vogon bureaucracy is centred on Vogsphere). In the radio series it is said that "Their highly domed nose rises above their small piggy forehead". Garth Jennings based the visual portrayal of the Vogons in the 2005 film on the work of cartoonist James Gillray (1757–1815). "His creations were so grotesque when we looked at them, we realised they were the Vogons".

The series tells that, far back in prehistory, when the first primeval Vogons crawled out of the sea, evolution gave up on them. Through sheer obstinacy, though, the Vogons survived (partly by adapting a misplaced, badly malformed, and dyspeptic liver into a brain). As the radio show says: "What nature refused to give to them, they did without. Until their myriad anatomical deficiencies could be rectified with surgery." They then emigrated en masse to the MeagaBrantis star cluster (although the film has them staying on Vogsphere), the political hub of the galaxy. They banish the ruling philosophers to the tax office to lick stamps and within a few short Voge years took over pretty much all of the galactic civil service, where they form most of the Galactic bureaucracy, most notably in the Vogon Constructor Fleets (which, despite their name, patrol the galaxy demolishing planets). The only named Vogons in the stories are Jeltz (see below), Kwaltz (who appears in the film), Zarniwoop, revealed to be a Vogon in the Quintessential Phase, and Jeltz's son Constant Mown.

Vogons are described as officiously bureaucratic, a line of work at which they perform so well that the entire galactic bureaucracy is run by them. On Vogsphere, the Vogons would sit upon very elegant and beautiful gazelle like creatures, whose backs would snap instantly if the Vogons tried to ride them. The Vogons were perfectly happy with just sitting on them. Another favourite Vogon pastime is to import millions of beautiful jewel backed scuttling crabs from their native planet, cut down giant trees of breathtaking beauty, and spend a happy drunken night smashing the crabs to bits with iron mallets and cooking the crab meat by burning the trees. In the movie, the Vogons seem to smash the crabs for no apparent reason besides pure pleasure at killing something. In the film, Ford Prefect additionally tells Arthur Dent following the Guide's Vogon article that Vogons lack the ability of thought or imagination, and some can't even spell. The Vogons' battle cry, and counter argument to dissent, is "resistance is useless!" (cf. "Resistance is futile").

The ships of the Vogon Constructor Fleet were described as "impossibly huge yellow somethings" (the colour being a parallel to bulldozers that demolish Arthur's house) that "looked more like they had been congealed than constructed" and "hung in the air in much the same way that bricks don't"; they are said to be undetectable to radar and capable of travel through hyperspace. They are not crewed exclusively by Vogons; a species known as the Dentrassi are responsible for on board catering. In the television version of the story, the craft are shaped like battleships, albeit with a flat bottom through which the demolition beams are fired. In the film version, the craft are grey and cubic, a continuation of the emphasis on bureaucracy in the Vogons' conception: "Douglas [Adams]'s description of the Vogon ships hanging in the air in much the same way that bricks don't [led to] these Vogon ships which are these massive concrete tower blocks, with hardly any windows, they just have a few doors around the base," says Joel Collins.

The name Vogons is a new lexeme, a word newly created by Douglas Adams that does not conform to a pattern of word formation. Stephen Webb found the appearance of this first alien race that features in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy also "suitably strange, as aliens should be". The Vogons' behaviour in contrast turns out to be "full of very human—and specifically English—flaws and tendencies", to the point that Amanda Dillon considered them "probably the least othered alien in Adams's work". The Vogons are an easily recognizable satire of human middle management culture and bureaucracy. Dillon found them "Adams's most fully formed direct parody of the alien, and this makes them a source of laughter rather than fear". and which intends to thwart real progress, In his analysis of the depiction of extraterrestrials, Stephen Webb considered the Vogons "engaging aliens" despite their unpleasant traits, as they parodied middle management behaviour so well that "I can't help but like them".