Ursa Minor Beta
A sunny, affluent world where it is almost perpetually Saturday afternoon. Home to Megadodo Publications and the editorial headquarters of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Guide Entry: Ursa Minor Beta
"In fact it was probably the most remarkable book ever to come out of the great publishing corporations of Ursa Minor — of which no Earthman had ever heard either."
— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Introduction
Ursa Minor Beta is a sun-drenched, affluent paradise world celebrated throughout the cosmos as the media, publishing, and editorial capital of the known Galaxy.
The Perpetual Saturday Afternoon
Due to an ingenious combination of atmospheric refraction, planetary axial alignment, and carefully calibrated climate control, the weather on Ursa Minor Beta is almost always sunny, calm, and evocative of a warm Saturday afternoon just before the pubs close:
- The High-Rise City of Megadodo: Towering silver spires house the editorial offices, sub-etha transmitters, and legal defense departments of Megadodo Publications, publisher of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
- Editorial Demographics: The streets are populated by roving field researchers in loose linen trousers, flamboyant sub-editors, and visiting dignitaries sipping chilled cocktails on open-air rooftop terraces.
- The Relaxed Economy: Unregulated, low-tax commercial freeports handle immense volumes of Altairian Dollars and Triganic Puves derived from guide royalties and sub-etha broadcast licensing.
Connection to the Western Spiral Arm
It is from the editorial desks of Ursa Minor Beta that field researchers like Ford Prefect are equipped with Electronic Thumbs, towels, and Sub-Etha Sens-O-Matics and dispatched into remote, unfashionable backwaters like the Western Spiral Arm.
Traal
A gloomy, jagged world of perpetual mist, razor-sharp basalt ridges, and subterranean cavern networks. Infamous across the cosmos as the native home of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal.
Vogsphere
Ancestral world of the Vogons orbiting the Vogsol sun. Where the Vogons crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas billions of years ago and evolution gave up on them in disgust, compensating with scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs, breathtakingly slender colourful trees, and silken-coated gazelle-like creatures.