Species Dossier: The VogonsCopy Anchor Link

"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 allow a Vogon to read poetry at you."

— The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Chapter 5

The Vogons are one of the most unpleasant races in the Galaxy and form the immensely powerful backbone of the Galactic Civil Service from their adopted seat in the Megabrantis Cluster.

Evolutionary History & AnatomyCopy Anchor Link

1. Abandoned by Evolution: Billions of years ago, when the Vogons first crawled out of the sluggish primeval seas of Vogsphere and lay panting and heaving on its virgin shores beneath the first morning rays of the bright young Vogsol sun, the forces of evolution gave up on them there and then, turned aside in disgust, and wrote them off as an ugly and unfortunate mistake.
2. Slug-Brained Stubbornness & Surgery: They never evolved again and should never have survived. That they did is a tribute to their thick-willed, slug-brained stubbornness ("Evolution? they said to themselves, Who needs it?"). Whatever nature refused to do for them they simply did without, until they were able to rectify their grosser anatomical inconveniences with surgery.
3. Physical Traits: A typical Vogon such as Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz features a highly domed nose rising high above a small piggy forehead, and dark-green rubbery skin thick enough to play the game of Vogon Civil Service politics and waterproof enough to survive indefinitely at sea depths of up to a thousand feet with no ill effects.
4. Vogsphere Pastimes & The Megabrantis Migration: On ancient Vogsphere, as nature worked overtime to compensate for its blunder, the Vogons ate scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs by smashing their shells with iron mallets, cut down breathtakingly slender colourful trees to burn the crab meat with, and sat on silken-coated, dewy-eyed gazelle-like creatures whose backs snapped instantly. Within a few short Vog years of discovering interstellar travel, every last Vogon migrated to the Megabrantis Cluster. Though they have attempted to acquire learning, style, and social grace, they still import twenty-seven thousand scintillating jewelled scuttling crabs every year to smash to bits with iron mallets on a happy drunken night.

Racial Characteristics & Guide AdvisoryCopy Anchor Link

• Bureaucratic Callousness: Not actually evil, but bad-tempered, bureaucratic, officious, and callous. They will not 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.
• Hard Currency & The Dentrassi Loophole: Vogon money is one of the hardest currencies in space. Because long-haul Vogon Constructor Fleets now employ Dentrassi catering staff—who love Vogon money but loathe Vogons and delight in seeing them annoyed—hitchhikers can bypass the Vogon ban on passengers by getting beamed aboard by the Dentrassi cooks.
• Spoken Language & Poetry: Spoken Vogon over a ship's Tannoy sounds like a man trying to gargle whilst fighting off a pack of wolves, requiring a Babel fish in the ear to translate. Travelers are strictly warned: "On no account allow a Vogon to read poetry at you." Vogon poetry ranks as the third worst in the Universe (behind the second-worst poetry of the Azgoths of Kria and their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent, and the very worst poetry of all by Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings of Greenbridge, Essex). Early Vogon attempts at composition were part of a bludgeoning insistence that they be accepted as a properly evolved and cultured race, though now the only thing that keeps them going is sheer bloodymindedness—using Poetry Appreciation Chairs wired to imagery intensifiers, rhythmic modulators, alliterative residulators, and simile dumpers to ensure not a single nuance of the poet's thought is lost.
• Vogon Guard Corps & Career Structure: Young Vogons frequently join the Vogon Guard Corps on the advice of their aunts (attracted by the uniform and the low-slung stun-ray holster), where the very first phrase they learn is "Resistance is useless!" Guards acknowledge that while the hours are good, most of the actual minutes are pretty lousy—except for some of the shouting, which they quite like, and which if kept up can eventually earn promotion to Senior Shouting Officer (since there aren't usually many vacancies for non-shouting and non-pushing-people-about officers).