The Vogons were an alien race in The Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy by Douglas Adams. The archetypal slimy green alien, vogons are more bureaucratic and callous than actively evil.

The main Vogon to appear in the books is Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz, amateur poet and head of the fleet of ships assigned to demolish the Earth, to make way for a hyperspace bypass; and who later orders Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect to be thrown out of an airlock.

Incidentally, while Vogon poetry is the third worst in the universe, and the second worst definitively is that of the Azgoths of Kria in all versions of the book; the worst - the poetry of Paula Nancy Millstone Jennings was, in early versions and the radio series, that of Paul Neil Milne Jennings until Jennings, a schoolfriend of Adams, complained.

mkb reminds me that the vogon brain evolved from a misplaced, dyspeptic liver...

An excerpt about Vogons:

"Vogons are extremely ugly, extremely officious, and generally not much fun to be around.

They emerged from the seas of the planet Vogsphere, and gave up on evolving there and then. Only their stubbornness allowed them to survive."

Even though the Vogon poetry is only the third worst poetry in the galaxy, it was still quite sufficient to be used as means to torture the space travellers Arthur Dent and Ford Prefect. Only Ford Prefect seemed to suffer, though, Arthur actually claimed to have liked what he heard. Then again, the man had just lost his home to bulldozers and he had been tricked to hitchhike to a spaceship with a towel, followed by losing his whole Earth to hypergalactic bulldozers, when all he wanted was a moment of peace to read the newspaper and have a nice, warm cup of tea - who can blame him for not quite being in his full senses to realize the horrendous situation they were in at the time.

Here's the poem the Prostetnic Vogon Jeltz read to the unfortunate couple:

"Oh freddled gruntbuggly thy micturations are to me /
As plurdled gabbleblotchits on a lurgid bee. /
Groop I implore thee my foonting turlingdromes. /
And hooptiously drangle me with crinkly bindlewurdles, /
Or I will rend thee in the gobberwarts with my blurglecruncheon, /
see if I don't!"

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