h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The Marquis could be a cat, Croup could be a fox, Vandemar could be wolf, but that's just how I see it...
Maybe other people saw other animals (or other creatures) in some of the characters...

I've only heard the audio version of the book, but I really enjoyed it, and I'm not usually a fan of "Fantasy", preferring the disappearing "hard sci-fi". This is actually somewhere in between, with the real London Underground settings.

I will have to think about the animals. The villains make the story: "If you prick us, do we not bleed?" "No, we don't."

The audio version is a classic! But I don't think the animals thing is very sound. Why would some bloke wander around talking to cats and the like. but no book/TV series has such brilliant bad guys.

Right, the bad guy makes the story. Shakespeare, as always, started this (OK, probably the Greeks) with characters like Richard III. The movie a few years ago with Ian MacKellan (sp?) was amazing. What an actor! and what a screenplay! When he has killed every other possible successor to the throne (children, women, extraterrestrials ... ) the folks ask him if he would be king. He answers, in an aside to the audience, "Do I have a heart of stone?"

Why would a bloke talk to animals?
Remember you're in the Gaiman-universe!
The marquis is based on a fairy-tale about a talking intelligent trickster-cat (can't remember the author(s) or the title, but I DO remember the story). The rat-speakers are almost rats themselves. And what creatures get left behind (like the parts of London that make up London Below) the MOST? Animals, no?

Sorry man. I was thinking too normal. It's a good point, when put like that, and lots of animals do get left around in London.