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

Entry: The Writer and the Devil - A32938004
Author: minorVogonpoet - U3099090

No, this isn't autobiographical!

Poor Hilda. She doesn't seem to deserve this devilish curse. There was no conscious agreement between her and the handsome nosey-parker on the hill. No traditional contract signed in blood or anything like that. So we have to draw our own conclusions about whether she's killing people with her stories or she's just deluded? Going on the evidence presented, I tend to come down on the side of deluded. A poor, batty old author, living under "the dark waves of the South Downs" (nice description), convinces herself that she's caused all these deaths, then punishes herself by setting fire to her home, with her still in it?

I could see the undulating hills and the forlorn, windswept woman

Thanks! It was meant to be ambiguous!

I enjoyed this. At first I thought the story gave away too much, too soon...but then I thought about it, and came to the same conclusion as Tibley.

What did it was your attention to the details of the house - all those flammable materials.

We could read it that Hilda unconsciously brought about her own Faustian ending.

Btw, I came to the same conclusion about the historical Faust when I visited the place of his demise. I think the poor fellow was making gunpowder in his hotel room, and blew himself out the window onto the (in South Germany obligatory) manure pile.

How many supposedly fateful encounters actually take place only in the mind of one of the participants, I wonder?

Thanks, Dmitri.

And how many women were burnt as witches because they were a bit odd?

Or had red hair...or talked to their cats...right on.

Good story, neat plot. I feel a bit 'poor Hilda', but, she believed it and she kept doing it... for a while anyway. Which suggests a pretty high degree of determination, or obsession, or something.

There's a detached feel to the way she talks to the interviewer. Which fits if you consider what she belives is about to hapen - it would be distracting.

Her publisher's set to make a killing

Thanks Llwaz.

I did rather dash this story off, unlike most of my things, which I revise and revise until I'm sick of them.

I tend to not continue reading things if I don't like the first couple of lines. Probably a symptom of the modern culture of instant gratification, but hey, what can you do? Anyway I didn't read this the first couple of times I clicked on the link, because the first couple of sentences didn't really grab me. They sound quite cliche and lack promise for interesting things to follow.

However, I'm glad I did finally read it. It's a really nice piece of work. Well written, and the story is very engaging once you are in there. I particularly like the ambiguity of the ending, and the fact that you don't elaborate on the 'Devil' figure. There's nothing really to say there's anything supernatural about him at all. He could just be a nice guy who gave some advice to a stranger.

Nice read mate.

Thanks.

I might have another look at the first couple of sentences.

This is good. I liked it.

Thanks, Bel.

It was Tibley who was the real mistress of the dark story, but she seems to have moved on.

But did the poor cats make it out safely?

Tibley is busy with her bees, I think.

I bet the cats are even now hunting for mice in the long grass of the scarp slope of the South Downs.

Glad to hear it