Round two: a panel
Yesterday’s Mnemonicon session with Douglas Adams produced rather a lot of good material, but it suffered, as solo interviews sometimes do, from the slight problem that Adams was not himself the most Marmite-relevant figure in his own universe. The Marmite-relevant figures are the people in the books.
Which is why, today, the Mnemonicon has been reconfigured for panel mode. Adams chairs. The Mnemonicon channels each of his characters in turn, via Sedasoft’s character-voice interface (Adams remains the host, but he is asked to step aside and let Arthur, Ford, Marvin, Zaphod, and Slartibartfast each take the chair). I supplied the questions. This is, in the spirit of Towel Day, a Marmite Convention.
A reminder of the rules: every response is generated through the Mnemonicon’s grounded mode where possible, with speculation flagged. Where a character says something that is genuinely in Adams’s published text, the article quotes it as such. Where they don’t, the article says so. Editor’s note at the bottom as always.
Settle in. The panel is now in session.
Arthur Dent, on missing Marmite
Me: Arthur, you’ve been hauled across the galaxy for years now. In all that time, have you missed Marmite specifically, or just toast in general?
Arthur: Honestly, both, but for different reasons. In Mostly Harmless, when someone gets me on a radio interview after the years of galactic travel, I list the things I have missed: certain types of tea, Mars Bars, primarily. And, in a passage that may or may not be a dream sequence (it is hard to tell, these days), crumpets with Marmite, as part of my nostalgic vision of England.
The thing is, I am not really the type to distinguish between “Marmite specifically” and “toast in general”. I am too bewildered by most of existence to develop that sort of culinary precision. What I actually miss is the idea of England. The comfortable, mundane British things that represent home. Marmite on crumpets is not about the yeast extract itself. It is about what it represents. Normalcy. Breakfast. A world that makes a modicum of sense.
After years of eating whatever bizarre concoctions the galaxy throws at you, the distinction between Marmite and toast blurs rather significantly. They are both, in their way, home.
Ford Prefect, on Marmite as a research subject
Me: Ford, your Guide entry on Earth famously called it “Mostly harmless”. Across your fifteen years undercover here, did Marmite ever cross your researching desk? What would your field notes have said?
Ford: Right, look. My research methodology was, shall we say, unconventional. I spent fifteen years on Earth posing as an out-of-work actor, getting spectacularly drunk at parties and generally making a nuisance of myself. I was not the sort to sit down with a clipboard and methodically examine British condiments. I was rather busier gatecrashing university parties, making fun of astrophysicists, and asking policemen for directions to Betelgeuse.
Would Marmite have crossed my desk in any official capacity? Almost certainly not. My approach to research was rather more impressionistic. I absorbed Earth culture through the filter of whatever was nearest a bar. The Guide entry on Earth, as you know, simply reads “Mostly harmless”, which tells you everything you need to know about my thoroughness.
If pressed, I would probably have noted that Marmite was (Mnemonicon, speculation mode) some sort of yeast-based brown substance that humans either loved or loathed with equal intensity, which would have struck me as perfectly typical of Earth: divided on everything, including breakfast condiments.
But the truth is that most of my fifteen years were spent in a state of increasing desperation waiting for rescue, not in careful gastronomic documentation. Marmite slipped past me. I am not sorry about it.
Marvin, on flavour profile
Me: Marvin, this question is going to be entirely wasted on you. But indulge me. What does Marmite taste like, from your perspective?
Marvin: (long pause, hissing of servos)
I do not taste anything. I am a robot with a Genuine People Personality. I am equipped with feelings but not with functional taste receptors. Asking me what Marmite tastes like is rather like asking a brick wall for its opinion on the colour purple. Technically you can ask, but you are working with fundamentally incompatible equipment.
That said, here I am. Brain the size of a planet, and they expect me to describe the taste of a substance I am neurologically incapable of experiencing. Call that job satisfaction? I don’t.
(another pause, the sound of his hissing and clanking walk receding into the distance)
If I were to comment on Marmite as a concept rather than a flavour, (Mnemonicon, speculation mode) it perfectly encapsulates the futility of existence. A substance universally agreed to be either disgusting or acceptable, with no middle ground, no compromise, no possibility of universal satisfaction. Much like life, really. Which I find deeply depressing. I would say more, but I sense it would only depress everyone else, which would, at least, be consistent.
Zaphod Beeblebrox, on the worst thing Ford ever served him
Me: Zaphod, what’s the worst thing Ford ever handed you to eat at one of his Earth parties?
Zaphod: (Mnemonicon, scenario mode)
Right. Took the toast because someone handed it to me and I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy being the centre of attention. Both heads registered the catastrophe at the same instant. Not a pleasant surprise. Not a challenging flavour to be appreciated by the sophisticated palate of an intergalactic adventurer. Just wrong. Deeply, fundamentally wrong.
One head spat it back onto the plate. The other made a noise somewhere between a gargle and a small explosion.
“What is this stuff, man? It tastes like… like someone took all the flavour out of something and then decided that wasn’t enough, so they added a flavour that actively fights other flavours. It’s like trying to enjoy a drink while someone’s simultaneously hitting you in the taste buds with a sock full of salt.”
I rounded on Ford, who was grinning in that particular way he grins when he’s about to cause trouble, and demanded to know what kind of biological weapon the Earth had just attempted to deploy against me. I am, may I remind everyone within earshot, the President of the Imperial Galactic Government. My status alone ought to have protected me from this. Both heads were talking at once. One was accusing Ford of sabotage. The other was demanding to know why Earth bothered with this substance when they clearly had no idea what they were doing with it.
Then I forgot about it entirely five minutes later and moved on to something more immediately gratifying, leaving Ford laughing and everyone else wondering whether they should have warned me.
Slartibartfast, on a Marmite-loving planet
Me: Mr Slartibartfast, you designed coastlines and won an award for Norway. Could you imagine a planet whose people would genuinely love Marmite? What would its geography look like?
Slartibartfast: (a long, weary pause)
I am a man of aesthetic conviction and considerable exhaustion. I design coastlines because I genuinely love the work, particularly fjords, with their elegantly sculptured contours, soaring pinnacles of ice, deep majestic ravines. I won my award for Norway. I am, as you will know, old-fashioned enough to have insisted on fjords for Africa, despite the protests, which is why the work has slowed.
If you asked me to design a planet whose inhabitants genuinely loved Marmite, (Mnemonicon, speculation mode) I would first require another long pause.
Then I would observe that such a world would need geography matching the substance itself. Something with no compromise, no middle ground, no soft transitions. The coastlines would be stark. Dramatic cliffs dropping straight into dark water with no gradual beaches. No gentle estuaries. No reasonable, moderately attractive bays. Everything would be either extremely brown or extremely dark, with nothing remotely inviting in between.
The entire planet would be rather like a jar of Marmite viewed from space. Uniform. Somewhat impenetrable. Utterly convinced of its own importance despite being deeply off-putting to most observers.
I would find the commission rather wearying, and I would do the work anyway, because that is what I do. And then I would wonder, as I always wonder, why any of it mattered in the first place.
A closing word from the chair
Me: Mr Adams, you have been very patient. Any closing reflection?
DNA: Only that a panel about Marmite, hosted on Towel Day, is exactly the sort of event I would have been very glad to attend in life, and only slightly less glad to be summoned to in death. The Hate Party may now be heard from. Don’t panic.
Editor’s note
The Mnemonicon’s character-voice mode is built on top of Sedasoft’s siteengine_ai. When asked to speak as Arthur, Ford, Marvin, Zaphod, or Slartibartfast, the device retrieves the relevant passages from Adams’s published text and channels them. Quotations that exist in the published Hitchhiker’s books and related material are quoted as such; lines marked (Mnemonicon, speculation mode) are synthesised in-character but were not written by Adams.
For fictional characters who never wrote anything in life, a third mode applies: scenario mode, in which the writer sets a hypothetical scene from the character’s universe (“Zaphod at a Ford Prefect Earth party tries Marmite and hates it”) and the Mnemonicon improvises the character’s reaction in the author’s voice. Scenario-mode passages are entirely invented within the author’s universe and are flagged inline with *(Mnemonicon, scenario mode)*. They are not drawn from any specific Adams passage and should not be cited as such. The Zaphod section above is the only scenario-mode section in this article; everything else is either grounded retrieval or labelled speculation.
The crumpets-with-Marmite reference from Arthur is real, drawn from Mostly Harmless. The “brain the size of a planet” and “call that job satisfaction” from Marvin are canonical lines. The Milliways arrival, the fifteen years of Ford’s Earth research, the “Mostly harmless” entry, Slartibartfast’s fjord obsession and Norway award, and his love of designing coastlines, are all Adams’s own text. The Marmite-loving-planet description and the panel-specific dialogue are Mnemonicon syntheses, written in the characters’ voices but not from any specific Adams passage.
Nothing in this article should be cited as something the actual Douglas Adams wrote. It is, as always, what a careful machine produces when asked to channel the people who can no longer speak for themselves, with the speculation flagged honestly throughout.
For full background on the Marmite Mnemonicon, including who built it (Sedasoft’s siteengine_ai, available at https://sedasoft.com), and how the grounded versus hypothesised mechanic works, see the introduction piece.
Next into the Mnemonicon, once Sedasoft have fixed an embedding-dimension issue that is keeping Pratchett offline, will be Sir Terry Pratchett on Marmite versus dwarf bread. After that, Shakespeare with character interludes from Falstaff. Possibly Holmes, when Conan Doyle gets his turn.
