Post #2653595

2026-04-18 18:55 UTC

@pcdevil@mastodon.social True story: that was a (happy) coincidence & didn’t happen on purpose 😬 If you check your copy (I mean, you did buy it, right? 🙂), you’ll see that the book is ordered alphabetically within each of three sections: solar system, Milky Way, & extragalactic. That’s by fiat of the publisher, so I had no choice about where Betelgeuse ended up, although perhaps Frankie & Benjy had something to do with it. That said, I was very happy when I saw how it turned out 🤷‍♂️

Replies (1)

@markmccaughrean@mastodon.social 2026-04-18 18:59

@pcdevil@mastodon.social And Betelgeuse wasn’t even going to be in the book, as there’s no high-res picture of it. But the distributor requested it, not because of the Tim Burton film as I initially suspected, but because of the HHGTTG connection via Ford Prefect. That was a very good reason, & when I remembered I had made a good drift & defocus photo of Orion, that sealed the deal 🙂

Open ##2653596