I love the idea, but I feel like I have to say that I’ve got a pretty solid idea of what the total perspective vortex would look like for someone being subjected to it. When I first read the books I immediately had a visual and that has never changed when I’ve read them again (and again…).
I’m not sure what that says about either of us, but I would say that your definitive “quite hard to visualise” statement is very much subjective.
Vortex may be not so much but there are other hard to visualize things. I am on the third book, and I have no idea what Beeblebrox's two heads look like. Second head is often mentioned in passing. Sometimes its mentioned as its always there, other times it feels like its just pops out of somewhere, otherwise, it's like it doesn't exist.
There is the scene when they see themselves on the beach on first rescue by the ship. That was hard to grasp. Or the insides of the ship itself, the bridge, the panels etc. Also that black ship they stole.
But may be its just me having a hard time with these concepts.
It's not just about scene being difficult to visualize, even if I can see them in my head, I want to see them on paper too because those thing excite me.
We have alt text for images, you want alt images for text.
You can see other people's interpretation of Zaphod's two heads by watching the BBC HHGTTG show (Mark Wing-Davey) or the movie (Sam Rockwell), among other renditions, which offer completely different interpretations, none of them canonical (not the least of which is because there was no canonical version of HHGTTG according to DA). I'm sure there are multitudes of fan art for HHGTTG on deviantart. Having AI generate an image doesn't offer any more "official" visualization.
Zaphod's second head is mentioned just as much is warranted. If a character has a limp or a crazy haircut it is not mentioned every time, because it has nothing to do with what is going on. And the book mentions that one head is often distracted/asleep, so it sounds like you do have a good visual of what his two heads are like.
While I understand that people think differently and some people are more visual thinkers, a good portion of the concepts expressed through writing are meant to be mindfucks that are difficult to express visually. A picture may be worth a thousand words, but the meat of writing is usually not the visual representation of its concepts. That's a great thing about writing: you can fill in the visuals yourself and it's fodder for fans to discuss.
(BTW, Hotblack Desiato's ship would just be black. Your eyes couldn't focus on it. Even the controls were black labels on a black background. There is nothing here to visualize other than, well, blackness).
I agree that people interpret things differently and visualise differently and that is my point. I want to see the concept from my head in a solid visual form. Some concepts that are not clear, like those that I mentioned having trouble with, I want to see any kind of visual representation at all. I will probably not like some of those, but there these tools can help generate a bunch of variations tailored specifically for me. I can choose one and carry on with that. I can come back and more details to that as I read further.
If someone can show me exactly what I am thinking of, won't that be amazing.
Again, I have to disagree - which I suppose reinforces the whole subjectivity angle. I was positive that Zaphod’s two heads were side-by-side to the extent that it pissed me off a fair bit in the most recent movie adaption (among, let’s face it, plenty of other candidates).
I don’t know if the “layout” of the heads is mentioned or not in the books - I’d have to go back and check - but it’s often quite jarring when a book becomes a movie and doesn’t match my inner vision (and how incredibly unthoughtful of them, to boot).
I’m not sure what that says about either of us, but I would say that your definitive “quite hard to visualise” statement is very much subjective.