Person from Porlock

You always knew when summer had arrived when you could smell burnt brakes!

Saw more than the occasional jackknifed lorry as well on that hill

Raced down Porlock Hill on my Raleigh racer when I was 15. Walked it back up... second only to Telegraph Hill on the A38 - now that was stupid.

"Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" by Douglas Adams.

See Ray Bradbury's short story, "A Miracle of Rare Device".

EDIT: The Ray Bradbury Theater adaptation: https://youtu.be/2Ro9K9MWc7g

Some Piers Anthony series? the ones about the twinned sci-fi/fantasy world?

EDIT: a quick search tells me "Apprentice Adept" is the name of the series I'm thinking of.

Greg Bear's fantasy "The Infinity Concerto" revolves around a series of attempts to transmit Songs Of Power to Earth; Kubla Kahn was one, and the Person from Porlock was sent by a rival faction who wanted to send a different Song of Power. Had it been written down in full it would have changed the world in mysterious, magical ways.

It is indeed in the first paragraph of the article mentioned that "person from Porlock" can also be referred to as "man from Porlock", or just "Porlock"

The exact quote is on the page linked, but here it is, with Coleridge writing about himself in the third person:

> On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!