Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything
The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is numeric in Douglas Adams' series The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. In the story, a "simple answer" to The Ultimate Question is requested from the computer Deep Thought, specially built for this purpose. It takes Deep Thought 7½ million years to compute and check the answer, which turns out to be 42. Unfortunately, The Ultimate Question itself is unknown.
When asked to produce The Ultimate Question, the computer says that it cannot; however, it can help design an even more powerful computer (the Earth) that can. The programmers then embark on a further, ultimately futile, ten-million-year program to discover The Ultimate Question, a process that is hindered after eight million years by the unexpected arrival on Earth of the Golgafrinchans and then ruined completely, five minutes before completion, when the Earth is destroyed by the Vogons, to make way for a new Hyperspace Bypass.
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The search for The Ultimate Question
In the story, the Deep Thought computer has calculated the answer to the ultimate question to be 42. It tells the programmers that they should have been more specific in the question they had asked. It goes on to tell them that it will design a new "greater computer" to find this question. This new computer will incorporate living beings in the "computational matrix" and compute The Ultimate Question. The new computer is discovered to be the Earth, which the pan-dimensional creators occupy as supervisors by taking on the form of mice. At the beginning of the story, the Earth is destroyed by a race of beings called the Vogons. This is now discovered to have been just five minutes before the question was formed. The Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of psychiatrists, led by Gag Halfrunt, who feared for the loss of their careers when the meaning of life became known.[1]
Lacking a real question, the mice proposed to use "How many roads must a man walk down?" (from Bob Dylan's protest song "Blowin' in the Wind") as The Ultimate Question for the "5-D chat show and lecture circuit" (in their dimension). One of the pan-dimensional beings called Frankie Mouse admits:
| “ | I mean, yes idealism, yes the dignity of pure research, yes the pursuit of truth in all its forms, but there comes a point I'm afraid where you begin to suspect that if there's any real truth it's that the entire multi-dimensional infinity of the Universe is almost certainly being run by a bunch of maniacs; and if it comes to a choice between spending another ten million years finding that out or on the other hand just taking the money and running, then I for one could do with the exercise.[2] | ” |
Arthur's Scrabble tiles
At the end of the first radio series (and television series, and The Restaurant at the End of the Universe book) Arthur Dent, having escaped the Earth's destruction, potentially has some of the computational matrix in his brain. He attempts to discover The Ultimate Question by extracting it from his brainwave patterns, as abusively[3] suggested by Marvin the Paranoid Android, when a Scrabble-playing caveman spells out FORTY TWO. Arthur pulls random letters from a bag, but only gets the sentence "WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE?"
| “ | "Six by nine. Forty two."
"That's it. That's all there is." "I always thought something was fundamentally wrong with the universe"[1] |
” |
Arthur and Ford are simply forced to accept "What a Wonderful World" the Earth is.[3]
This 'question' is impossible with a standard set of Scrabble, as it has only two Ys. In the TV series[4] and book,[1] the set has been handmade from Arthur's memory; in the radio series Arthur has a "pocket Scrabble set" at Milliways.[2]
The program on the "Earth computer" should have run correctly, but the unexpected arrival of the Golgafrinchans on prehistoric Earth caused input errors into the system - computing (because of the garbage in, garbage out rule) the wrong question - the question in Arthur's subconscious being invalid all along.[1]
Fenchurch had figured out the ultimate question in a small cafe in Rickmansworth just before Earth's destruction,[4] but lost her memory of what it was in the universe where Earth survived.[5]
The exclusion philosophy
The exclusion philosophy first appeared in Fit the Seventh of the radio series, on Christmas Eve, 1978:
| “ | Narrator: There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened. There is a third theory which suggests that both of the first two theories were concocted by a wily editor of The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy in order to increase the universal level of uncertainty and paranoia and so boost the sales of the Guide. This last theory is of course the most convincing as The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy is the only book in the whole of the known universe to have the words DON'T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on the cover.[2] |
” |
The first two theories start the second novel (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) and are confirmed at the close of the third (Life, the Universe and Everything) where Arthur encounters Prak (played on radio's The Tertiary Phase by the actor who was Arthur Dent in the 1 May to 9 May 1979[6] stage show"[6]). A Krikkit-robot caused a massive overdose of a truth serum to be accidentally administered to Prak, who was then sworn to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" which he did unstoppably. Prak confirms that 42 is indeed The Ultimate Answer, and confirms that it is impossible for both The Ultimate Answer and The Ultimate Question to be known about in the same universe (compare the uncertainty principle) as they will cancel each other out and take the Universe with them to be replaced by something even more bizarre (as described in the first theory) and that it may have already happened (as described in the second).[7]
The final 42 resolution
At the end of Mostly Harmless, the fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitch-Hiker's Trilogy, there is a final reference as Arthur and Ford are dropped off at Club Beta:
| “ | 'Just there, number forty two,' shouted Ford Prefect to the taxi-driver. 'Right here!'[8] | ” |
The entire Earth (in every version of the Whole Sort of General Mishmash) is destroyed by the Grebulon Leader in a "most terrible catastrophe"[8] soon after this final 42 reference.
Adams and the choice of the number 42
Douglas Adams was asked many times during his career why he chose the number 42. Many theories were proposed,[9] but he rejected them all. On November 3, 1993, he gave an answer[10] on alt.fan.douglas-adams:
| “ | The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, an ordinary, smallish number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, base thirteen, Tibetan monks are all complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, stared into the garden and thought '42 will do.' I typed it out. End of story. | ” |
Adams described his choice as
| “ | A completely ordinary number, a number not just divisible by two but also six and seven. In fact it's the sort of number that you could, without any fear, introduce to your parents.[2] | ” |
Despite this, there is evidence of other explanations.
Base 13
Some readers noticed that 613 × 913 = 4213 (using base 13). Douglas Adams later joked about this observation, saying:[11]
| “ | I may be a sorry case, but I don't write jokes in base 13. | ” |
Video Arts theory
Whilst 42 was a number with no hidden meaning, Adams explained in more detail in an interview with Iain Johnstone of BBC Radio 4 (recorded in 1998 though never broadcast[12]) to celebrate the first radio broadcast's 20th anniversary. Having decided it should be a number, he tried to think what an "ordinary number" should be. He ruled out non-integers, then he remembered having worked as a "prop-borrower" for John Cleese on his Video Arts training videos.
Cleese needed a funny number for the punchline to a sketch involving a bank teller (himself) and a customer (Tim Brooke-Taylor). Adams believed that the number that Cleese came up with was 42 and he decided to use it.[13]
The 1977 Burkiss Way: 42 Logical Positivism Avenue
Adams had also written a sketch for The Burkiss Way called "42 Logical Positivism Avenue", broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on 12 January 1977[14] - 14 months before the Hitchhiker's Guide first broadcast "42" in fit the fourth, 29 March 1978.[2]
Radio Interview with Douglas Adams
in January 2000, in response to a panelist's "Where does the number 42 come from?" on the radio show "Book Club" Adams explained that he was
| “ | on his way to work one morning, whilst still writing the scene, and was thinking about what the actual answer should be. He eventually decided that it should be something that made no sense whatsoever- a number, and a mundane one at that. And that is how he arrived at the number 42, completely at random." | ” |
Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry, a friend of Adams, claims that Adams told him "exactly why 42", and that the reason is[15]
| “ | fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it, completely obvious. | ” |
However, Fry says that he has vowed not to tell anyone the secret, and that it must go with him to the grave.
John Lloyd
John Lloyd, Adams' collaborator on The Meaning of Liff and two Hitchhikers fits said that Douglas has called 42[16]
| “ | The funniest of the two digit numbers | ” |
42 puzzle
The 42 Puzzle is a game devised by Douglas Adams in 1994 for the United States series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy books. The puzzle is an illustration consisting of 42 multi-coloured balls, in 7 columns and 6 rows. Douglas Adams has said,
| “ | Everybody was looking for hidden meanings and puzzles and significances in what I had written (like 'is it significant that 6 * 9 is 42 in base 13?'. As if.) So I thought that just for a change I would actually construct a puzzle and see how many people solved it. Of course, nobody paid it any attention. I think that's terribly significant."[17] | ” |
In the puzzle the question is unknown, but the answer is already known to be 42.
The puzzle first appeared in The Illustrated Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was later incorporated into the covers of all five reprinted "Hitchhiker's" novels in the United States.
Six of the solutions are:[18]
 |
||
| How many spheres are in the diagram? (six rows of seven is 42) | What position in the grid does the computer that calculates the Question to the Ultimate Answer (the Earth) occupy? (42) | The barcode is the number 42 as an Interleaved 2 of 5 barcode |
| Considering red-hued spheres (red, purple, orange, black) as a '1' and those without as a '0', what number does each line represent in decimal form? (In binary, each line reads '0101010', or '42' in decimal form.) | What number do the blue-tinted spheres (blue, green, purple, black) spell out? (Similar to a color blindness test.) (42) | What number is represented by Roman numerals spelled out by the yellow-tinted spheres (yellow, orange, green, black) in the first three rows? (XLII = 42) |
You also might notice the rock formation in the background is infact the number 42 at a slight angle.
Further reading
Smith, Mol (2007). 42 - The Answer to Life, The Universe, and Everything. Maurice Smith. pp. 178 pages. ISBN 978-0-9557-1370-5.
See also
- 42 (number)
- Mathematical constants, such as:
- Meaning of life
- Monty Python's The Meaning of Life
- Universal constants, for example:
- Gravitational constant
- Planck's constant
- Speed of light
- The Meaning of Liff
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Douglas Adams (1 January 1980). The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. ISBN 0-345-39181-0.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 The Original Hitchhiker Radio Scripts. Douglas Adams, edited by Geoffrey Perkins. Pan Books, London. 1985. ISBN 0-330-29288-9
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (TV series) Episode Six
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Douglas Adams. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. ISBN 0-330-25864-8.
- ↑ Douglas Adams. So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. ISBN ISBN 0-330-28700-1.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Neil Gaiman (1987). DON'T PANIC - the official Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy Companion. Titan Books. ISBN 1852860138.
- ↑ Douglas Adams. Life, the Universe and Everything. ISBN 0-330-26738-8.
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 Douglas Adams (1992). Mostly Harmless. ISBN ISBN 0-330-32311-3.
- ↑ "In Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, 42 is the number from which all meaning could be derived.". CIO (Chief Information Officer) Magazine (2007-04-03). Retrieved on 2008-03-03.
- ↑ "Why 42 ? - alt.fan.douglas-adams - Google Groups". Retrieved on 2007-09-01.
- ↑ "BBC - h2g2 - A Conversation Forum". Retrieved on 2007-09-04.
- ↑ This interview is contained on Douglas Adams's Guide to The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC Cassette ISBN 0-563-55236-0) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Collectors Edition (BBC CD ISBN 0-563-47702-4)
- ↑ Several attempts by fans to find this particular video have been unsuccessful and it is possible it may never have been published or has since been deleted from use).
- ↑ This is found on the Douglas Adams at the BBC CD set (ISBN 0-563-49404-2)
- ↑ "BBC News - Magazine - What on earth is 42?". Retrieved on 2008-03-22.
- ↑ John Lloyd speaking at the 30th Anniversary Hitchhiker's recording at Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture on Wednesday 12th March 2008 at The Royal Geographical Society
- ↑ "Cool questions and answers with Douglas Adams". Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
- ↑ "4.8 Probable Solution to the Ill Guide Puzzle (Douglas Adams)". Retrieved on 2007-08-19.
External links
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