Hitchhiker's Guide Turns 30

XaN-ASMoDi writes "Yesterday saw the 30th anniversary of the very first broadcast of Douglas Adam's seminal work, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", to mark this, Mark Vernon has written an article for the BBC News Magazine on the answer to The Question. 'It's 30 years since Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made its debut on BBC radio, but its most famous mystery is still waiting to be resolved...'"

Maybe my memory's failing me...

[Spazholio]

...but wasn't the Ultimate Question "What is six times nine?" - thus proving that something is fundamentally broken with the universe? I remember these from the radio scripts, which were the first incarnation of HHGTTG.

Re:Maybe my memory's failing me...

[Jim Hall]

That was the Question that came out of Arthur's brain, when pulling random letters from the Scrabble tile bag in pre-historic Earth. But as Ford and Arthur pointed out just before they did so, Arthur escaped from the Earth just before his planet was destroyed. So whatever comes out probably won't be the correct Question, but it should be close.

And in fact, 6 x 7 = 42, so 6 x 9 was off by 2. :-)

Re:Maybe my memory's failing me...

[tambo]

And in fact, 6 x 7 = 42, so 6 x 9 was off by 2. :-)

Yeah, but that couldn't be the Ultimate Question. As it's defined in HGTTG, it's practically impossible to derive the Answer from the Question, or vice versa. (Yet the Answer is fully responsive to the Question.)

Actually, the Question is presented in the books. There's a conversation between Marvin and a mattress creature on Squornshellous Zeta in which - well, read it for yourself [geocities.com]. It's right there, plain as day.

My geek duties for the day having been satisfied, I shall now go have breakfast... ;)

- David Stein

Re:

[TheThiefMaster]

Are you referring to "Think of a number, any number."?
For which "Er, five" is the wrong answer?

Douglas Adams spells it all out, in various places

[MarkusQ]

Correct.

The ultimate question is "Think of a number, any number" to which the correct answer is "42".

Which immediately suggests such as penultimate questions: "Why is that the ultimate question?" "Why does it have a correct answer?" and "Why is 42 the correct answer?"

Which D.A. explained quite succinctly by saying "The road to wisdom is infinitely long. It doesn't matter which end you start at." --MarkusQ

Re:

[Pluvius]

Too bad "Think of a number, any number" isn't a question, otherwise this solution would've been fairly elegant.

Personally, I agree with the idea that 42 is God's phone number, since one of the scientists complained that all their arguing about His existence would be pointless if Deep Thought turned out to give that to them the next day. Dramatic irony, as it were.

Rob

Re:Douglas Adams spells it all out, in various pla

[masterzora]

Doesn't the part where "Think of a number, any number" is not a question dissuade you from thinking it's the Ultimate Question?

Re:

[Thornae]

Well, I'm glad that someone got it before I had to get all curmudgeonly.

"Think of a number. Any number at all."
"Three" - this being the highest number that mattresses could count to.
"Wrong. See?"

(Apologies for typos - quoted entirely from 10 years on memory).

Marvin reveals all! How could you not get that?!

And, yes, it's a lame Question to the Answer. What, you were expecting maybe Gödel?

Re:

[HTH NE1]

The quotes from the book "Life, the Universe, and Everything", first Marvin:

"I gave a speech once," he said suddenly, and apparently unconnectedly. "You may not instantly see why I bring the subject up, but that is because my mind works so phenomenally fast, and I am at a rough estimate thirty billion times more intelligent than you. Let me give you an example. Think of a number, any number."

"Er, five," said the mattress.

"Wrong," said Marvin. "You see?"

The mattress was much impressed by this and realized that it was in the presence of a not unremarkable mind. It willomied along its entire length, sending excited little ripples through its shallow algae-covered pool.

And then Eddie:

When it became clear that Prak could not be stopped, that here was truth in its absolute and final form, the court was cleared.

Not only cleared, it was sealed up, with Prak still in it. Steel walls were erected around it, and, just to be on the safe side, barbed wire, electric fences, crocodile swamps and three major armies were installed, so that no one would ever have to hear Prak speak.

"That's a pity," said Arthur. "I'd like to hear what he had to say. Presumably he would know what the Ultimate Question to the Ultimate Answer is. It's always bothered me that we never found out."

"Think of a number," said the computer, "any number."

Arthur told the computer the telephone number of King's Cross railway station passenger inquiries, on the grounds that it must have some function, and this might turn out to be it.

And in this case, Eddie was responding directly to Arthur's query about the question and answer.

And it is so Douglas Adams' style to tell you something at the start of a book and bring it back for the very end. He did it again in "Mostly Harmless" wrt Stavro Mueller and his clubs. He did it in "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" with the sofa. IIRC, even the computer game for THHGTTG requires that you do somet

Re:Maybe my memory's failing me...

[KokorHekkus]

Actually... 6 x 9 is 42. That is, if you use base 13 instead of base 10.

Re:Maybe my memory's failing me...

[TheThiefMaster]

Except that Douglas Adams has said "I don't write jokes in base 13".

It's base 10, and intended to be wrong, to allow the punchline of "I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong about the universe".

Re:

[cp.tar]

Except that Douglas Adams has said "I don't write jokes in base 13".

It's base 10, and intended to be wrong, to allow the punchline of "I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong about the universe".

What, base 13 isn't fundamentally wrong enough for your tastes, huh?

Re:

[BeerCat]

One of my friends (also named Douglas, something that amused Douglas Adams when he was signing a book - "To Douglas from Douglas") pointed out the base 13 connection to Adams, which met with a bemused response at the time (and a mention in the forward to the book of the radio scripts to all the geek fans who had come up with that one)

Re:Maybe my memory's failing me...

[tverbeek]

But nobody writes jokes in base 13.

I do. They're so funny that one of my jokes plus 79 cents will pay for a 1-dollar bus fare.

Re:Maybe my memory's failing me...

[interactive_civilian]

I thought it was meant to show that the Golgafrinchans (sp?) did, in fact, mess up the program when they crashed on prehistoric earth, and Arthur was a last generation product of that bug...

Re:

[SanityInAnarchy]

Oh, it works. You just have to do it in base 13.

The answer..

[bigattichouse]

wasn't 6*9, its that it is impossible to know the question and answer in the same universe, and doing so will cause the universe to be replaced by one infinitely more strange, and that this has possibly already happened.

Re:

[rucs_hack]

6*9 was the proof that the arrival of the GolgaFrinchans messed up the experiment in prehistory.

The proper way to celibrate

[edwardpickman]

Raise a pan galactic gargle blaster to the late Douglas Adams for 30 years of bizarre geek humor.

Re:The proper way to celibrate

[phoenixwade]

Raise a pan galactic gargle blaster to the late Douglas Adams for 30 years of bizarre geek humor.

I agree, besides, I haven't been hit in the head with a lemon peel wrapped brick in ages......

Re:

[BeerCat]

Raise a pan galactic gargle blaster to the late Douglas Adams for 30 years of bizarre geek humor.

I agree, besides, I haven't been hit in the head with a lemon peel wrapped brick in ages......

"It's unpleasantly like being drunk"

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk"

"Ask a glass of water"

Re:

[cheater512]

Its a *gold* brick for heavens sakes.
There is no point in bashing your brains out unless its made out of gold! :P

Re:

[rucs_hack]

I prefer that old Janx Spirit personally.

All these people mourning the loss of Gygax know how us H2G2 fans felt the day we heard the news of Douglas's passing.

Then to finally read the first three chapters of Salmon of Doubt was a double blow, because it was shaping up to be one of his finest books. /sob

Re:The proper way to celibrate

[hey!]

But it's more than just geek humor.

Adams didn't just poke fun at his characters, he wrote with a real sympathy for them. Well, just look at the man, he was a person who cared about things like the extinction of bizarre species that the vast majority of humanity has never heard of, much less seen for themselves. Empathy. That's the secret of reaching the apex of funniness. When the reader in his imagination steps into a character's shoes, he takes the metaphorical pies in the face personally.

Adams wrote as if the way the universe is mattered.

He also wrote as if the way the universe is happens to be funny.

The fact that the way things are both matters and is funny isn't exactly funny itself. Or rather it's very funny, and it's very something else, which there isn't a perfect word for. To capture that something else, you'd have to write a bunch of books.

Which is just what Douglas Adams did.

Re:

[Icarus1919]

You're absolutely right. Kurt Vonnegut was funny for all the same reasons.

Re:The proper way to celibrate

[Telvin_3d]

For anyone who cares, there is a club in Ottawa, Ontario called the Zaphod Beeblebrox, and yes, they do sell Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster.

Re:

[m0nkyman]

And some of the staff might have low digit Slashdot UID's. ;)

Re:The proper way to celibrate

[gnick]

...got to go there if you truly adore this book.

Like all good ./ers, I of course love the books. But, I find the original radio show very enjoyable and have listened to it far more times than I've read Hitchhiker's. In case you weren't aware, the BBC rounded out the radio show a couple of years back using as many as possible of the original cast as possible. All available on CD, for those who are interested.

Much fun!

Re:

[Mercano]

Plus they managed to tack on a bit of an epilogue or three, softening the blow that is the original ending of Mostly Harmless, and explaining where the Lintillas went.

Re:

[gnick]

who are these dot-slashers of which you speak?

dot-slasher:
1: A person who trolls a particular online forum occasionally posting comments. Often quite nerdy, with tendencies toward typos, poor proof-reading, and bouts of spelling-nazism.
SYN: ./er, /.er, slashdotter
ANT: digger, b-tard

Re:

[nogginthenog]

Or maybe a Jynnan Tonnyx?

Re:

[zeromorph]

As a practitioner of the bitterly divided and unhappy discipline of structural linguistics I'll raise a glass of ouisghian zodah for him today.

Rubbish article

[hairykrishna]

The guy seems to miss the point entirely, make vague spiritual overtones and I wonder if has even read the books. Was he one of the scriptwriters for the hitchikers movie?

Re:Rubbish article

[rucs_hack]

Actually, Douglas himself wrote a lot of the stuff for the Movie. He invented the new character Humma Kavula as well.

In fact if you read much of his stuff, including interviews (I have everything its possible to get in audio form), you learn that he definitely did not want the movie to be a copy of either the book or the radio series. Actually it never could be a copy of the radio series, because there were all sorts of problems over what Douglas had the right to use.

It's not fashionable to like the H2G2 movie, but I enjoyed it hugely. Had it been an exact rehash of the same old stuff I'd have been annoyed. I wanted to not know what was going on for as much of the film as possible. Casting Mos Def as Ford Prefect was an inspired move, he performed the role really well. I'm not so sure about Sam Rockwell as Zaphod, but we can't have everything.

And Marvin? Well he was amazing. I never did understand why such an advanced robot should look like the one in the tv series. The one in the movie was much closer to my mental image of the robot then I expected.

Re:

[AaronLawrence]

Sure, it was quite well produced, the new ideas had some potential, and everyone was ... well... earnest. But it just wasn't very funny. Maybe Adams just wasn't very good at visual humour, and they couldn't fit the literary humour into a movie. Maybe they needed someone who did understand visual humour to translate the spirit of HHGG to a movie.

Re:

[rucs_hack]

Yes, I suppose it wasn't too funny. Mind you, the only version of H2G2 to ever make me seriously laugh was the radio series (still does, and I must have listened to it hundreds of times over the years), so I wasn't too bothered, I just watch the film to enjoy it.

I'm not especially keen on the H2G2 books either, although I read them. That said, I'm currently desperately hoping that my local bookshop doesn't sell the first edition H2G2 hardcover they have. If someone comes in with a big offer, I'm boned,

His

Re:

[BeerCat]

The movie wasn't al bad - the last half hour or so (presumably when the studio execs started to panic and let the director just get on with it) had the right tone.

The best bit, though, was the Monty Python "Meaning of Life" homage that was the opening sequence - by the looks of things, most of the budget went on that (in the same way that the "Every Sperm is Sacred" opening number in "Meaning of Life" used up 80% of that film's budget.) Just the kind of silly, thumbing nose at authority gimmick that DNA wou

Re:

[hairykrishna]

We'll have to agree to disagree. I know Douglas wrote a lot of movie material but they had also been trying and failing to make it for a long time because it didn't get his approval. He died, suddenly it got made.

I didn't want a carbon copy of the books. What annoyed me were the sections taken from the books and changed to make them less funny. Why? The Trillian love interest was badly done too in my opinion. It wasn't all bad; the Steven Fry voiced guide sections were great. Marvin was quite well done.

Re:

[robably]

The guy seems to miss the point entirely, make vague spiritual overtones...

"He began his professional life as a priest in the Church of England" (from his web site [markvernon.com]).

Articles about anniversaries of stuff are generally filler - it's doubly meaningless when the thing in question hasn't been continuously running for that time. I like the Guide in all its incarnations, but I can't see any significance in it being 30 years since it was first broadcast, and the radio show is probably the least known aspect of i

Re:

[MadMidnightBomber]

The movie was great - Mos Def was a revelation as Ford, Arthur was perfectly cast and it kept to the old tradition of being completely different to *any* previous version. (I've heard the radio series, read various books, and watched the BBC TV production before seeing the movie.)

Re:

[cheater512]

The casting was perfect but the plot didnt live up to expectations.

The theme song was brilliant though. :)
I couldnt have imagined a better song for it.

Re:Rubbish article

[hey!]

Well, I've often reflected that only an atheist could be as funny as Douglas Adams, which in a sense makes his books spiritual.

It's not that atheists are automatically funny, quite the opposite. Most are drearily dull as any priest. If you want to be a bore, be deeply and earnestly concerned that other people might commit, speak, or think an error.

For Adams, life consists of a series of wrong turns that lead you to places you never intended to be. In that he's not too far from the most interesting religious thinkers; the Buddha once compared his teaching to a raft you might throw together to cross a river. Once you're over, you have no use for it, so you throw it away. In Adams books, you might say the characters are constantly struggling with the question of "why am I here?" because they're never quite where they expected to go.

Given the perverse randomness of the universe, it's rather quixotic to be obsessed with the errors of thought other people make. Somehow, it all feels like a big mistake, at least if you're paying attention.

This book will live forever

[INeededALogin]

Just look at the posts. People asking why 42, 6*9 is the answer, knowing both the question and answer will destroy the universe. It is obvious that Douglas Adams work will live forever. I only recently read the books, but I gave them to a friend's kid(12ish) and he loved it, his 15 year old brother loved it and the younger 7 year old loved it. It is just one of those books that is fun to read, fun to talk about and fun to celebrate the culture that it has created.

Do you know where your towel is?

Re:This book will live forever

[ucblockhead]

It is unfortunate that the original radio series isn't as widely spread. The books are great, but the radio series is even better.

Re:

[rucs_hack]

Its easy to get, but in my experience people think he only did the books, then the tv series. It's very hard not to get all 'call yourself a fan!' on them.

Unless you were around at the time they were being broadcast, it probably wouldn't be apparent. Not sure though, I'm pretty certain it mentions 'adapted from the radio series' on several of my copies (yup, I have every version of the paperbacks I can find).

I was lucky to be at home, upstairs, and trying to find something interesting on the radio just minu

Re:

[zmollusc]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitch-Hikers-Guide-Galaxy-Primary/dp/0563477881 [amazon.co.uk]

The meaning of the answer is obvious

[LecheryJesus]

Its the average IQ of a creationist.

Flame away :P

Re:The meaning of the answer is obvious

[matt me]

Its the average IQ of a creationist.

Mod ++funny, because in hitch-hiker, the Earth *was* created!

Oh bollocks

[localroger]

It shows that seeking numerical answers to questions of meaning is itself the problem. Digits, like a four and a two, can no more do it than a string of digits could represent the poetry of Shakespeare.

I guess this guy has never seen the shirt that says "It's all ones and zeroes." Or heard of ASCII.

Poetry

[Fuzzums]

It's always funny to find some Vogon poetry commented in a piece of ancient code.

And the question is:

[Bob Hearn]

How many squares are there on a go board? [ihug.co.nz]

Actually...

[uxbn_kuribo]

Call me when the series turns 42.

42nd Post !

[Dave21212]

I tried to post the answer, but the lameness filter won't allow it.

only 30?

[davidwr]

The copyrights should expire just after dinner [wikipedia.org].

42nd

[phrostie]

now a real fan would be holding out for the year, 2020. that's when it turns 42.

My theory...

[itsdapead]

...is that Adams was referring to the pivotal clause #42 of the official rules for the game Mornington Crescent (using the pre-Livingstone concordance, obviously, since Adams was writing in 1978) - which also explains the significance of Fenchurch Street Station in the later books. Regular listeners to BBC Radio 4 (on which the original radio versions of HHGTTG were broadcast) will immediately grasp how following this philosophy allows the follower to confidently navigate the complexities and contradictions of life - but slashdotters from the USA and elsewhere may need to look it up.

Of course, it could be that Adams was merely satirising humanity's strange obsession with seeking simplistic answers without actually understanding the question - but that seems unlikely considering the masses of evidence for a deeper numerological significance.

DNA actually said

[Kupfernigk]

That he just made it up as a suitably non-sequitur answer. In fact, there are 42 Laws of Cricket, and cricket features heavily as a key plot mover in HHGG. Fenchurch is easily explained. It's a joke about people who name their offspring after where they think they were conceived (e.g. Brooklyn?). Fenchurch Street was the grubbiest and most dismal of the London railway termini at the time, and that was saying a lot. To have a particularly beautiful (and randy) woman conceived by her parents at Fenchurch St.

Re:

[itsdapead]

Unless Douglas was playing with an early Whitesmiths edition of course, but then rule #42 is quite different and I fail to see how it could apply to your comment concerning Fenchurch St.

Did you just here a whooshing noise by any chance? Adams is continuing the joke about the answer being corrupted by the arrival of the Golgafrinchans. Fenchurch St doesn't actually have a London Underground station, and clause #42 of Whitesmiths restricts the "10 minute walk" rule to two-tailed games played under the Hammersmith bidding protocols (which obviously rarely happens). Trying to play "Fenchurch St" as a terminating bid is a sterotypical mistake by amateur players in much the same way as "6 x

Other news

[Jabbrwokk]

"The 30th anniversary celebrations were accompanied by Vogon poetry readings over BBC radio. In other news, the suicide rate rose sharply across London and surrounding areas..."

Radio Show

[hansamurai]

If you've never listened to the radio show, I would highly recommend it. The cast is truly stellar and does a terrific job reading the phases. The most interesting thing about the radio series is that the first two phases were produced back in the last 70's and then they brought just about the entire cast back together ~25 years later to do the last three phases.

I loved the radio series so much that I was pumped when I got to see Simon Jones (Arthur Dent in both the radio and TV series) perform in Minneap

2020 Anyone?

[mlwmohawk]

In 2020, HHGTG will be 42 years old. I find it odd how much of Douglas Adams' stuff just works out neatly.

Harrods Earl Grey No. 42

[QuasEye]

Harrods has a brand of Earl Grey known as No. 42. (Review here [teaviews.com]). Given that DNA was very particular about his tea, it's not that much of a stretch that the number was floating around in the back of his mind for that very reason.

Adams *did* reveal the "secret" behind 42

[Jugalator]

FTA:

Douglas Adams never revealed the secret of number 42

http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.douglas-adams/msg/d1064f7b27808692

Most famous mystery?

[Foehg]

Why all this hubbub about the question? I'm still waiting for the REAL suspense to be resolved... who sustained a minor injury on their forearm?

At last, the question!

[isomeme]

"How old is HHttG, in base 14?"

Re:

[Wonko the Sane]

I though that was explained in a later book. Those petunias were the reincarnation of that same entity that kept getting killed by Arthur.

Re:if we knew

[maxwell demon]

But the books later reveal the reason. It's Agrajag, who has been killed by Arthur many times.

Re:

[ray-auch]

ah, but we do know the answer to that one... or at least we do if we read the books.

Re:

[Mercano]

Its covered in the Tertiary Phase of the the radio series, too, with Douglas Adams himself providing the voice of Agrajag. Apparently, he read for an audio book version of Life, the Universe, and Everything, so they lifted the audio and worked in Simon Jones's lines. He may also show up in the episode four of the Quintessential Phase at Stavromula Beta.

Re:

[hendersj]

"May also"? Um, *did* is more like. Quintessential Phase has been finished for a couple of years, available on CD.

Re:

[ChiefNX]

They just picked it because it was the funniest number they could think of.

It created its own nerdy significance. :)

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[hendersj]

This is correct. According to every official source (and written by Adams himself), he said he needed a funny number, looked out the window, and said "yeah, 42, that's an ordinary number", wrote it down and continued writing.

There was no deep hidden meaning in the selection at all.

RIP, Douglas, we miss you.

Re:

[Z00L00K]

Since the introduction in the Hitchhikers Guide it has become the least randomly selected number between 0 and 100.

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[tverbeek]

When I was in middle school I devised a rule set for determining the most "random"* number between 0 and 100. The guiding principle was that it had to be a number with no obvious significance. Any number with a strong popular "meaning" was out, so no 13, 52, 69. It couldn't be particularly large or small, so anything less than 10 or greater than 90 was out. Multiples of 10 were out, as were their immediate neighbors. So were numbers halfway between multiples of 10. Or numbers in the 50s or 60s (too close to the overall midpoint). Even numbers (and digits) were insufficiently odd, and composite numbers in general seemed a little too derivative. This left only two qualifying numbers, and 73 was too close to 3/4 for my tastes. So I concluded that 37 is the most "random" number.

And no, it's not part of my ATM PIN. :)

*Note: I said "random" not random. I know there's a difference.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[hendersj]

One could argue (and probably has, for that matter) that the only reason it's the least "randomly selected number" is because people attribute something special to it because it was picked by Adams as the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything.

If it shows up now in anything in popular media, it's taken as a nod to Adams. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't - but when it isn't, people tend to attribute it as such.

Re:

[Prof.Phreak]

This is correct. According to every official source...

But the very fact that it appeared to him out of thin air may indicate that it has cosmic significance that DNA wasn't aware of.

Re:

[hendersj]

Some people need to make things have cosmic meaning - it doesn't mean they do.

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[Ford Prefect]

A much more important question: do you know where your towel is?

Re:

[zeromorph]

Belgium, man!

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[Ford Prefect]

Belgium, man!

Disconcertingly, the person who many years ago thought it would be a laugh to choose the username 'Ford Prefect' for this new 'Slashdot' thing is now, erm...

Living in Belgium.

Having a disgustingly rude swear-word as part of my address is great, of course. It's just that hardly anyone recognises it as such. :-(

Re:

[zeromorph]

> Living in Belgium.

Belgium! But then, judging from your username, you seem to be a hoopy frood who really knows where his towel is. (I'm an expat in NL, so quite the same unfashionable corner of the universe.)

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[Random BedHead Ed]

Interestingly, the Belgium joke was added to the American edition of Life, the Universe and Everything. In the original British edition the Rory was an award for the most gratuitous use of the word "fuck" in a serious screenplay. Presumably the US publishers asked Adams to change it, so in the American version it's "Belgium." This led to a whole extra passage about how offensive the word Belgium is throughout the galaxy, and how funny it is that Earthicans (that's an unrelated Futurama reference - pay no heed) named a country after it.

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[pdh11]

Interestingly, the Belgium joke was added to the American edition of Life, the Universe and Everything. In the original British edition the Rory was an award for the most gratuitous use of the word "fuck" in a serious screenplay.

Yes, but the Belgium joke actually predates that: it was in the second radio series, from which Life, The Universe And Everything was very loosely adapted. (Zaphod says it when about to fall out of the Nutrimatic cup.)

Peter

Your use of Belgium isn't gratuitous

[mckwant]

No award for you!

Re:

[john83]

That's how it went in original British version of the book. American audiences are, or at least are thought to be, more squeamish.

Re:

[techno-vampire]

I've heard that the whole Belgium thing isn't in the original British edition. It was added to the American one because his American publishers didn't want him using a certain four-letter word. Thus, one of the best bits in that book came from a piece of bowlderism. Don't know if it's true, of course, but if one of Slashdot's British readers could confirm or deny, I'd be grateful.

Re:

[cheater512]

That is correct. I'm a Aussie and I've only read the 'true' British version. :)
It uses 'fuck'.

If it was for those reasons, what does the American version use in book 4?
You know what bit I'm talking about. :)

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[AmIAnAi]

Apparently not. In a BBC article [bbc.co.uk] celebrating 30 years of Hitchhikers, they report that Adams apparently refuted that suggestion:

I don't write jokes in base 13.

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[maxwell demon]

Apparently not. In a BBC article [bbc.co.uk] celebrating 30 years of Hitchhikers, they report that Adams apparently refuted that suggestion:

I don't write jokes in base 13.

Well, maybe the true meaning of that sentence wasn't that he didn't use base 13, but that he didn't mean it as joke ...

Re:

[LordGlenn]

so, 5 is not a prime number?

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[maxwell demon]

Well, 42 is the product of the 2^0th, the 2^1th and the 2^2th prime ...
But maybe it has nothing to do with math, but with the sound of it: "for tea, too." After all, tea plays an important role in the story ...

Time to fall though the earth in minutes

[microbox]

If there were a whole in the Earth and you jumped in it, then 42 minutes later you'd appear momentarily still at the other side of the planet. AFAIK, that's where Douglas Adams got the number 42.

Re:

[Lane.exe]

It's divisible by both one and magic.

Re:

[TFGeditor]

Parent's anwer makes more sense than any other I have read/heard. Whether correct remains open, but an intriguing proposition nonetheless.

Re:

[TFGeditor]

Heh, I noted after posting that my previous comment was number 142, whatever that means in the grand cosmic scheme.

Re:It's not the ultimate meaning...

[Daimanta]

It has many interesting features. Namely:

42 is the product of the first three terms of Sylvester's sequence; like the first four such numbers it is also a primary pseudoperfect number.

It is the sum of the totient function for the first eleven integers.

It is a Catalan number.

It is the reciprocal of a Bernoulli number.

It is conjectured to be the scaling factor in the leading order term of the "sixth moment of the Riemann zeta function".

In base 10, this number is a Harshad number and a self number, while it is a repdigit in base 4 (as 222).

The eight digits of pi beginning from 242,422 places after the decimal point are 42424242.

The first digit (4) taken to the power of the second digit (2) is equal to the second digit (2) taken to the power of the first digit (4): 42 = 24 = 16. It follows clearly that 24 exhibits the same characteristic, and in fact 24 is the only other two-digit non-repdigit number that does. (All two-digit repdigit numbers exhibit this characteristic.)

The number 42 appears in various contexts in Christianity. There are 42 generations (names) in the Gospel of Matthew's version of the Genealogy of Jesus; it is prophesied that for 42 months the Beast will hold dominion over the Earth (Revelation 13:5); 42 men of Beth-azmaveth were counted in the census of men of Israel upon return from exile (Ezra 2:24); God sent bears to maul 42 of the youths who mock Elisha for his baldness (2 Kings 2:23), etc.

42 is the number with which God creates the Universe in Kabalistic tradition.

Re:

[BeerCat]

Which series?

Radio - third series (Tertiary Phase) also good; missed the 4th one, so can't comment

Books - three is good, four is short (because he was locked in a hotel room with only a Mac Plus to write it on, rather than an of his 5 Mac IIs,because the publisher had let him miss too many deadlines already, and wanted a book. any book). Pass on five, unless you like downer endings

Re:

[hendersj]

Book 5 was quite good, in spite of (and even to some extent because of) its "downer ending". There has been speculation that Adams was to write a 6th book that resolved the ending in MH (and there's some material in Salmon of Doubt that supports this) - without giving too much away for those who haven't read it, there was really nothing in the Hitchhiker's universe that couldn't be *undone*, as evidenced by the fact that the Earth returned after being utterly destroyed.

Re:

[greyhueofdoubt]

Ah, a new breakthrough. The HHGTTG is written in little-endian ObjectiveTroll. Thank you so much!

-b