So I’ve read the Hitchhiker’s series, and was curious what your thoughts were on what the big question was.
I’m sure this has been done before, but it wasn’t on the first 2 pages of search, so I figure it’s old enough to start again instead of necro-ing
I was unsure whether this is Great Debates or Cafe Society, so if this is wrong I apologize.
Now that the disclaimers are out of the way, the first theory would be the one explicitly stated in the book “What do you get if you multiply 6 by 9?” This of course does not multiply into 42, implying that the universe does not make sense, and provides a great anticlimax.
My personal theory is that the question is actually “What do you get if you multiply 6 by 7?” because, well, that multiplies to actually be 42. Why then did Dent get it wrong? Well, it is because the Golga-whoziwhatis (The ship full of telepone sanitizers and the like) landed on Earth, and killed the original inhabitants. Dent is the decendent of these telephone sanitizers, and Ford and Dent have a conversation that says that whatever result they get will be twisted by the Golgabarglegargle’s right before they draw the letters of the scrabble board, suggesting that their 6X9 solution to be twisted.
Other theories include the one about 6X9 = 42 if you use base 13, which Douglas Adams himself has rejected “I’m not sad enough to make jokes about base 13,” and one about it being “Pick a number,” because Martin, who knows the question from reading Dent’s brain waves, at one point asks a mattress to pick a number, and when the mattress answers 5, Martin claims that the mattress is wrong.
What do you think? Are there more theories floating around?
Frankly, the entire series is one big anticlimax, with the point being that the universe doesn’t make sense, will never make much sense and it’s downright senseless to expect it’ll make much sense. The only patterns of order we can expect are the purely arbitrary systems of beaurocracy and ritual imposed by ourselves on ourselves.
The truth telling guy - I can’t remember his name - says that the question and the answer are mutually exclusive as well, they can never both be known in the same universe.
So does that mean there is even a question for the answer? Thinking about if, had the makers of Deep Thought worded their question correctly, and asked What is the Question to the matter of Life, The Universe and Everything, I am sure some sort of unanswerable question would have resulted.
If, indeed, the question is, “What is 6 times 9?”, then either:
(1) There is a bug in the program, so that for some reason it can’t do simple arithmetic. (And presumably can’t do more complex stuff, like finding the Ultimate Question, i.e., the Earth was doomed, not because of the Vogon Planning Department, but because of a programmer’s error.)
(2) The computer is working in base-13 arithmetic, where 6 times 9 really is 42.
I’m sure there’s a better answer, but it will take me several millenia to calculate it on a much better computer than the one I have now.
The Earth was destroyed five minutes before coming up with the question. For a planet-sized computer, that’s an eternity.
Personally, I like to think that the ultimate question really is “What do you get when you multiply 6 by 7?”. It would fit in very well with the flavor of the books.
There’s also, of course, the Alice in Wonderland Theory, which points out that the King of Hearts invokes rule 42 to try an have Alice thrown out of court.
Rule 42 being, “All persons more than a mile high must leave the court.”
DNA was reportedly a big Lewis Carroll fan. Make of that what you will. :dubious:
well if i remember right arthur would have been wrong simply because he was descended from the golgafrinchams and not the cavemen that were originally a part of the earth-supercomputers programming. as for the 42 question… it cant be know what the answer and question are in the same univers or the whole thing would collapse and be replaced by something even more confusing.
People, this thing wasn’t intended to be a brain teaser. The Question was “What do you get if you multiply six times nine?” and the answer is 42. It doesn’t work, you’re left to think, because the universe, fundamentally, is just off. By 12. In the universe of Hitchhiker’s, you can’t just puzzle your way into the whole thing making sense, like saying “Oh, it’s base 13.” If the answer isn’t wrong, the joke doesn’t work, and it’d be totally out of keeping for the Ultimate Question and Answer in that universe to be deep, satisfying, correct, or even comprehensible because that universe is none of those things.
And don’t forget that Arthur and company were in Earth’s past with the “bloody useless” Golgafrinchams, thousands of years before the Question to the Answer was due to be determined by the Earth-as-computer. So one of two possibilities occurs to me:
The “what is six times nine” scrabble-bag question is an Earth-computer expression of a “working hypothesis”, or
Arthur’s involvement with the process allowed the Earth-computer to utilize him as the resource to finish the Question, being that he was on Earth right before the Question was due, and he may have somehow been in subliminal possession of the nearest-to-final calculations. I like this one, because if we will recall, the mice wished to puree and analyze his brain because they thought much the same thing.
His name was Prak…and he laughed himself to death.
From the introduction to The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe:
Adams has (or rather had) stated that he picked the number 42 completely out of the air, in desparation to meet one of those wooshing deadlines he so loved to ignore. Ulterior justifications, such as a solution in base 13, or something to do with monks, et cetera are entirely incidental and just another one of those random, bizarre things that life continues to throw out, like a whale and bowl of petunias suddenly appearing twenty miles above the surface of a planet.[sup]*[/sup]
Sorry about that. We apologize for the inconvenience.
The question is about how to make people happy without moving small green bits of paper, or nailing anyone to anything. This is stated on page one, folks.
No, no, no. That was what “a young girl [we later find out it’s Fenchurch] sitting in a small cafe in Rickmansworth suddenly realized. It was right, it would work, and this time no one would get nailed to anything.” It had nothing to do with The Question, it was God’s Last Message To His Creation. Which, Fenchurch and Marvin eventually find burning in letters of fire, in the middle of a desert tourist trap (in one of the more maudlin scenes in the series) is:
We apologize for the inconvenience.
Quotes from memory of the Simon Moore audiotapes I listened to incessantly as a kid, not referencing the books, so don’t quote me on 'em.
I thought that too. The thing is, though… if it didn’t actually deliver the question, then what the heck was it Fenchurch got?? The feeling she described of ‘being connected up to everything’ for days leading up to that final mysterious revelation doesn’t sound like it can be coincidental.
Iiinteresting!! And douglas was, by all accounts, a very tall person himself!! (When his class went on a school trip, they were told to “meet under Adams.” )
It’s been a long while since I read the Hitchhiker’s Guide, but about 42 I remember the original question being put in the book - what is the meaning of life - and it couldn’t be answered by the first computer, but the first computer ultimately came up with that he could build a computer that could build a computer that would be able to come up with the answer, which was then, some generations on, 42. The people were going ‘wtf’ and the computer then said, well are you sure you understood the question? I thought it was awesome. But now I’m wondering if it’s all in my head.
Probably the whole deal showed up elsewhere in one of the other parts that I’ve forgotten about.
Close. They told the computer, “We want you to tell us: The ANSWER!” To which the computer inquired, “The answer to what?” They hesitantly reply, “Well, you know…the answer…to life, the universe and…everything!”
Pretty vague. If they had been a little more specific, like asking for the *meaning *of life, they might have gotten a useful answer. As it is, we’ll have to argue about it some more.
Scientists built a big computer to which they could propose the Ultimate Question: “What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?” The big computer (Deep Thought) says okay, but this is going to take awhile. Eons or so later, the computer is ready with the answer. Okay, they say, give it to us.
“Forty-two.”
They’re all befuddled, and ask what kind of answer that is. The problem was that it was only the answer. What they needed was the question (Much like Jeopardy yay!). So Deep Thought proposes they build an even bigger computer to which they can propose the Ultimate Answer to, to find out the question. That planet, it so happens, was Earth.
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