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It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

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Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#111

Post by kazinator »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #73

I was 9 when he published Hitchhiker's guide. I'd just started reading and would go on to spend my teens reading ANYTHING I managed to lay my hands on. And throughout my teens everyone went on and on about Hitchhiker's Guide, and it just didn't... push me to read it. I eventually read it after being consrcipted. And it left me feeling as ambivalent as I felt before reading it. As the comments here evidence, people re…

I think that the quaint wackiness in HHTTG is simply a cult thing; it provides its fans (plus a broader body of geeks) with a body of references they can draw upon in order to communicate. Like this 42 thing. You don't need depth for that, or even humor that is rib-splitting. I think that the work simply holds a charm for some people, which may be all stylistic; it's okay to dig style. Just like quantity can be a quality of its own (who said that, Stalin?), style can be a depth of its own.

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#112

Post by bellyfullofbac »

xhedley wrote: post #109

But why did Douglas Adams think of 42? My theory is that it is from "times table" memorisation questions. Back in the day in the UK we learned "times tables" at school as a verbal by rote memorisation technique. For each "times table" you memorised up to "times twelve". And then the teacher might ask you in class the answer for a table you were supposed to have learned. First one to learn was "two twos are four, thre…

3rd reply (4th item in the thread) from the man himself:

https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.douglas-adams/c/595nPukE...

> 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.

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#113

Post by pram »

sideshowb wrote: post #89
FourthProtocol wrote: post #73

I was 9 when he published Hitchhiker's guide. I'd just started reading and would go on to spend my teens reading ANYTHING I managed to lay my hands on. And throughout my teens everyone went on and on about Hitchhiker's Guide, and it just didn't... push me to read it. I eventually read it after being consrcipted. And it left me feeling as ambivalent as I felt before reading it. As the comments here evidence, people re…

I think there is a lot of depth in HHGG. I read the whole 42 saga as a parable on society's tendency to trust computer outputs without understanding what they really mean. There's a lot of great social commentary in there, one example that springs to mind is a planet run by middle managers declaring leaves as fiat currency as that way money really does grow on trees. Eventually this leads to mass deforestation in an…

That planet was Earth.

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#114

Post by lemmsjid »

FourthProtocol wrote: post #73

I was 9 when he published Hitchhiker's guide. I'd just started reading and would go on to spend my teens reading ANYTHING I managed to lay my hands on. And throughout my teens everyone went on and on about Hitchhiker's Guide, and it just didn't... push me to read it. I eventually read it after being consrcipted. And it left me feeling as ambivalent as I felt before reading it. As the comments here evidence, people re…

Hitchhikers is more or less a series of vignettes that describe some human activity or historical event in such a way as to foreground it’s inherent absurdity. In a way, it’s meaning is to strip other things of meaning. Appreciating it goes hand in hand with appreciating Monty Python, who do the same thing. Hitchhikers is brilliant not insofar as it is layered with meaning as a work of literature, but in that it is quite dense with successful and memorable “skits” that poke fun at English society’s sacred cows. It’s a great example of science fiction as an analytical tool, where by redescribing something outside of its culturally weighted context a new perspective can be gained. I’d say that’s the primary “meaning” to be gained outside of the humor itself. As an example, one of the sections where he describes a whole series of absurd events that culminates in someone getting nailed to a tree for suggesting that everyone should get along, at which point you realize he’s describing the Jesus story. I think it’s a great read for someone in their adolescent years, to help them build some deconstructionist tools, but in a gentle way (Adams is quite humanist in the midst of all the absurdity).

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#115

Post by not2b »

cobbaut wrote: post #51
freedomben wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

wouldn't six by nine be 54? Is this one just soaring over my head?

Spoiler alert: Try 6 by 9 in base13.

But that isn't a spoiler alert, since it is a coincidence that the author didn't intend.

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#116

Post by xhedley »

bellyfullofbac wrote: post #112
xhedley wrote: post #109

But why did Douglas Adams think of 42? My theory is that it is from "times table" memorisation questions. Back in the day in the UK we learned "times tables" at school as a verbal by rote memorisation technique. For each "times table" you memorised up to "times twelve". And then the teacher might ask you in class the answer for a table you were supposed to have learned. First one to learn was "two twos are four, thre…

3rd reply (4th item in the thread) from the man himself: https://groups.google.com/g/alt.fan.douglas-adams/c/595nPukE... > 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 sto…

I was hypothesising the subconscious reason why Douglas Adams would think "42 will do". I find 42 funny for the conscious reasons I stated.

It's perfectly possible this did not apply to Douglas Adams. But a hypothesis around "eek I didn't do my homework but I winged it" seemed plausible for him.

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#117

Post by relaxing »

ErrantX wrote: post #90
camexp wrote: post #88

"The book follows Englishman Arthur Dent as he wakes up to find that Earth is about to be demolished to make way for a space highway." It was a hyperspace bypass. As far as I am aware that is neither "space" nor a "highway". I guess it is a "kind of space" but I just feel that this is a terrible way to describe it by the authors of the article. However, I could be wrong, I have been multiple times in the past.

I feel like the bypass reference is a very English joke, and therefore doesn't fully translate.

Bypasses exist in the US. I can’t believe they are never created in other countries that build highways.

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#118

Post by reilly3000 »

A couple of interesting 42 links:

42 is the largest answer to the Diophantine puzzle, solved by using a "world computer"

https://phys.org/news/2019-09-sum-cubes-solvedusing-real-lif...

Douglas Adam's 42 puzzle:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrases_from_The_Hitchhiker%27...

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#119

Post by aklemm »

niccl wrote: post #106
westcort wrote: post #66

Schopenhauer used an equation with the answer of 42 to make a metaphysical point in “The World as Will and Idea.” I suspect this is the meaning Adams had in mind: As time has only one dimension, counting is the only arithmetical operation, to which all others may be reduced; and yet counting is just intuition or perception a priori, to which there is no hesitation in appealing here, and through which alone everything…

I'm really sorry, but this is distressing me no end: It should be (((7 + 9) x 8) -2) / 3 = 42. As written, it equals 25.6666...

Seems right to me. Google agrees. What am I missing?

Re: It's been 42 years since 'The Hitchhiker's Guide' answered the ultimate question

#120

Post by dtgriscom »

xhedley wrote: post #109

But why did Douglas Adams think of 42? My theory is that it is from "times table" memorisation questions. Back in the day in the UK we learned "times tables" at school as a verbal by rote memorisation technique. For each "times table" you memorised up to "times twelve". And then the teacher might ask you in class the answer for a table you were supposed to have learned. First one to learn was "two twos are four, thre…

The question was revealed to be "what do you get when you multiply 6 * 9." This is, of course, 42, when you have thirteen fingers. (Mr. Adams denied this, but clearly he was being controlled by the Illuminati.)
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