It is said that books contain the answer to everything, but the truth is that the reader is not always very clear about what exactly they are looking for. Or why he wants to know something. The best example is that one of the most widespread solutions to such complex issues as life, the universe, and essentially everything else is 42. Forty-two. Just as you read it. This is how he tells it The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and if he says it Douglas Adamsit must be true.
What authority do you have? The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy to affirm something like that? Technically there are two books that share that title. One of them was never published on Earth and no human being knew of its existence until the planet was destroyed. Maybe I’m getting too ahead of myself. Coincidences of life is also the name of a series of novels written by Adams and that you can buy in your trusted bookstore. Books that I never tire of recommending.
Confusing the two works is natural, let it be noted, since generally on the front or back cover you can read the phrase in very large capital letters. DO NOT PANIC. If you think about it, it’s the least you can ask of anything that dares to explain the meaning of life. However, the reason why Adams chose that specific figure will not be found in any of those works. But don’t be disappointed, at iGamesNews we will try to locate you as much as possible on the whole matter. That has fabric.
What is the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
Supposedly everything has an origin, but The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has two. We are definitely not talking about just any work. Technically, it all started as a radio comedy with colorful characters and a fortunately jinxed protagonist: Arthur Dent. That being said, the name of the show and the novel actually come from the book Hitch-hiker’s Guide to Europe de Ken Wels (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Traveling through Europe) which, given what he s aw, Douglas Adams must have found it very funny.
From here on a disjointed fact, as an extra bonus and courtesy of a fan of the Hitchhiker’s Guide itself: the radio program written by Adams was broadcast for the first time on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, being the first broadcast comedy produced in stereo, which enabled truly avant-garde music and sound effects to be used for listeners.
Without going into too many details, so that you can enjoy the books more and better, the first novel by The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy introduces us to Arthur, a completely normal Londoner who is having a particularly bad Thursday: he has just seen his home demolished. The story told in short is that his house was in the middle of the project to build a highway and, despite the fact that there was a perfectly exposed period of replication, no one informed him of the plans, or the procedure, or anything.
Bad luck? Ha! This is just the warm-up: coincidences of life it turns out that your city, the United Kingdom and the entire planet Earth are going to be demolished too and for the same reasons: a space highway is being built through the Milky Way. Apparently, the plans and all the information related to this restructuring on a planetary scale were offered in a remote world who knows where and no terrestrials came forward to complain. Bureaucracy is like that.
The relatively good news for Arthur is that, just before everything went to hell, he ran into his quirky friend Ford Prefect -who turned out to be an alien- and without much explanation they both managed to hitchhike into space at the last second, saving their lives and ending up on the first ship that passed by.
What chances of surviving does Arthur Dent have in a universe as surreal as it is unknown? That’s where a manual comes into play that will come in handy to try to understand what’s happening: Ford gives you your copy of the successful Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxywhich is already more sold than The great galactic encyclopedia and it is taken more into account on many planets due to the fact that it is a little cheaper. This is life.
42: an answer that took 7.5 million years to calculate
The radio program of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy It was liked enough for a second series to be written and recorded, later released on vinyl and cassettes and, in 1979, Adams dared to make a series of novels. Not long after, more adaptations of his delirious stories and characters to new media will arrive, including video games or television series and, shortly after the author’s death, a film produced by Disney in which Douglas Adams himself was working hard during his last years.
All the productions follow more or less the same plot and the same thing is stated in them: the answer to life, the universe and everything else is 42. In fact, despite being such a specific answer, in the novels and all other adaptations it took the most advanced computer in the universe 7.5 million years to calculate it. If starting your PC gives you time to prepare breakfast or dinner, imagine the holy patience of those who created this cosmic invention.
In any case, and after that long wait, we return to the starting point: how is that figure supposed to fit with the question of the meaning of life, the universe and everything else? Or, at least, what 42 has to do with any of those things.
Before we delve deeper, which we are going to do, we are going to put one crucial piece of information in front of you: Adams himself said that he chose that number simply as a joke, as a joke that – following the patterns of British humor – fits wonderfully within the surreal tone of his work and without the pretension of offering a deep meaning.
“The answer to this is very simple. It was a joke. It had to be a number, a small, ordinary number, and I chose that one. Binary representations, that thing about it being a number in base 13, that thing about the Tibetan monks… “All those theories are complete nonsense. I sat at my desk, staring out at the garden, and thought 42 would be enough.”
The funny thing is that, even knowing this, Adams plays with the reader’s imagination and, at one point, in the novel The restaurant at the end of the world and the rest of the media gives its protagonist a surreal revelation in which, through a hilarious process, he manages to counterformulate the question by obtaining the phrase “What do you get if you multiply six by nine?”
An answer as big as a planet (with fun spoilers)
Before you jump to the wrong conclusion, the result of multiplying six by nine is not even 42 (it is 54), so Arthur Dent assumes that something is wrong in the universe and, at that moment, a voice sighed in his the last moment that took into account the tridecimal system (in base 13) when calculating. Giving new impetus to the joke.
From this point we come across a reality: rivers of printed ink have been written and possibly there are an absurd number of theories and coincidences circulating on the Internet that try to establish a certain connection between the number 42 and the meaning of life itself and the universe. And be careful, in popular culture there are tons of direct references to the answer that Adams pulled out of his hat: from Coldplay songs (track 42 of the Album Live life
What’s more, when SpaceX launched a Tesla into space, two words in capital letters could be read on its console: “DON’T PANIC.” A tribute to the phrase DO NOT PANIC that is read in each copy of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy.
But what is truly significant is not the coincidences found for more than four decades regarding the figure written in the novel, but the explanation that the super-computer imagined by Adams tried to give to those who asked: the planet Earth itself.
In the novel or film adaptation of Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy It is revealed that our planet Earth is actually a new generation supercomputer designed by the same intelligence that calculated 42 with the purpose of providing that missing piece of the puzzle: definitive question. The brilliant irony of all this is that at the beginning of each work it was destroyed by bureaucracy, extremely mediocre and boring beings and a desperate system of interplanetary politics.
What’s more, the demolition of the Earth occurred exactly five minutes before a calculation that had been in the works for about 10 million years was completed. That type of genius that demonstrates how Adams knew how to give little importance to the serious and, from there, make wit, humor and irony emerge.
So what’s the point of life, the universe and everything?
The thing does not end here, for the record. I recommend that you read the novels, listen to the radio programs and, despite the fact that he plays in another league, even watch the movie starring Martin Freeman who still had a decade left to be known as Bilbo in the movies. The Hobbit and a few years before taking on the role of Watson in the Sherlock from the BBC. However, from the beginning I promised you an explanation. Because there is.
Although there are still millions of years left for the Earth, as a supercomputer, to calculate the definitive question, which is the missing piece of a meaningless puzzle, the conclusion we can reach when reviewing Adams’ work is that As much as we encounter stupid bureaucrats, nefarious politicians and mediocre people spread throughout the galaxy, the reality is that improbability, impossibility and absurdity They are the true agents that govern life, the universe and all things. Seen this way, it is a miracle that we exist.
So maybe, just maybe, we need to focus less on the cabals and the possible meanings of existence, as a concept, and focus a little more on everything that is in front of our noses. Above all, in the good things. Like a good book with a warning in capital letters. For example.
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