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Hitchhiker's Guide Turns 30

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hah-i'm-still-older dept.

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...'"

37 of 193 comments (clear)

  1. Maybe my memory's failing me... by Spazholio · · Score: 3, Informative

    ...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.

    1. Re:Maybe my memory's failing me... by Jim+Hall · · Score: 5, Informative

      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. :-)

    2. Re:Maybe my memory's failing me... by interactive_civilian · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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...

      --
      "Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
    3. Re:Maybe my memory's failing me... by tambo · · Score: 4, Informative
      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. It's right there, plain as day.

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

      - David Stein

      --
      Computer over. Virus = very yes.
    4. Re:Maybe my memory's failing me... by KokorHekkus · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    5. Re:Maybe my memory's failing me... by TheThiefMaster · · Score: 3, Informative

      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".

    6. Re:Maybe my memory's failing me... by tverbeek · · Score: 3, Funny

      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.
      --
      http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  2. The answer.. by bigattichouse · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    meh
  3. The proper way to celibrate by edwardpickman · · Score: 5, Funny

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

    1. Re:The proper way to celibrate by phoenixwade · · Score: 3, Interesting

      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......
      --
      A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
    2. Re:The proper way to celibrate by hey! · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    3. Re:The proper way to celibrate by Telvin_3d · · Score: 3, Interesting

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

    4. Re:The proper way to celibrate by gnick · · Score: 4, Interesting

      ...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!
      --
      He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
  4. Rubbish article by hairykrishna · · Score: 4, Funny

    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?

    --
    "Physics is to math as sex is to masturbation." -R. Feynman
    1. Re:Rubbish article by rucs_hack · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Rubbish article by hey! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  5. The meaning of the answer is obvious by LecheryJesus · · Score: 4, Funny

    Its the average IQ of a creationist.

    Flame away :P

    --
    Jesus was an invention of the Romans - watch "The Pharmacractic Inquisition" for something more credible...
    1. Re:The meaning of the answer is obvious by matt+me · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Its the average IQ of a creationist. Mod ++funny, because in hitch-hiker, the Earth *was* created!
  6. Re:if we knew by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Informative

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

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  7. And the question is: by Bob+Hearn · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How many squares are there on a go board?

  8. Actually... by uxbn_kuribo · · Score: 3, Funny

    Call me when the series turns 42.

    --
    No portion of this post may be rebroadcast without the express, written consent of Major League Baseball.
  9. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

    --
    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  10. only 30? by davidwr · · Score: 3, Funny

    The copyrights should expire just after dinner.

    --
    Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
  11. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by AmIAnAi · · Score: 4, Informative
    Apparently not. In a BBC article celebrating 30 years of Hitchhikers, they report that Adams apparently refuted that suggestion:

    I don't write jokes in base 13.
    --
    Any sufficiently advanced bug is indistinguishable from a feature.
  12. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apparently not. In a BBC article 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 ...
    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  13. My theory... by itsdapead · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...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.

    --
    In a survey of 100 programmers, 111111 thought that duck-typing was a good idea.
  14. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by maxwell+demon · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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 ...

    --
    The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
  15. Other news by Jabbrwokk · · Score: 3, Funny

    "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..."

  16. Douglas Adams spells it all out, in various places by MarkusQ · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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

  17. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by Ford+Prefect · · Score: 4, Funny

    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. :-(

    --
    Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
  18. Re:This book will live forever by ucblockhead · · Score: 3, Informative

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

    --
    The cake is a pie
  19. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by hendersj · · Score: 3, Informative

    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.

    --
    Insanity is a gradual process; don't rush it.
  20. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by Random+BedHead+Ed · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  21. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by tverbeek · · Score: 5, Funny

    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.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  22. Adams *did* reveal the "secret" behind 42 by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Informative
    FTA:

    Douglas Adams never revealed the secret of number 42 http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.douglas-adams/msg/d1064f7b27808692
    --
    Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
  23. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by Daimanta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
  24. Re:It's not the ultimate meaning... by pdh11 · · Score: 3, Informative

    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