
Why 42? - Douglas Adams Explains - instantramen
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.fan.douglas-adams/msg/d1064f7b27808692?pli=1
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tomstuart
This is my all-time favourite reply to a mundane fan question:
[http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-
bin/mboard/info/dnathread.cg...](http://www.douglasadams.com/cgi-
bin/mboard/info/dnathread.cgi?1546,2)

~~~
mojuba
I'd expect a less boring answer from a writer, or at least not along the lines
of "well, it's just a book I wrote, there is nothing beyond it". As if we are
so stupid not to understand that. Every good fiction book is a world within
and beyond for the reader. And I think questions like this are more like a
test for the writer: "Are you that great?". No, apparently he's not.

His answer on why 42 is as disappointing.

~~~
alunny
> "Are you that great?". No, apparently he's not.

That's not really fair - there are plenty of very good motivations for writing
(and reading) fiction other than immersion in a sustained imaginative world.
By that criterion, "Avatar" is a better film than than, say, "Casablanca,"
because James Cameron knows more about the flora of Pandora than Michael
Curtiz does about Morocco.

Adams is a great writer precisely because of his lack of pretension, his
humility, and his irreverence -- I'd be disappointed if he didn't regard his
own work with the same outlook he had for everything else.

~~~
hugh3
The grandparent is getting modded to all hell, but there is a genuine point
here about the sort of writer Douglas Adams was. Not that he's a bad writer,
but that he's the sort of writer who would say his main character _has no
existence outside the sequence of words designed to create an idea of this
imaginary person in people's minds._

Some writers would consider their characters to have some kind of additional
existence inside their (the writer's) own mind. They would "know" things about
their characters which they never put into print; not to the level of what
sort of computer they used, but certainly a more fully-functional mental model
of the character beyond the words on the page.

Douglas Adams wasn't one of these writers, he was a writer for whom the
characters were always to a certain extent subservient to the joke and the
narrative. And Arthur Dent is a particularly strong example of this since
there was never all that much to Arthur's character; he's essentially just an
unidealised version of Douglas Adams himself who travels around the universe
reacting to things in pretty much the same way that Douglas Adams would if
Douglas Adams found himself with no home planet and no tea.

------
Tichy
Then again, his brain is part of the computer that is supposed to calculate
the question, so maybe his random thought was not really random.

~~~
nwatson
7 == representation of divinity

6 == what comes short of divinity, i.e., humankind (the number of man)

666 == emphatic rejection of the influence of the divine in humankind's
affairs

42 == 6 * 7, the product of interaction of the divine with humankind, being
the most elevated object in creation -- the understanding of this interaction
is the ultimate answer, Douglas Adams stumbled on it

~~~
confuzatron
And 4 == number of corners in 4 corner simultaneous world time cube. Or
something.

~~~
epochwolf
A cube has 8 vertices, not 4.

~~~
sp332
Duh, it's a planar cube!

~~~
eru
A two-dimensional hypercube.

~~~
sp332
A Hypocube?

~~~
eru
Indeed.

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pistoriusp
I'm one of those developers that frets over the small things. I'll spend what
feels like hours trying to figure out how to name things.

I'm working on simply saying "that'll do. The end."

I'll get so much more done.

~~~
jrockway
If you can't come up with a name for something, you probably don't need it.

~~~
blasdel
...or it doesn't need a name

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noonespecial
It had to be completely arbitrary for the story. If there was some deep hidden
meaning, it wouldn't have been nearly as funny. Even if the number meant
something to Adams, it was important that it was meaningless and random in the
story, so I'm guessing he'd never let on.

Its the same kind of humor as "a duck!" weighing more than a witch. There's no
"ooohhhh" of deep understanding, just a delightful WTF!?

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DotSauce
Read this response somewhere. Included in The Ultimate Guide I believe.

Check out this wildly entertaining speech by Adams published last month:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_...](http://www.ted.com/talks/douglas_adams_parrots_the_universe_and_everything.html)

~~~
Gormo
I had no idea TED had been around that long. Do you know if there's any way to
view their full archives?

~~~
guelo
It's not a TED talk, it's in TED's "Best of the Web".

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sharan
That's breaking a cardinal rule of artists - maintain mysticism. It's the
reason the inspiration for American Pie will never be known. Collective human
imagination can come up with a far more interesting opinion than any
individual can, regardless of how talented they might be.

Mr. Adams, with due respect, I don't know what the Tibetan Monk explanation is
but it sounds way more interesting than your garden.

~~~
jacquesm
FYI Douglas Adams is, alas, deceased.

~~~
phsr
The post is from 1993

~~~
pinko
The comment addressing him directly is from 2010.

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jacquesm
What do you get when you multiply six by nine ?

~~~
__david__
Um. 54? Am I missing a joke here?

~~~
lsb
54 base 10 = 42 base 13. To quote Douglas Adams, "I may be sad, but I don't
make jokes in base 13.".

~~~
Raphael
Alice In Wonderland has an easter egg along these lines.
<http://www.eeggs.com/items/20350.html>

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roundsquare
In college, we had an assignment where we had to update an interpreter to
always output 42 when it say 6 * 9.

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scott_s
How fitting: <http://www.cs.vt.edu/~scschnei/pictures/42.png>

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kunley
Did you know that 50% of Douglas Adams fans do not realize that they
constitute half of this guy's fans population?

~~~
kunley
Erm... actually I find this phrase funny; it can be of course related to
anything, and this thread seems relaxed enough to insert it.

But whatever the collective wisdom says...

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dreaming
I love douglas adams, but I don't see how this is vaguely news worthy...

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elptacek
You're welcome.

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mkramlich
I hereby demand the world produce another Douglas Adams. I will gladly prepay
for this hypothetical man's 1st 10 novels. Now I sit back and wait for the
market to satisy my needs. Perhaps a startup whose sole purpose is to produce
a Douglas Adams clone? Heck I'd not only be a consumer I'd invest!

~~~
btilly
For me Terry Pratchett is an entirely acceptable substitute.

------
mickeyben
Why 42? - Douglas Adams breaks the Myth

