(Untitled)
OK, so you know how in hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy the meaning of life is 42? where does that come from? is it a biblical reference? it's established in matthew that a total of 42 generations elapses between abraham and the birth of jesus. coincidence? eh?
i'll be home in a month. hahahahahaha. need more sleep.
i'll be home in a month. hahahahahaha. need more sleep.
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.
While it is certainly true that the answer was intended to be just a number with no hidden meaning, the fact that he arrived at 42 was explained in more detail in an interview with Ian Johnstone of BBC Radio 4 recorded in 1998 (though never broadcast) to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the first radio broadcast of The Hitchhiker's Guide.
In the interview Adams said that, having decided it should be a number, he tried to think what an "ordinary number" should be. Adams ruled out non-integers, then he remembered having worked as a "prop-borrower" for John Cleese on his Video Arts training videos. Cleese needed a funny number that would serve as the punchline to a long sketch involving himself (as a bank teller) and Tim Brooke-Taylor (as a customer). Adams believed that number that Cleese came up with was 42 and he decided to use it.
Several attempts by fans to find this particular video have been unsuccessful and it is possible it may never have been published or has since been deleted from use.
This interview is contained on Douglas Adams's Guide to the Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy (BBC Cassette ISBN 0-563-55236-0) and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - The Collectors Edition (BBC CD ISBN 0-563-47702-4).
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