QUOTE
What on earth is 42?
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.
The radio series - which subsequently became both bestselling book, television series and film - traces the travels around the galaxy of Arthur Dent, after the earth is destroyed to make way for a "hyperspatial express route".
Possibly the most famous line in the whole book is the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" given by the supercomputer, Deep Thought.
For seven and a half million years, this stupendously powerful, office-block of a machine had whirred. When it came to announcing what it had discovered, crowds had quite understandably gathered. "You aren't going to like it," Deep Thought warned. "Forty-two," it said, with infinite majesty and calm.
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.
The radio series - which subsequently became both bestselling book, television series and film - traces the travels around the galaxy of Arthur Dent, after the earth is destroyed to make way for a "hyperspatial express route".
Possibly the most famous line in the whole book is the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" given by the supercomputer, Deep Thought.
For seven and a half million years, this stupendously powerful, office-block of a machine had whirred. When it came to announcing what it had discovered, crowds had quite understandably gathered. "You aren't going to like it," Deep Thought warned. "Forty-two," it said, with infinite majesty and calm.
Full Story >> http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/7283155.stm
