SELINGER@RU-GREEN@RUTGERS (12/28/82)
From: Marla <SELINGER at RU-GREEN at RUTGERS> Enough speculation on Star Trek III and Star Wars NNN..... What about Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Part IV? Here's an interesting point to brood on.... In the series, when the 'Disaster Area' ship is about to plunge into the sun with our heroes, Marvin reveals that HE knows the question to Life, the Universe and Everything, to which the answer is 42. How is this so? Well, dear viewers, remember that key phrase that Marvin uttered about 3 times in every episode? "...Brain the size of a planet, and THEY want me to...." ...walk the dog, make tea, etc. Interesting. Marvin was probably quite a few generations away from Deep Thought, and perhaps even from that Mega-computer we all knew as Earth. Now, Earth's program was 'only' scheduled to run for 10 million years. However, while our heroes were dining at the Restauran' at the End of the Universe, Marvin had many, many millions of years to wait around. He must have done *something* besides park cars! Yes, folks, he would have been able to run the 'Earth' program a few times, just for monotony's sake! Given the starting data, he could, reasonably, extrapolate the question! Unfortunately, Marvin was left diving into the sun at the end of episode 7.....ah, well, the best laid plans of mice.... -------
gh (01/01/83)
Marvin said quite explicitly that the reason he knew the answer to the ultimate question was that he could read it in Arthur Dent's brainwaves, not because he was himself able to figure it out.
fred.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay (01/04/83)
From: Fred Blonder <fred.umcp-cs@UDel-Relay> From: Marla <SELINGER at RU-GREEN at RUTGERS> . . . when the 'Disaster Area' ship is about to plunge into the sun with our heroes, Marvin reveals that HE knows the question to Life, the Universe and Everything, to which the answer is 42. No. Marvin didn't say that he knew the question, just that he was able to look into Arthur's mind and see the question stored there, which as we learned later, was the WRONG question. To save you all a lot of useless speculation I will now reveal the correct ultimate question of Life, the Universe and Everything. It is: How many Vogons does it take to screw in a lightbulb?