"All right," said Deep Thought. "The Answer to the Great Question . . . "
"Yes . . . !"
"Of Life, the Universe and Everything . . . " said Deep Thought.
"Yes . . . !"
"Is . . . " said Deep Thought, and paused.
"Yes . . . !"
"Is . . . "
"Yes . . . !!!. . . ?"
"Forty-two," said Deep Thought, with innite majesty and calm."
(120)
I like this quote though and have found that 42 is indeed the answer to a great many things. One of the questions on a final my Sophomore year in college was "What is the answer to the Great Question of Life, the Universe and Everything..." Fortunately I had read HHG2G and knew that c. 42 was the correct answer. Furthermore, if you google, "answer to life, the universe and everything" check out what the google calculator returns...it's 42.
The significance of 42 in the book is simple, it's the answer to the Great Question of Life the Universe and Everything. Unfortunately no one thought to figure out what the Great Question was and an answer without a question is pretty useless. The mice (yes, mice. Though if truth be told they are really super intelligent pan-dimensional beings.) constructed a computer to divulge the answer to the Great Question, which gave them 42. They failed to realize that they didn't know the Great Question so then decided they would need to build a better computer to calculate the question, this better computer would be called "Earth" which was blown up at the beginning of this novel 5 minutes before it was going to reveal the Great Question.
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Wow. I have never thought about that before. I thought that the answer to a Great Question would be something about evolution or how God formed everything not a number. The mice have reasons for thinking that the answer was 42 because that was what the computer gave them for an answer, but they should have asked the computer a real question like "How was the Earth formed."
Which would be a very good question except for the fact that the mice already know how the earth was formed. They hired the people of the planet Magrathea to build them the greatest computer that would ever be. The Magratheans, who build custom planets for a living, created the Earth at the request of the mice.
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