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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 3251233" data-attributes="member: 4937">Arrrrrrgggggghhhhh....So many people have this misconception.This is the real story.The Earth was destroyed just before the question was produced.&nbsp; We know that Arthur Dent supposedly had the question written into his brain and if he had allowed himself to be dissected that its very probable that the question would have been discovered.When Arthur Dent hears the story of the question, he says the question could be anything and offers as an example, &quot;What is six times seven?&quot;Later, when Arthur is deposited in Earth's past, he attempts to obtain the answer to the question from the primitive earthlings inhabiting the planet.&nbsp; They produce the question, &quot;What is six times nine?&quot;&nbsp;&nbsp; Arthur theorizes that the arrival of the Golgafrinchans have upset the program, causing the Earth to produce the wrong answer.&nbsp;&nbsp; We are led from this to assume that the real question is something similar to &quot;What is six times nine.&quot;, but the end of it has been corrupted in much the same way the end of the Earth's program is corrupted by the Galgafrinchans.Which leads us back to the one sensible answer to the question an Earthman has ever given - &quot;What is six times seven?&quot;&nbsp; And that question is funny for much the same reason that '42' is a funny answer to &quot;What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?&quot;But, its also suggestive that Douglas Adams likes numerology, and that he intends to pose for us a numerological puzzle - very similar in my opinion to the numerological puzzle posed by John the Revelator when he says that the anti-christ can be recognized by the number of the beast, or 666.&nbsp; The question then becomes, besides being funny, how serious was Douglas Adams being?&nbsp; Much of his other funny commentary in Hitchhiker's also works on multiple levels, why wouldn't the obviously intellectual Adams encode something in his seemingly meaningless statement that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is &quot;42&quot;.Or maybe the joke is watching people over analyze his silliness.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 3251233, member: 4937"] Arrrrrrgggggghhhhh.... So many people have this misconception. This is the real story. The Earth was destroyed just before the question was produced. We know that Arthur Dent supposedly had the question written into his brain and if he had allowed himself to be dissected that its very probable that the question would have been discovered. When Arthur Dent hears the story of the question, he says the question could be anything and offers as an example, "What is six times seven?" Later, when Arthur is deposited in Earth's past, he attempts to obtain the answer to the question from the primitive earthlings inhabiting the planet. They produce the question, "What is six times nine?" Arthur theorizes that the arrival of the Golgafrinchans have upset the program, causing the Earth to produce the wrong answer. We are led from this to assume that the real question is something similar to "What is six times nine.", but the end of it has been corrupted in much the same way the end of the Earth's program is corrupted by the Galgafrinchans. Which leads us back to the one sensible answer to the question an Earthman has ever given - "What is six times seven?" And that question is funny for much the same reason that '42' is a funny answer to "What is the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything?" But, its also suggestive that Douglas Adams likes numerology, and that he intends to pose for us a numerological puzzle - very similar in my opinion to the numerological puzzle posed by John the Revelator when he says that the anti-christ can be recognized by the number of the beast, or 666. The question then becomes, besides being funny, how serious was Douglas Adams being? Much of his other funny commentary in Hitchhiker's also works on multiple levels, why wouldn't the obviously intellectual Adams encode something in his seemingly meaningless statement that the answer to life, the universe, and everything is "42". Or maybe the joke is watching people over analyze his silliness. [/QUOTE]

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