ATTENTION all Froods!: photos of Marvin the Paranoid android in SFX.

[Oddboy]

Yeah, but well '42' - it doesn't really mean anything - and "Life, the universe & everything" isn't a very concise question, is it?

How about "How many roads must a man walk down?" - it sounds good, but it doesn't tie anyone down to meaning anything.





Oh dear, we're all going to die, aren't we?

[Slippery PD]

Well wasnt that his point in a way?  

There isnt a big answer to Life, The Universe and Everything its just too complicated.  If you spend your life looking you may end up with answer your not satisfied with.  A bold concpet for a comedy, I think.

Yer Slips

[The Enigmatic Dr X]

Haven't read the books in a while, but wasn't the question: What is the meaning of life?

[Mr D]

It was 'THE ANSWER!'
What answer?
You know, THE answer - to Life, The Universe and Everything!

Clarified as meaning of life, meaning of the universe etc later on...

[Oddboy]

*sigh*

I was being facetious...

Although we know the 'answer' to be 42, we never get to find out what the question was, because the Earth was distroyed before it finished it's calculations and Arthur wasn't prepared to give his brain to a couple of mice.
Not that that would help, as they later discovered that 'humans' aren't entirely indiginous to the Earth anyway, but a cross breed of cavemen & telephone sanitatisers & hairdressers.

[mongor2003]

Personally I think the design for Marvin looks like a box of shit, nothing like I imagined him from the books, I'd sooner they'd gone for a slightly updated version of the old 80's tv series Marvin.

[Dudley]

we never get to find out what the question was

Yes we did!  
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Wasn't it at the end of Restaurant at the End Of the Universe - Arthur sees a caveman using Scrabble letters to spell out "what's six times seven"?  Of course this still begs the question of why that amounted to the ultimate question of LTU&E, but that's why Adams was a true great.

Sex scenes in So Long & Thanks for all the Fish were where it went downhill for me, and the Mostly Harmless book I just prefer to think of as an aberration...

[petemaskreplica]

IIRC, what the caveman spells out is "What do you get if you multiply six by nine?"

[Dudley]

IIRC, you're right.

[Oddboy]

Yes, hence:

Not that that would help, as they later discovered that 'humans' aren't entirely indiginous to the Earth anyway, but a cross breed of cavemen & telephone sanitatisers & hairdressers.

Arthur's mind is *not* pure Earthlet, because he's a descendant of a hybrid race brought from another planet on the 'B' Arc. Therefore the wrong 'Question' was found.

And Dudley - Adams does advise the reader to skip most of So Long &.. & go to the last chapter which has Marvin in it & miss all the awkward sex parts.

[therev]

Now I thought that the "caveman using Scrabble letters to spell out "what's six times seven" was either:

a)The question being bolloxed up cos of the inter-breeding between early man and the thicko crashed spaceship bod's.

or

b)As it's still early in the Earth's overall span this is how far the question has be worked out/looked at. After all it took billions of years to get as far a monkey man (sadly not in a hat) but "Earth" still had billions of years left to go...unless a Volgon construtor fleet appeared that it!

Or am i being a telephone sanatiser?

[paulvonscott]

Am I wrong is Marvin being played by a Dwarf?

[therev]

Think he's a midget...

[Oddboy]

I think it's 'A' - because they used Arthur to pull out the scrabble pieces, and as Arthur was from the 'future' & IIRC the question was due to be discovered only five minutes after the dirty Volgans distroyed the Earth.