{"id":392,"date":"2007-06-25T21:44:15","date_gmt":"2007-06-25T11:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/06\/25\/the-real-answer-to-everything\/"},"modified":"2007-10-07T19:47:58","modified_gmt":"2007-10-07T09:47:58","slug":"the-real-answer-to-everything","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/2007\/06\/25\/the-real-answer-to-everything\/","title":{"rendered":"The Real Answer to Everything"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s a technical term in literature that I can’t remember. Foretelling? Foreboding? I can’t remember. Anyway, this term describes stories where the reader is expected to understand what the inevitable ending is before it happens. For example, we know<\/em> the hero will survive, because the hero is alive to tell us the story.<\/p>\n

There is no way of telling this story without that happening. Anyone who has seen or heard any of the multitude of variants of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em> will jump ahead far too quickly. I just can’t stop them.<\/p>\n

\n

The origin of the story is a bit hazy to me; it was in the early 1980s. My brother and I were working on our homework. My father, Joe, was helping.<\/p>\n

My brother commented on the coincidence that the answers to his last two maths questions were the same: forty-three. He was still having some trouble with the lesson, so Joe whipped up a few more maths problems for him to practice on. Joe decided to have a little fun, and made sure that they all came out to have forty-three as the solution.<\/p>\n

My brother was delighted. It became a family joke that the answer to every question was forty-three.<\/p>\n

A few months later, we watched the TV series variant of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy<\/em>. The show talked about a giant computer, Deep Thought, and its quest to find the answer to the great question, of life, the universe and everything.<\/p>\n

My father retorted at the telly: “It’s forty-three, of course!” We laughed, and went back to watching.<\/p>\n

Just try to imagine what we thought when they finally got to the great scene, where Deep Thought gives his answer to the two philosophers, Lunkwill and Majikthise:<\/p>\n

Deep Thought: You’re really not going to like it.
\nLunkwill: Tell us.
\nDeep Thought: The answer to the Great Question…
\nLunkwill: Yes?
\nDeep Thought: …of life, the universe, and everything…
\nLunkwill: Yes?
\nDeep Thought: …is…
\nFook: Yes?
\nDeep Thought: …is…
\nLunkwill, Fook: *Yes*?
\nDeep Thought: Forty-two.
\n[stunned silence]\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That was definitely a freaky moment in our household. For the rest of his life, Joe always maintained that Deep Thought was very slightly wrong, and I agree.<\/p>\n

\n

If I was a funnier writer, I would finish off by jumping in here and say: “`Forewarning’! That’s the word I was looking for!”… but, sadly, that’s not it either. I still can’t remember the word. Damn. I bet Sherrill<\/a> would know.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was in the early 1980s. My brother and I were working on our homework. My father, Joe, decided to have a little fun.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[31,46,41],"tags":[53,371,78,64],"class_list":["post-392","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geek","category-my-father-joe","category-story-telling","tag-father","tag-humour","tag-literature","tag-prank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=392"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/392\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=392"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=392"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.somethinkodd.com\/oddthinking\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=392"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}