The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe
(Douglas Adams)
According to the Hitchhiker's Guide, researchers from a pan-dimensional, hyper-intelligent race of beings, construct Deep Thought, the second greatest computer of all time and space, to calculate the answer to the Ultimate Question. After seven and a half million years of pondering the question, Deep Thought provides the answer: forty-two. Forty-two! yelled Loonquawl. Is that all you've got to show for seven and a half million years' work?I checked it very thoroughly, said the computer,and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never actually known what the Question is.Deep Thought informs the researchers that it will design a second and greater computer, incorporating living beings as part of its computational matrix, to tell them what the question is. That computer was called Earth and was so big that it was often mistaken for a planet. They themselves take the form of mice, to run the program. The question was lost five minutes before it was due to be produced, due to the Vogons' demolition of the Earth, supposedly to build a hyperspace bypass. (Later in the series, it is revealed that the Vogons had been hired to destroy the Earth by a consortium of philosophers and psychiatrists who feared for the loss of their jobs when the meaning of life became common knowledge.) Lacking a real question, the mice proposed to use How many roads must a man walk down? (the first line of Bob Dylan's famous civil rights song Blowin' In The Wind) as the question for talk shows, after considering and rejecting the question, What's yellow and dangerous??actually a riddle whose answer, not given by Adams, is Shark-infested custard. However, this may also refer to the Vogon Constructor Fleet that demolished Earth, in that their ships were described as yellow in the book (and appeared that way in the TV series) and most certainly dangerous. The Ultimate Answer At the end of Mostly Harmless, and consequently at the very end of the series of novels, there is one last reference to the number 42. As Arthur and Ford are dropped off at club Beta (owned by Stavro Mueller), Ford shouts at the cabby to stop just there, number forty-two ... Right here! The entire Earth (in all dimensions, not just those in which it was demolished by the Vogons), is destroyed immediately after this final reference. The radio adaptation of this fifth novel contains multiple endings, of which the above is merely the first. It should be noted that Adams himself considered writing another Hitchhiker's book, to get away from an ending he himself described as bleak, but died in 2001 before writing an alternative. The alternative endings that do exist were written by Dirk Maggs, in an attempt to give a more uplifting ending to the series. In the second novel, as well as the fifth radio episode, the fifth TV episode, and the second of the LP album adaptations, Marvin mentions that he can read the Question in Arthur's brainwaves. This does nothing to cheer him up. At the end of the first radio series, the television series, and the book The Restaurant at the End of the Universe (the second book of the five-book trilogy), Arthur Dent (as the last human to have left the Earth before its destruction, and therefore the portion of the computer matrix most likely to hold the question) attempts to discover the Question by extracting it from his unconscious mind, through pulling Scrabble letters at random out of a se result is the sentence WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU MULTIPLY SIX BY NINE. Six by nine. Forty-two. That's it. That's all there is. Since 6 × 9 = 54, this being the question would imply that the universe is bizarre and irrational; on the other hand, there is no proof that this was the actual question. After all, Arthur Dent comprised only a minuscule fragment of the vast and complex computer matrix that was the Earth, and besides, it was stated that the computer's run had not finished when it was destroyed. In addition, Arthur and Ford realized that the original ape-like inhabitants of Earth were displaced by the Golgafrinchans, which could account for the irrational nature of the question in Arthur's mind (as he himself is a descendant of the Golgafrinchans). On discovering the question in the original radio series, Arthur Dent remarks: I always said there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe. Another thought as to the false equation in the Hitchhiker's Guide was that the program (Earth) would have run correctly if not for the crash landing of the Golgafrinchams.
Resumos Relacionados
- Life, The Universe And Everything
- Life, The Universe And Everything
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
- The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
|
|