The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy novel by Douglas Adams, first published in 1979. In the story, a supercomputer named Deep Thought is asked to find the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. After 7.5 million years of computation, it delivers the answer: 42. The joke captures a philosophical truth: even a perfect answer is meaningless without a well-defined question. The novel originated as a BBC Radio 4 series in 1978 and expanded into a five-book trilogy, a television series, and a feature film.