In The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the characters visit the legendary planet Magrathea, home to the now-collapsed planet building industry, and meet Slartibartfast, a planetary coastline designer who was responsible for the fjords of Norway. Through archival recordings, he relates the story of a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built a computer the size of a planet named Deep Thought to calculate the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. The answer was revealed as 42."So what?" you say, "Why do I care?" Well, today I am 42 years old (1965 in case you were busy doing the math) and my age is the answer to life, the universe, and everything. Unfortunately, like the hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings who built Deep Thought, I am not sure what the question is. They were forced to build an even more powerful computer to work out what the Ultimate Question actually was, but their plans never come to fruition, as Earth was destroyed by a Vogon construction fleet to build a hyperspace freeway bypass. Some posit that the question is: "how many roads must a man walk down," but no really knows for sure.
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