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Short Story

The Meaning of Life: A tribute to the late Douglas Adams

Did you feel a tiny bit frustrated when Douglas Adams told us in The Hitchhikers’ Guide To the Galaxy that the meaning of life was 42? Tim LeBon did and wondered what interplanetary wanderer Arthur Dent might have concluded if he’d met some real philosophers.

Five seconds after flicking the Infinite Improbability Drive to ‘Maximum Wisdom’, Arthur was amazed to find himself in Philos, the mythical planet where all the great philosophers of the past lived in eternal contemplation . “Here, at last, I shall finally get the answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything” thought Arthur. “Who shall I visit first – maybe Socrates or Plato, maybe Descartes, or how about Bertrand Russell?”. But, before he had time to decide, a thickly-moustached man wearing a superman outfit, with a huge letter ‘N’ emblazoned on it, shouted out “The only aim of life is be to be a superman. Rise above the herd, unless you are a sheep!” Outraged, refutations of stunning wit and logic citing the essential equality of man before God started to form in Arthur’s mind.

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