42

From BBC News:

‘It's 30 years since Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy made its debut on BBC radio, but its most famous mystery is still waiting to be resolved. Possibly the most famous line in the whole book is the "answer to life, the universe, and everything" given by the supercomputer, Deep Thought.

For seven and a half million years, this stupendously powerful, office-block of a machine had whirred. When it came to announcing what it had discovered, crowds had quite understandably gathered. "You aren't going to like it," Deep Thought warned. "Forty-two," it said, with infinite majesty and calm.

Ever since, speculation has been rife as to what Adams meant. Tragically, Douglas Adams died in 2001. So what does Stephen Fry, a close friend, voice of the audiobook, and possibly one of the most intelligent admirers of The Hitchhiker's Guide think?

"Of course, it would be unfair for me to comment," he confides. "Douglas told me in the strictest confidence exactly why 42. The answer is fascinating, extraordinary and, when you think hard about it, completely obvious. Nonetheless amazing for that. Remarkable really. But sadly I cannot share it with anyone and the secret must go with me to the grave. Pity, because it explains so much beyond the books. It really does explain the secret of life, the universe, and everything."

Stephen Fry’s reticence is, I am sure, nothing that a bit of water-boarding wouldn’t sort. But then again, Mr Bush would need an interest in the question, and he already has his own answers.

As astrologers, we are aware that Uranus takes 84 years to go round the Sun: 42 is therefore the average age of the Uranus opposition, the astrological mid-life crisis, a time of sudden insights when you start to recognise your youthful follies. So perhaps some of us know the answer as well.

The first episode of the Hitchhikers Guide was broadcast at 10.30pm in London on 8 March 1978. There was a New Moon at 16-18 Pisces (the Mind of God) closely trine to Uranus (not what you thought it was).

Adams (born 11 March 1952) was a Pisces, but also, as you might expect, he had Mercury square to Uranus and Venus-Node in Aquarius.