The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide, #1)

by Douglas Adams

Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the Universe than we do now.

He started to count to ten. He was desperately worried that one day sentient life forms would forget how to do this. Only by counting could humans demonstrate their independence of computers.

He gestured Arthur toward a chair which looked as if it had been made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus. “It was made out of the rib cage of a stegosaurus,”

For seven and a half million years, Deep Thought computed and calculated, and in the end announced that the answer was in fact Forty-two—and so another, even bigger, computer had to be built to find out what the actual question was.