Festival 42

42? What’s 42? If you search online, you’ll see right away that this is the symbolic number par excellence for science fiction and, by extension, fantasy genres. There are memes, T-shirts and whole articles to help you figure it out. People honour it, play with it and reference it both overtly and cryptically. Above all, they attempt to solve the mystery behind it.

In theory, it’s easy enough to see where the phenomenon comes from: it is the surprising answer to the question “What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything?” provided by the computer Deep Thought, after reflecting on it for 7.5 million years, in Douglas Adams’ novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. An icon of the genre at its most humorous, on a par with Kurt Vonnegut, Terry Pratchett, Italo Calvino, and closer to home, Pere Calders, Adams didn’t stop there. In the novel, after giving the famous answer, the computer follows it up by adding that the problem is really that the question had not been properly phrased. This, of course, leads to the characters building a better computer so they can ask it the Ultimate Question…

For now, we’ll leave it at that. Because it’s precisely this invitation to pose new questions, to set aside grandiose answers to refine our initial approach, that is at the heart of the festival’s vision. 42, then, is a way of re-examining this genre.

A name so different that it’s not even a name but rather a number.

A name that celebrates the creative tradition of fantasy genres.

And a name that was chosen on the 42^nd anniversary of the work that created it (yes, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was born 42 years before the festival).

For everything else… we’ll see you at 42.