M is for Magrethea

The most ridiculously series I have ever read was that by Douglas Adams - the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. As a teen, I remember hearing a lot about it, buying a massive book containing all the volumes between a single cover, and then spending a week reading one page over and over again before realizing I still had no idea what Adams was on about and so set it aside for good. I did however, finish the first three books. To anyone looking to pick them up, I'd recommend stopping after book one.

Magrathea though was an interesting place. It was a planet located in the Horsehead Nebula that was involved in the very specialist industry of building luxury planets. If you could dream it, and pay for it, those working on Magrathea would create it. Even square ones.

One of the planets Magreathea crafted was Earth (for a race of hyperintelligent pandimensional beings who in this dimension look like mice) to serve as a giant computer. What calculation could possibly need a planet sized computer and several thousand years to compute? The ultimate question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.