I just found out about this game. Has there really been 41 Editions before this one or is that some sort of in game joke?

Game looks incredible btw

It's not a 42nd edition , it's been 42 years since the game was first released. It doesn't exactly have editions, but it's been through a few pretty different versions with different publishers: Eon, Mayfair, Avalon Hill, and Fantasy Flight. I'd definitely reccommend picking this one up, it might be my favorite game.

(Also the 42 thing is a reference to Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and not the first one tge game has made incidentally).

I don't think there has been 41 previous versions but there is that joke from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy about 42 being the answer to life, the universe, and everything.

Also the game has been out since the 70's, so that might be what the 42nd anniversary edition means.

First edition of Cosmic Encounter dates back to 1977. So, technically, it's 41 years now, but it's very close to that Hitchiker's 42, as GroggyGolem mentioned

At the con, they talked about the 1976 Parker Brothers edition, which would have been the first, but they pulled the plug saying "space doesn't sell". 42 years later....

We created the UNIVERSE game in 1972. We licensed it to Parker Brothers in 1976 , who paid us $7,000 (I think) and made Encounter Parker Bothers game of interstellar conquest . But then almost immediately cancelled the contract because the marketing department said: "Space doesn't sell." So it's 2018 42 years later, the 42nd year since the first "paid for" version of Cosmic Encounter came into being. And yes we wanted to grab onto 42, because Cosmic Encounter is as good an answer to everything that I can think of. And since the announcement fell on May 25th Towel Day, we also had CE fans give the Cosmic aliens an assist in celebrating Cosmic Encounter Towel day. You can see more at cosmicencounter.com ads we recap our last three days at the Museum of Science Fiction's Escape Velocity 2018 con. As to the actual number of Cosmic Encounter versions - if you count different covers and different languages as different versions along with different physical changes or content adjustments there are about 20.

Uh, that's interesting. Thanks for sharing the story of the game

Answer to everything.

How come expansion set 1, Incursion, can't be found to purchase?