Product Description

On Friday, May 11, 2001, the world mourned the untimely passing of Douglas Adams, beloved creator of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, dead of a heart attack at age forty-nine. Thankfully, in addition to a magnificent literary legacy—which includes seven novels and three co-authored works of nonfiction—Douglas left us something more. The book you are about to enjoy was rescued from his four computers, culled from an archive of chapters from his long-awaited novel-in-progress, as well as his short stories, speeches, articles, interviews, and letters.

In a way that none of his previous books could, The Salmon of Doubt provides the full, dazzling, laugh-out-loud experience of a journey through the galaxy as perceived by Douglas Adams. From a boy’s first love letter (to his favorite science fiction magazine) to the distinction of possessing a nose of heroic proportions; from climbing Kilimanjaro in a rhino costume to explaining why Americans can’t make a decent cup of tea; from lyrical tributes to the sublime pleasures found in music by Procol Harum, the Beatles, and Bach to the follies of his hopeless infatuation with technology; from fantastic, fictional forays into the private life of Genghis Khan to extended visits with Dirk Gently and Zaphod Beeblebrox: this is the vista from the elevated perch of one of the tallest, funniest, most brilliant, and most penetrating social critics and thinkers of our time.

Welcome to the wonderful mind of Douglas Adams.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #55965 in Books
• Published on: 2005-04-26
• Released on: 2005-04-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 336 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Edited by Peter Guzzardi and with an introduction by Christopher Cerf, this bittersweet collection comprises letters, fragments of ideas for books, films and TV, ruminations on a diverse array of subjects and a good bit of a final unfinished novel by the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, who died in May of last year. Included are a letter to the editor of a U.K. boy's magazine (written in 1965, when Adams was 12); a reminiscence about his lifelong love for the Beatles, written when he was in his 40s; a 1991 piece from Esquire entitled "My Nose"; and an undated article for the Independent espousing his preference for whiskey. Also on hand are a q&a in which he identifies the most interesting natural structure as being a "2,000-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News"; a spiritual encounter with a giant manta ray while testing a mechanical diving device at Australia's Great Barrier Reef; an affecting introduction to P.G. Wodehouse's unfinished novel, Sunset at Blandings; an account of a Save the Rhino pilgrimage across Africa; ruminations on computerization; and a philosophical address about the authorship of the universe entitled "Is There an Artificial God?" Two sketches "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" and "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" from the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book, 1986, are also here, as are 10 chapters from various versions of the title novel-in-progress. National advertising.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When Adams died unexpectedly in May 2001, he had not written fiction in ten years. The success of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and the peculiar adventures of Detective Dirk Gently had made Adams an sf icon. His fans kept hoping for at least one more weird and wonderful galactic adventure. The Salmon of Doubt is a loving tribute to the author by his friends, who decided that the best way to salute his life and work was to collect some of the more unusual bits of it and let the world share the mind of a wonderfully talented man, with a unique viewpoint on almost everything. The book comprises selections from a huge amount of material, a fascinating collection of bits and pieces of a busy writer's life. Articles on a variety of subjects written for various magazines and newspapers, introductions to books, speeches, personal interviews, and glimpses of a well-enjoyed life are included. Adams describes the traumas of his school days, his love for the Beatles and Bach, an illicit liaison with someone else's dogs, and his fascination with evolutionary theory. Among the fiction entries is a tale from the private life of Genghis Khan and a Zaphod Beeblebrox short story. The narrators were all personal friends of Adams's: actor Simon Jones reads the largest portion of the book and does a wonderful job; Stephen Fry also takes a turn, and Christopher Cerf reads a eulogistic introduction that he wrote for the print version. Fans will be both happy and sad to experience this final chapter of Adams's journey through the galaxy. Highly recommended, but libraries will want to repackage this audio for circulation.
Barbara Rhodes, Northeast Texas Lib. Syst., Garland
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From AudioFile
Douglas Adams was a gifted futurist, humorist, and self-effacing humanoid. His hard drive and clippings yield some gems here in a loving posthumous read of bits, bytes, lectures, articles, and nonsequiturs. The much adored author of THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE UNIVERSE is given his final hurrah by close friends Stephen Fry, Christopher Cerf, and others. This mirthful catalog of verbiage culled from his many computer hard drives and notes addresses technology, the environment, the Beatles, life as a modern human, and much more. Fans of THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE and DIRK GENTLY'S HOLISTIC DETECTIVE AGENCY will especially enjoy this offering and its warm and witty read. D.J.B. © AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine-- Copyright © AudioFile, Portland, Maine

Customer Reviews

A mixed bag of goodies
An interesting little volume filled with Adams' musings about a wide-ranging array of topics. Some of the essays and articles here are quite good, and others are, well, not quite so good. But they are all written with Adams' trademark zany wit, and you certainly won't be bored.

The good:
As usual, his observations about the foibles of life, whether it's his mortification about having to wear short pants to school because they didn't make long trousers his size, or the story about the stranger stealing his cookies, are hilarious. And his passionate enthusiasm for his personal values, whether it's technology or the Beatles, shines through in every line and is therefore quite contagious. He has a way of turning a phrase to bring an abstract point down to earth, especially when it comes to his criticism of theism. And some of his analogies between evolution and computer science are quite illuminating, particularly his observation that computer code is analogous to the genetic code in showing how evolution operates by performing simple operations millions of times over.

The bad:
As an amateur biologist, however, Adams does tend to get carried away with the computer analogies--no, Douglas, your baby is not "rebooting." Combine this tendency with his otherwise virtuous enthusiasm, and, like many computer scientists, he carries it to the point of assuming that we are on the verge of creating "artificial intelligence," i.e., that in the near future there will be conscious computers. This failure to distinguish between the biological and the man-made plays right into the theists' hands--after all, that's the basic fallacy behind the argument from design (the Celestial Watchmaker and all that), Adams has just kind of done it in reverse. And his playing at being a naturalist is at times almost embarrassing--like when he wants to ride a manta ray, which would probably be pretty cool, and then feels all stupid when told he can't, or when he hikes to Mount Kilimanjaro in a ridiculous rhino suit (although he does recognize the pretension of telling developing nations that they preserve the resources that Western nations "exploited" during their own development).

As for "The Salmon of Doubt" itself, I haven't read either of the previous Dirk Gently novels yet, but I thought this one was shaping up to be, with more polishing, an interesting book. Of course, in its rough form, and with no ending, it is a bit unsatisfying. Overall, however, this collection is well worth reading, but unless you're an Adams collector you can probably stick with the mass market version (or visit your local library).

Sorry, Douglas, I was disappointed...
Likely never intended for publication, but published anyway (as every famous writer's memoirs and journals are), this is a collection of ideas that Douglas had. I was incredibly disappointed, as it was toted to me as his fragmentary final book. BOO!

Spend your money more wisely, buy Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency series by Douglas or his books about endangered animals. You will get way more out of them. Sorry, Douglas, rest in peace.

If you loved this Douglas Adams you are gonna love this !
I was so glad that there was more Douglas Adams to read, thank god for this book. But now that I have found a book that you will love to read as it is cut from the same laugh riot ilk as any great DA.

It is not science fiction by any means, but if you like Douglas Adams, you are gonna love Pete McCarthy's book "McCarthy's Bar A Journey of Discovery in Ireland".

This is a little known book and I even had to post the photo of this book on Amazon and afterwards came across to post a review of this book for any other Douglas Adams fans as they will be glad that I have shared.

Kind Regards,
Randall

McCarthy's Bar: A Journey of Discovery In Ireland