The Salmon of Doubt by Douglas Adams (2002)

From the beginning with an enthusiastic note from the Editor you can see that the "Salmon of Doubt" is a book that has been collected by fans of Adams's work, for fans. I must admit to being sceptical of the foreword by Stephen Fry and was surprised to learn this intelligent, yet ultimately irritating Actor come Presenter was a close friend to Adams. Fortunately, I was pleasantly surprised that Fry writes a superb introduction and indeed tribute to Adams's work from his "Hotel room in Peru". His tribute is inspired and obviously sincere. Fry writes of a confident yet irritating man who...

Douglas Noel Adams, born 1952 in Cambridge (giving him a good nine months headstart over that other DNA that was all the rage a little later), is not, it must be said, the funniest man alive. The reason for this, of course, is that he escaped this mortal coil in 2001, a sudden heart attack robbing the twenty-first century of a great wit and a crazy giant of a man. Way back in the mists of time, DNA wrote and produced a radio show called the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, wherein the Earth is demolished to make way for a hyperspace bypass, and Arthur Dent, the last human alive, finds...

I picked up The Salmon of Doubt to be completist. However, I was under the impression that it contained an unfinished Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy story. It doesn't. Not really. What it does contain is a short biography of the late Douglas Adams, a number of essays on a variety of topics, interviews, a couple of short stories, and the unfinished pieces of "Salmon of Doubt". This last being, at least in this form, a Dirk Gently story. Douglas Adams Douglas Adams wrote The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy which is a series of radio plays, a five book trilogy, a BBC television series, a...

In fall 2001, author Douglas Adams, writer of Hitchhiker s Guide to the Galaxy, died. Peter Guzzardi, his editor, and others took on the task of making a compilation of the man's works. They collected over 2700 works. Some were just letters, others were manuscripts, and other miscellaneous writing. One of these items was a manuscript for his new book, The Salmon of Doubt. The Salmon of Doubt is a continuation of the Dirk Gently books. However, this new published book is more than just the unfinished Dirk Gently saga. The Salmon of Doubt is a compilation of many of the different writings of...