Product Description

`You are on the verge of entering the wise, provoking, benevolent, hilarious and addictive world of Douglas Adams. The bottom drawer of recently deceased writers is often best left firmly locked and bolted: in the case of Douglas, I am sure you will agree, the bottom drawer (or in his case the nested subfolders of his hard drive) has been triumphantly well worth the prising open' - Stephen Fry

Introduced by Stephen Fry, The Salmon of Doubt comprises eleven chapters of the novel on which Douglas Adams was working at the time of his death, along with an astonishing collection of pieces recovered from his beloved Macintosh computer.

The plot of The Salmon of Doubt is as intriguing as its title and sees Dirk Gently simultaneously on the trail of half a cat and an actor whose sudden appearance is perhaps not as random as it seems. Starring alongside the pizza-addicted detective are Thor, Norse god of thunder, Dave of DaveLand and a highly confused rhinoceros called Desmond. Other fictional stories include Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, featuring the intergalactic star of the Hitchhiker series.

Non-fiction pieces start with an earnest twelve-year-old Douglas's letter to Eagle magazine and go on to give insights into a teenage mind full of adoration for the Beatles and loathing for short trousers. Here too are lectures reflecting Adams's exceptional understanding of our natural, technological and philosophical worlds, and articles on subjects as diverse as religion, the `little dongly things' making a mess of computers, the letter Y, and Douglas's love affair with two dogs in New Mexico.

For fans and new readers alike, The Salmon of Doubt is the ultimate smorgasbord of the insanities, urbanities and wondrous workings of life, the universe and everything.

`The phone was ringing. Dirk answered it. He sighed. It was Thor, the ancient Norse God of Thunder. Dirk knew immediately it was him from the long portentous silence and low grumblings of irritation followed by strange distant bawling noises. Thor did not understand phones very well. He would usually stand ten feet away and shout godlike commands at them. This worked well as far as making the connection was concerned, but made actual conversation well-nigh impossible'

`The Hollywood process is like trying to grill a steak by having a succession of people coming into the room and breathing on it'

`Normally she would ask her husband, only he had recently died bungee jumping, which he shouldn't have been doing at his age only it was his seventieth birthday and he said he'd do exactly what he wanted even if it killed him, which of course it did, and though she had of course tried contacting him through a medium, the only message she'd got from him was that he didn't believe in all this stupid spiritualist nonsense, it was all a damned fraud, which she thought was very rude of him, and certainly rather embarrassing for the medium.'

`Every country is like a particular type of person. America is like a belligerent, adolescent boy; Canada is like an intelligent, 35-year-old woman. Australia is like Jack Nicholson. It comes right up to you and laughs very hard in your face in a highly threatening and engaging manner.'

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37041 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-10
• Binding: Hardcover
• 336 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
The Salmon of Doubt is the late Douglas Adams' third comic novel about "holistic detective" Dirk Gently. Ten tantalising chapters of this unfinished project are padded to book size with about 50 short Adams pieces, mostly non-fiction.

Additional material includes introductions by Stephen Fry and editor Peter Guzzardi (who stitched together the Salmon fragment from disk drafts), The Guardian's Adams biography, Richard Dawkins' farewell piece, and the order of the memorial service.

The non-fiction by the man himself ranges from perhaps a dozen meaty articles and speeches to brief squibs, interview/questionnaire answers and tiny asides like:

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognise something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.

There are enjoyable pieces on computers (especially), atheism, dogs, manta rays on the Great Barrier Reef, the Save the Rhino stunt climb, and PG Wodehouse. Much of the rest is ephemeral; you can't help reflecting that Adams himself never chose to collect all this lightweight newspaper work.

Lovers of his fiction will welcome the Hitch-Hiker-related short stories "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" and "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe", despite the latter's dreadfully dated political punch line.

What of The Salmon of Doubt itself, a quarter of this book? There's a glimpse of a far-future estate agent's utopia, a woman asking Dirk Gently to investigate a cat that's literally only half there (his puzzling reluctance to take the case may echo Adams' own feelings about the novel), Gently's capricious trip to America in response to an unknown client's total lack of instructions, the tragic death of a rhino as perceived by the rhino... Many teasing questions; we'll never know the answers.

Overall it's a must-have for devoted Adams fans and completists, a likely disappointment (though with pleasant exceptions) for new readers. --David Langford

Sunday Express, 2002
`Magical . . . read this book.'

Sunday Times, 2002
`Sheer delight . . . many plums of the authentic, irreplaceable genius of Douglas Adams'

Customer Reviews

The Benefit of Doubt.
`The Salmon of Doubt' is a posthumously published collection of words put into a fantastic collection of arrays by Douglas Adams whom had previously been assembling words in a very pleasing manner in the various incarnations of `The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' and the `Dirk Gently' novels.

The book contains tributes from comic actor and writer Stephen Fry, Nicholas Wroe, scientist and writer Richard Dawkins and the editor of this collection, Peter Guzzardi. All of which give some insight into Douglas but nothing like the insight Douglas gives of himself in the collection of articles, drafts of speeches and letters which have been prised from the hard drive of Douglas' beloved Apple Mac.

The pieces have been assembled into three sections, Life, The Universe and Everything but the themes don't really add anything to the writing of a man whom could have paraphrased the phone book in a manner that would leave us weeping with laughter.
The best part of the book is the quarter given over to `The Salmon of Doubt' an abandoned rather than incomplete Dirk Gently novel. Adams had apparently decided that the ideas he was exploring did not suit Dirk Gently and was considering rewriting the piece as a Hitch Hikers novel.

Although it would have possibly being a great novel as Adams then saw it I have to say that I enjoyed reading what he had actually written and am only disappointed that I will never get to marvel at the clever conclusion that not only tied up all the loose ends I'd noticed but ten or twelve others I wouldn't have noticed until rereading the book for the nth time. The beauty of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books was that every time you reread them you found something new which you hadn't noticed before.

A look into an awesome mind
If you have read every Douglas Adams book but still don't feel close enough to the great man himself, this is the book for you. You can see how the master thinks, how his everyday musings were written with the same wit and wisdom as his greatest works of fiction and read a wonderfull work in progress. As he says of 'Sunset at Blandings' (unfinished due to the author's death) by PG Wodehouse, you can see in DNA's first Chapters of his new Dirk Gently novel, the craftsman at work, the sentences are unpolished, the work has not even been through its first proof-read and it is all the more wonderful because of this. This book is fact, fiction and autobiography all rolled into one. Read it. It will blow your mind.

Be aware of what you're getting
For those who know Douglas Adams' work, chances are you are aware that The Salmon of Doubt is the last of Adams' work before his untimely death and is incomplete. Thus for those with an interest in Adams' work this is your last insight into what would have been the third book in his Dirk Gently series. Or perhaps the sixth book in the Hitchhikers series? Who knows what this may have ended up as.

This book will give you your last Adams' fix but be aware. Although the book is listed as 336 pages, the actual in-progress novel The Salmon of Doubt is tucked away at the very end of the book and constitutes only a small portion of the entire book. The majority of the content is a compendium of Adams' work ranging from speeches to columns to random notes. It's a chance to see a little more of Douglas Adams for those who are fans, but for those who just bought it for the novel you may feel a bit ripped off.