I waited sixteen-and-a-half years to read this and I just about managed to get through it without bawling my eyes out. Douglas Adams was the first author to make me laugh uproariously, back when I was a wee nipper. Sure, Roald Dahl had given me a few chuckles, but it wasn't until I read Hitchhikers for the first time that I realised a book could make me laugh so much I nearly wet myself.

As such, this was a bittersweet experience. Reading Adams' unpublished work, including several chapters of a new but never to be finished Dirk Gently novel, gave a new definition to laughing through one's tears. I'm glad I read it but it's going to take a while to recover. It's a good job I had my towel...

I didn’t want to rush reading this selection of Douglas Adams’s writings, but my library loan ran out, so I had to finish faster than I would’ve liked.

The people who edited this selection together, did a very good job organizing these pieces into a logical order. And while some might be more interesting than others, there are a few I could easily read over and over - especially those that go into his views on atheism. And having access to the last, unfinished Dirk Gently novel is a joy, even if it makes me sad to know that I’ll never get another Douglas Adams book. Salmon had wonderful promise.

When i first heard about this book, I went very quickly from exitement, through confusion and ended up in serious doubt. I was exited at the prospect of a book by my favorite author that I had not yet read, confused as to how that had happened, and finally in serious doubt if I should when i learned what it was about. This is an unfinished Dirk Gently #3, and mabye some other stuff(Or so I thought, it turns out that the DG#3 is only about 80 pages out of 280). I was scared that it would be really obviously unfinished, that it would be nothing like the other books I love so deerly, and that reading the start of it would make me horribly sad and depressed about never being able to read the whole thing. I was right about the last one, it is a bittersweet read. It startes of with all the wonderful Douglassy Adamsness that i wanted from it, but then it just ends, leaving me exactly where I feared it would when I happened upon it in the library and thought something along the lines of "fuck it, its Douglas Adams, I can't not read it".

However. That is only true for the Dirk Gently part of the book. The other parts are thoughtprovoking, easy to read, fun brilliance. Some of it will be familliar to those who has already read Last Chance to See, or watched his talk at University of California just before his death.

Even though I am now quite sad I don't regret reading it, and I'd recommend it to any and all fans of Douglas Adams.

I'm just guessing here, but I think those who rated this book highly were doing it out of affection for Douglas Adam's other, better works. They are great.

This one is less so, and came about from collecting whatever was lying around on his computers after his sudden and sad death. So what can we expect- much of the book is incomplete and unfinished.

There is also a wide variety of subject material here that veers away from comedic science fiction into serious atheism and endangered species protection.

The last book he was working on, The Salmon of Doubt, is not far enough along for the reader to do more than glimpse at where it was heading, so remains unsatisfying. You couldn't and can't expect more that that, considering the circumstances, but there it is.

What the book does offer is another look at the author himself, which dedicated fans will most likely appreciate.

Douglas Adams was brilliant—and it pains me to have to put that in the past tense. His novel-in-progress, The Salmon of Doubt, was cut short by Adams' untimely death in 2001. But this posthumous collection of miscellany from his computer's hard drive, also called The Salmon of Doubt, showcases Adams' brilliance, and is a worthy addition to his canon.

There's not much of the planned novel here—just a few chapters, and that's not what impressed me most about this collection anyway. The things that amazed me most about The Salmon of Doubt were: first, the breadth and depth of Adams' interests, as revealed here particularly in his discussions of Last Chance to See, written with Mark Carwardine, a serious attempt to document and, perhaps, even save some of Earth's vanishing species. And, second, the evidence of Adams' prescience when it came to computing and the Internet. Far from being just a comedic writer, the interviews and excerpts included here show clearly that Adams had his finger on the pulse of the Internet, more so than many self-acclaimed pundits and insiders. He foresaw the importance of wirelessness, for example, and the utility of thumbs for texting, well before such things were common knowledge.

The Salmon of Doubt isn't a complete novel, and never will be now—and that is tragic. But The Salmon of Doubt is one last amazing glimpse into Adams' mind, and for that I am grateful.

Potrei scrivere un fiume di parole su quanto apprezzi l'Adams scrittore e l'uomo, quanto condivida le sue idee (a parte sulla Apple, ma se vedesse cosa è diventata credo si schiferebbe anche lui)e su quanto la sua scomparsa mi rattristi molto più di quanto sarebbe lecito aspettarsi. Ma non è il caso.

Questo libro raccoglie tante interviste, aneddoti ed idee che raccontano molto su chi era Adams; quindi se avete apprezzato i suoi libri e desiderate scoprire qualcosa su di lui è la lettura giusta.
Inoltre contiene la prima bozza incompiuta del nuovo romanzo di Dirk Gently.. e accidenti non saprò mai che cavolo doveva combinare con quel rinoceronte!

I'm terrible at reviews. Read it. Tell me what you think. It's... different.

A good send-off for Douglas Adams.

I don’t want to finish this book.

I really don’t.

If I finish this book that means I’ll have finished the last work of Douglas Adams. And since it is technically ‘unfinished’, that means I’ll actually need to acknowledge that he’s gone. Dead. Breathed his last. Snuffed it.

Have you read anything by Douglas Adams? If you were born in the last fifty years and are a fan of British comedy, I’ll assume you’ve come across The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. Maybe you’ve even read about his detective Dirk Gently. Or his work of non-fiction, Last Chance to See, where he travelled to see almost extinct animals, like a very rare lemur in Madagascar and the Komodo dragon. If you haven’t, I must insist you do. If you don’t like British comedy? You may want to back away slowly. I’m sure there are many other book reviews you would find more pleasurable and I must insist you find one. Now, back to the book.

Adams’ friend and fan, Stephen Fry, introduces The Salmon of Doubt. It is a posthumous collection of things taken from his Macbook after he died (urgh, that hurts to say). The Salmon of Doubt includes articles from the late eighties and nineties about technology, book introductions, speeches and works that have never been published before. It is packed with Adams’ quirky sense of humour and contains plenty of the self-deprecating jokes common to British comic writers. Classic Adamisms include his section for children, where he explains how to tell the difference between things. Since I can’t actually for you to slowly wander to this section in the book, please continue to read it here!

You will need to know the difference between Friday and a fried egg. It’s quite a simple difference, but an important one. Friday comes at the end of the week, whereas a fried egg comes out of a hen. Like most things, of course, it isn’t quite that simple. The fried egg isn’t properly a fried egg until it’s been put in a frying pan and fried. This is something you wouldn’t do to a Friday, of course, though you might do it on a Friday. You can also fry eggs on a Thursday, if you like, or on a cooker. It’s all rather complicated, but it makes a kind of sense if you think about it for a while.

The second half of the book is the first half (or is it… technically if the first half follows the second half, I must be making a mistake somewhere) of Adams’ uncompleted novel The Salmon of Doubt. Dirk Gently is on the trail of half a cat and a mysteriously easy-to-track actor. It’s probably fantastic. But if I read it – that means I have to acknowledge that it is unfinished. Which means the story of Douglas Adams, the writer, the environmentalist, the radical atheist, and all around brilliant person, is finished. So, I haven’t read it yet. I will, I promise. But first, I must read the rest of the Dirk Gently series. Then I shall read it.

Anyway, you may ask who is this book for? If it’s not even finished, what’s the point? Unquestionably, The Salmon of Doubt is for the fans of Douglas Adams. Since I am undoubtedly that, I recommend this book wholeheartedly to other fans. If you want a few more Adamisms before you have to acknowledge (again!) that the man is gone, you can even divide this book up into each section and chapter. It truly is a delight to read. I found myself laughing in strange places and insisting the stranger sitting next to me or the friend I’m having lunch with read just this one paragraph.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read another section as I edge slowly towards finishing this book.

But I really don’t want to.

This review was originally posted at Teapots and Typewriters

This posthumously published piece of Douglas Adams' canon is cobbled together from letters, emails, and unfinished writings. From a memoir piece about climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro dressed as a rhino, to suggestions for improvements to technology, and a draft of the third Dirk Gently book. Salmon of Doubt is both sweet and sad.

Sempre bello leggere anche solo poche righe di un romanzo di Douglas Adams, anche se inconcluso. Le interviste e gli iscritti hanno tutti qualcosa di interessante anche se dopo un po’ diventano un po’ noiosi.

This book is pretty skippable. I love Douglas Adams, and there are a few small gems of his in here, but there's a lot that's distracting and even the excerpt of the (unfinished) Salmon of Doubt was unsatisfying since it lacked context or an actual story.