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The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Salmon of Doubt

douglas adams

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Friends and editors conceived this volume to the life of Douglas Adams.

null pages, Audio CD

First published May 28,2002
Series
The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

This edition

Format
null pages, Audio CD
Published
January 1, 2003 by Recorded Books, LLC
ISBN
9781402540431
ASIN
1402540434
Language
English
Characters More characters
  • Dirk Gently

    Dirk Gently

    Dirk Gently bills himself as a "holistic detective" who makes use of "the fundamental interconnectedness of all things" to solve the whole crime, and find the whole person. This involves running up large expense accounts and then claiming that every item ...

  • Thor

    Thor

    ...

  • Kate Schechter

    Kate Schechter

    ...

More editions

About the author

Profile Image for douglas adams

douglas adams

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Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Douglas Noel Adams was an English author, humourist, and screenwriter, best known for The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (HHGTTG). Originally a 1978 BBC radio comedy, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy developed into a "trilogy" of five books that sold more than 15 million copies in his lifetime. It was further developed into a television series, several stage plays, comics, a video game, and a 2005 feature film. Adams's contribution to UK radio is commemorated in The Radio Academy's Hall of Fame.
Adams also wrote Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (1987) and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), and co-wrote The Meaning of Liff (1983), The Deeper Meaning of Liff (1990) and Last Chance to See (1990). He wrote two stories for the television series Doctor Who, co-wrote City of Death (1979), and served as script editor for its seventeenth season. He co-wrote the sketch "Patient Abuse" for the final episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus. A posthumous collection of his selected works, including the first publication of his final (unfinished) novel, was published as The Salmon of Doubt in 2002.
Adams was a self-proclaimed "radical atheist", an advocate for environmentalism and conservation, and a lover of fast cars, technological innovation, and the Apple Macintosh.

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Community Reviews

Rating(4.1 / 5.0, 100 votes)
5 stars
39(39%)
4 stars
29(29%)
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32(32%)
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100 reviews All reviews
Profile Image for Kimberly .
dark_renegade
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Douglas Adams’ final, only-half-finished book, with copious bonus features. The half-finished book is a Dirk Gently story, the first one I’ve read, but it’s so good it makes me want to read the others. The 200 pages of bonus essays, short stories, and interviews is well worth it just for the way Adams strings words together. Maybe not an essential read for everybody, but I enjoyed the heck out of it.
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Profile Image for Kimberly .
7038634357
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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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.
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baba4elite
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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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.
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lorenj
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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Sarebbero 4.5 ⭐ come sempre questo libro ti fa riflettere e divertire, anche se con quella punta di amaro finale.
Penso sia una raccolta necessaria e che sia un'ottima, anche se triste, conclusione.
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Uppah
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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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!
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yoana1712
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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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.
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Fiqqy98
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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A collection of essays, speeches, ramblings unearthed on his hard drive(s), one short story culled from a BBC annual, and the titular unfinished Dirk Gently novel. The essays are breezy and witty, often lacking focus when discussing science and technology, but comprise (realistically) the most readable of his non-fiction output. There are some readers, yours included, who feel Adams spent himself on the Hitchhiker’s books: although the Dirk Gentlys were absurdist romps sutured with awesome logic, they didn’t hang together as novels. The short excerpt from The Salmon of Doubt, however, might prove me wrong: the usual warmth and humour is present, although in nascent form, (the narration even slips from third into first person, a sign of Adams’s dissatisfaction). But all in all, nobody who loves Adams could resist reading this book, despite snoozing through the travel/nature pieces to get to the stuff they want. It’s a pleasing gallimaufry. Savour it, because there is no more.
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manserpent
★ ★ ★ ★ ★
April 16,2025
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The title comes from the unfinished third book of the Dirk Gently series. As well as 11 chapters of this story, there are essays, interviews, and articles written by Douglas Adams on such subjects as PG Wodehouse, The Beatles, hangover cures, and testing an underwater Sub Bug vehicle on The Great Barrier Reef.
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