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.

Kipp die Schublade eines Schriftstellers aus, leere seinen Papierkorb, krame in seinen Hosentaschen und mische alles mit den Post-its von seinem Kühlschrank und voila, du hast etwas wie "Lachs im Zweifel".
Auf diese Mischung aus Schwanengesang und Leichenfledderei war ich nicht gefasst und sie gefiel mir auch nicht.
Wie kann ein Verleger annehmen, 30 Seiten "Dirk Gently" rechtfertigen einen kompletten neuen Band. Indem er das lediglich impliziert? Mich hat dieses Buch doch recht frustriert. Ich kann mir nicht vorstellen, dass Douglas Adams diesem Schnipselwerk zugestimmt hätte (siehe seine Anmerkungen zwecks Regie).
Traurig
Traurig

While many of the pieces included in this collection were, a) entertaining, b) somewhat informative, c) diverse, and d) well written peeks into the beliefs and personality of the author, the overall effect was also, e) incomplete. Of course that's to be understood, as it IS a posthumous gathering of magazine articles, interviews, and an unfinished 'Dirk Gently' story. One does wonder, however, if it was really necessary to publish "The Salmon of Doubt". Being as unfinished and maybe haphazardly thrown together as it sort of appears, do you think Mr. Adams himself would really have wanted to attach his name to this?
For all the good intentions involved, and the glorious little bits of wisdom and humor contained therein, "Salmon" still feels more like a tease than a satisfying conclusion.
It is understandable that fans of Douglas Adams may hunger for any scrap they haven't yet read by the man before his unexpected departure (Mr. Adams died suddenly, of a heart attack, in 2001), but overall, in my opinion, the assembly of the contents here feels rushed, desperately collected and lashed together, just so readers could feel as if it were that proper last goodbye. Is it? In my opinion, no. It is perhaps a sincere tribute put together by friends and admirers, but no, not a fitting conclusion.

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

Der Inhalt der Festplatten von 4 Computern des verstorbenen Douglas Adams: Textfragmente, Interviews, Aufsätze und ein unvollendeter Roman -hört sich todlangweilig an - ist es aber nicht! Es ist eine sehr gute Einsicht in die Meinungen, Philosophien, Visionen und kleinen Probleme eines der größten Autoren dieser Welt.
Da gibt es: Philosophische Abhandlungen über den richtigen alkoholischen Drink, seine glühende Bejahung des Atheismus, das Problem mit den Adapterdingsbumsen beim Verreisen mit elektronischen Geräten, eine sehr treffende Trendbestimmung bezüglich des Internet und sozialer Netzwerke, die so um das Jahr 2000 wirklich noch sehr visionär war aber heute bereits eingetroffen ist, dann noch sein erstes Werk als Zwölfjäriger...... und zuletzt seinen unvollendeten Roman, einen Nachruf seines Freundes Dawkins und das Line Up seiner Beerdigungsveranstaltung.
Wenn man den Menschen hinter den genialen Romanen kennenlernen möchte oder sich als Fan bezeichnet ist dieses Buch absolut empfehlenswert!

Ich habe mich immer sehr geärgert, da ich im Jahr 2000 eine Veranstaltung mit ihm in Wien, zu der ich mich hineinschwindeln hätte können, verpasst habe, da ich erst im nachhinein darüber informiert wurde. Als er dann kurz darauf zu allem Überfluss auch noch gestorben ist, war ich stinksauer. Dieses Buch hat mich ein bisschen dafür entschädigt dass ich ihm nicht die Hand schütteln und ein paar Worte mit ihm reden konnte.

Did not realize that this was the incomplete book Adams was working on at his sudden death. An interesting read - the majority of the book is interviews with Adams, thoughts by his friends and bits and pieces of his writing. The actual Salmon of Doubt part is only about 100 pages. I was glad to have once last glance of Dirk but as is usually the case with unfinished works - wished it was longer...

Published upon his death The Salmon of Doubt is Douglas Adams' final work. It is composed of various interviews, speeches, observations, short stories and the beginning of a new Dirk Gently novel. It is a combination of technology, science, fiction and humor. (It is also the title I assumed would be my fiftieth.)

I liked the book, but think I would have liked it more had I heeded the advice on the back cover and not read it straight through. There's not enough continuity to make it that kind of book. (Apparently the fact that it's a compilation of items rather than a story was not a big enough clue for me.)


Favorite Quotes:

"I only knew that the Beatles were the most exciting thing in the universe. It wasn't always an easy view to live with. First you had to fight the Stones fans, which was tricky because they fought dirty and had their knuckles nearer to the ground."

"Obviously the Sub Bug wins some points for being portable up to a point. You can take it on a plane, which you wouldn't do with a manta ray, or at least not with a manta ray you liked, and I think that we probably like all manta rays on principle really, don't we?"

"He moved his horse slowly forward and surveyed the small group of peasant huts that stood huddled together in the centre of the clearing, trying very hard at short notice to look deserted."

"There is a particular disdain with which Siamese cats regard you. Anyone who has accidentally walked in on the Queen cleaning her teeth will be familiar with this feeling."


Overall Opinion:

Unless you're an Adams' fanatic and looking to read everything he ever wrote on any subject then take it slowly. Read something else at the same time and you'll enjoy The Salmon of Doubt more than I did.



Rating:

6

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.

2.5 stars

Since you come into this book expecting Douglas Adams, and what you get is only somewhat Douglas Adams, it was a huge let down. The man's writing is very distinct, and while the little bits that are his are good, the other bits aren't.

A posthumous collection of writing recovered from Douglas Adams’s various Apple computers, plus 11 chapters of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel. I preferred the earlier essays and fragments. But the Dirk Gently stuff is quite interesting because it’s a sequel to The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. It has provided me with further oxygen and direction for my Douglas Adams deep-dive.

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.

It's really amazing the amounts of nostalgia that can build up in a person's system before it kinda explodes into a kind of reverse word soup full of interviews, introductions, epilogues, and snippets of novels we wish we had but they were never penned because the author up and died on us.

I'm writing of Douglas Adams, of course.

I almost didn't re-read this one because I remember it WAS mostly just magazine articles and interesting early computer-tech stuff and ruminations on science, god, and other random bits that fly out of this wonderful man's brain in tightly humorous one-liners that explain not only life, the universe, and everything, but also the way his mind works... and this is all DESPITE the fact that Mr. DNA may or may not have had a functional nose with which to sneeze out those humorous one-liners.

So am I rating this entirely based on a man's ability to be clear, funny, horribly learned, and dead?

Yes, but it's gotta be more than that, and indeed it is. I loved the man.

I grew up reading and re-reading HHGttG about a bazillion times with or without the cheese sandwhich, playing countless hours on the Infrogames title of the same name being simultaneously corrupted and flabbergasted by my inability to create NO TEA, and learning how to fly by distraction.

I even decided when I was fourteen that I'd grow a beard for the distinct purpose of giving some poor hapless creature a traveling burial site to not see the rest of the world through.

DNA is that kind of man to me.

This book reminds me of just how regular a human he is and it is an unabashedly wonderful nostalgia piece to boot.

Oh, and we also get a few short stories including Ghengis Kahn, a non-presidential Zaphod, and the opening to the next Dirk Gently book which would have been fantastic, I'm sure, had he written it.

*sigh*

Still, what a wonderful thing it is. Farewell, Mr. Adams. (Yes. I know I'm 16 years late. It's just that this book was compiled shortly after his death, so I feel it fresh. Sue me.)