A collection of essays and a well put-together but incomplete last Dirk Gently novel, I can see how this will always garner mixed reviews. Overall, I enjoyed this book as there’s something poignant about reading Adams’ words one last time that makes this a fond farewell, but the lack of an end to the Dirk Gently book left me disappointed and wistful, but the story was shaping up so well I’m glad to know as little as I now do. Maybe one for true aficionados but a touching book to add to a collection.

"La scienza ha perso un amico, la letteratura ha perso grande autore, i gorilla di montagna e i rinoceronti neri hanno perso un coraggioso difensore, Apple ha perso il suo più eloquente apologeta. E io ho perso un insostituibile compagno intellettuale e un degli uomini più buoni e spiritosi che abbia conosciuto in vita mia." Richard Dawkins
D.N.A manchi e mancherai sempre ❤️❤️

Perhaps I should have researched the book before reading it but I assumed it was a continuation of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. It is in fact a tedious collection of anecdotes, radio broadcasts, and magazine columns from Douglas Adams life with a partially written Dirk Gently novel at the end. But when the subtitle to the book is "Hitchhiking the galaxy one last time", what else is one supposed to think?

In early 1998 (or was it ‘97?), I experienced one of the most heady experiences of my life. A literary idol approached me at a conference we were attending in France (it was in Cannes, but it was a media festival rather than the more famous annual event), invited me to join him at dinner and debate the existence of God. Douglas Adams, self-proclaimed radical atheist, wanted to consider God’s existence (or lack thereof) with me. As a minister, I’d like to write myself in as the hero and claim that I at least put a dent in the famous atheist’s armor. We had a fascinating conversation and I’d like to think that I pushed him into rethinking his position, but that’s not very realistic. Hang on! This does relate to this collection of Adams’ writing in his last years, especially those reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt.

In our discussion, I pulled out the well-worn rubber duck of apologetics. I told him that he was dishonest in calling himself an atheist instead of an agnostic. I didn’t realize that this was the most offensive opening I could try. I hadn’t read his interview with American Atheists where he asserted that Agnostic did not adequately express his position because he was “convinced that there is no God.” (p. 96) But I blundered into the conversation with my classic approach that it is intellectual arrogance to claim to “know” that there is no God by appealing to an illustration in one of Rudy Rucker’s books on multidimensionality. This took my literary hero off guard because “multidimensionality” was a great fascination for him. I told him that certainty of the non-existence of God might well be trying to decide a multidimensional issue via the limited dimensions we have discovered in our empirical science. Then, I conceded that being “convinced” was different than “knowing,” but that it wasn’t objectively any better than a person of faith being “convinced.” I scored the opening round a stand-off. I’m not sure what Adams would have scored it. He must have been somewhat satisfied because he shifted gears.

He told me that there was no rational need for the existence of God. This, of course, is a different question. Unlike my typical sermon, I opted to walk the tightrope of suggested that God is a useful concept—EVEN (don’t be horrified at my speculation, true believers) if a personal God didn’t exist. I told him that I personally believe in a personal God, but for purposes of discussion, we should consider whether there really was no rational need for the existence of God. I asserted that, contrary to Adams’ hero Richard Dawkins for whom I expressed admiration for his science and reservation for his assertions which went beyond the acceptable evidence, the idea of God was more helpful than harmful.

Adams was skeptical (duh!) and attempted two analogies which I found interesting. He pulled some British currency out of his wallet and suggested that burning it wouldn’t warm you, eating it wouldn’t feed you, and wearing it wouldn’t cover you, but that it had purchasing power because the state stood behind it. But, he suggested that you need the assurance that the state exists in order for the currency to have any effect whatsoever. I countered (maybe a feeble parry at best) that, for the bulk of the British population, they had no idea of the nature of money supply, national deficit, budget viability, and governmental oversight of that currency but had an essential faith in the government. One doesn’t have to have all of the economics behind the currency explained satisfactorily in order to use the money. In the same way, one doesn’t have to understand everything about God in order to benefit from the idea of God. Therefore, there may well be a rational need for God.

Before I explain the next analogy, imagine my amazement to see the late 1998 speech from Adams that was reprinted in The Salmon of Doubt: “Money is a completely fictitious entity, but it’s very powerful in our world; we all have wallets, which have got notes in them, but what can these notes do? You can’t breed them, you can’t stir-fry them, you can’t live in them, there’s absolutely nothing you can do with them, other than exchange them with each other—and as soon as we exchange them with each other, all sorts of powerful things happen, because it’s a fiction that we’ve all subscribed to. …if the money vanished, the entire cooperative structure that we have would implode.” (p. 140) Did our discussion bear fruit? Adams didn’t change his mind about the existence of God. He merely recognized the utility of the concept of God. Egotistically, I had thought to convince him one step at a time, but perhaps, I merely pushed him to fortify and develop his philosophical position to allow for a utilitarian (he called it “artificial”) God.

The conversation was still stimulating, especially so when Adams began to expound about Feng Shui. Now, maybe I wasn’t listening, but I thought he was expressing skepticism about Feng Shui, so I said that it wouldn’t really make any different that he and I don’t believe that dragons exist, but that the concept of the dragon may help people design more comfortable and functional living spaces even if no dragon ever sets foot in the dwelling (and presumably they would not). Therefore, I suggested that even if I was wrong about the personal God whom I serve, my life may be better and more meaningful as a result of my conceptual idea of God’s involvement in my life. Now, admittedly, Adams’ hero of evolutionary arrogance (Richard Dawkins) wouldn’t concede this as said individual perceives the very concept to be harmful due to the fundamentalist extremes which have wreaked havoc in human history, but it seemed like the approach caused Adams to pause. Again, that could be arrogance on my part. I WISH I had impacted Adams and this could merely be wish-fulfillment.

However, I was delighted to read on p. 146: “You figure out how the dragon’s going to be happy here, and lo, and behold, you’ve suddenly got a place that makes sense for other organic creatures, such as ourselves, to live in.” Do I think I won a debate with this man who was, in so many ways, my intellectual superior? Naaah! I just like to think that our conversation pushed him in a direction he was already considering. Do I wish I could have convinced him of the existence of a personal God who cared about Him and wanted to be involved in his life and life’s work? Absolutely! Do I still admire him as a person and his creative output? Absolutely!

There were a few other lines that I really enjoyed in this book of essays, interviews, introductions to books, albums, and concerts, speeches, and rambling thoughts before I got into what I really procured the book to read, the last Dirk Gently story. I loved his line about art when he said, “I think the idea of art kills creativity.” (p. 158) And, I loved the story about his awkward experience in the train station with the cookies (pp. 150-151). It appears that he was sharing a table while waiting for a train. He had his coffee and a packet of cookies along with his morning newspaper. As he was reading his paper, the fellow reached over, opened the bag of cookies, too one out and began to eat it. Some British reserve kept him from confronting the man for his effrontery, so they actually ate the cookies in uncomfortable silence one-for-one. When the man left, Adams moved his paper and discovered an identical, but unopened bag of cookies under his paper. He was amused that he had thought so ill of the man while he was erroneously consuming the other man’s cookies. And he knew why this had occurred, but the other man never discovered the punch line. In the U.S., of course, there would have been a loud vocal confrontation at the very least.

As for the title piece, the bare-bones portion of the unfinished Salmon of Doubt, it was delightful—even in its admittedly unpolished form. I followed the tortured logic of the cabbie who assumed that since people said, “Follow that cab!” in the movies and he, having had a long tenure as a cabbie had never heard that phrase, he must indeed have been the cab that all other cabs were following (pp. 249-250). I rolled my eyes with empathy when Dirk discovered a freezer cabinet full of “old, white, clenched things that he was now too frightened to try to identify.” (p. 226) I chuckled at the description of Gently’s office that was “old and dilapidated and remained standing more out of habit rather than from any inherent structural integrity” (p. 238) I really loved the slam on typical airline personnel speak (Airline Syllable Stress Syndrome—p. 253). I was sad that the book wasn’t complete, even in its current form.

What a delight to revisit the mind of Douglas Adams. I like that this is a collection of emails, speeches, one-liners, and rants. Yes, there's the start of a novel in there, that he may or may not have intended to call the Salmon of Doubt.
The result is so much better than it sounds like it's going to be: Douglas Adams died, but his buddy knew his password and emptied his Mac onto a CD, the various unfinished writings were lightly edited and printed as this.
But gosh, am I ever glad that they did, because there's some exceptional writing in here, hilARious, as he always was, and glitteringly insightful. His projections on the future of technology, from the 90's, are pretty brilliant, and the piece de resistance is the speech to Cambridge on the purpose of God.

3.5 Stars

A Final Collection of Douglas Adams. Some of his Colums, Diaries a single Chapter taken out of the "Hitchhiker"-Universe and 9 Chapter of the third Dirk Gently Book.
The Colums are a bit much and a Stretch to read but the third and final part makes the book a fun read and really sad in a way. Would have loved to read what Adams' would have made out of it.

It's really hard to rate a text that is a compilation of snippets that was intended to eventually be a book, but that the author never completed.

This reliquary is constructed of some well-not-quite-eulogies of Douglas Adams, and some quotes, snippets and letters that he wrote and some of his magazine articles. The entire first half of the book comes across as a portrait of a man we have come to know through his work, with some semi-biographical pieces such as his time spent in the America walking borrowed dogs, his passion for The Beatles and Procol Harum, his thoughtful journey into Atheism, and that time he dressed up as a Rhino to climb Kilimanjaro. I was fully amused to listen to his wish-lists for future technology, that spookily predict many aspects our modern day mobile cloud-computing world and fibre optic networks, even though they were written in the 90s.

Bumbling into the more Dirk Gently end of the book, I was amused to find myself listening to the voice of Arthur Dent, Simon Jones. Having been brought up on Hitchhiker's Guide (TV and radioplay versions) this seemed quite fitting. I'll admit that knowing this was ostensibly a Dirk Gently book, I should have at first considered... "the interconnectedness of all things". I was caught off guard with a frisson of real honest to goodness goosebumps as random descriptions in the text tied back to other anecdotes, turns of phrase and backstory from Adams's life. Either that or I was just cold... gusty winds may exist.

I'm not sure how this would go down with people who are not fans of the author, but the book is a nice quiet farewell to the man.

Well now I'm doubtful of salmon or is it something else, a brilliant book by the master himself. Dirk Gently is a fabulous character construct as is the interconnectedness of all things. A holistically great book - Read it!!

Leider wurde "Lachs im Zweifel" nie zu Ende geschrieben... Aber wenigstens gab es ein paar Stücke, die hier zusammengetragen und veröffentlicht wurden. Blöd nur, dass ich jetzt natürlich wissen möchte, was aus der anderen Hälfte der Katze geworden ist... Da Douglas Adams' Stil einzigartig ist, wird diese Frage wohl unbeantwortet bleiben.

Das Buch versammelt unterschiedliche Texte über und von Douglas Adams, die uns u.a. auch seine privaten Seiten aufzeigen. Sein Einsatz für den Tierschutz, seine Faszination für Apple (sehr witzig, diese Episoden im Jahre 2023 zu lesen) und seine Beziehung zum Schreiben.

Interviews, Erinnerungen, Textfetzen - das alles ist hier versammelt. Es ist kein reiner Dirk Gently, wie der Rückentext vielleicht vermuten lässt, sondern eine Hommage an Douglas Adams und sein Werk. Deswegen in erster Linie für Fans geeignet, die den Autoren, seine Werke und dessen Art bereits kennen.

Ein schöner Abschied, dieses Buch.

I went into this thinking I was getting a 300 pg Dirk Gently story... guess I should have read some reviews of it first... cuz that is noty what this book was mostly. It was interesting but just not what I was hoping for.

This book was billed as Dirk Gently 3, but that is not the case.

There are a handful of chapters of wha would have been the third book, however the great man passed away before completion.

If I wanted to read a book of DNA's interviews or writings I probably would have given this a higher score.

Even though this is a bit of a mishmash of collected notes, interviews, and rough drafts pulled from Adams’s beloved Mac computers, it was sooo good to hear his voice again. Adams’s writing is so uniquely him - it doesn’t matter if he’s writing something as mundane as a shopping list, he imbues life and humor into it and it becomes suddenly clearly and beautifully connected to the world. There’s a reason that he’s known for writing about life, the universe, and everything. It was an incredibly sad day when we lost him at the young age of 49 - he’s one of my all-time favorite authors and could have created so much more. I read this for Book Riot’s 2018 “Read Harder” challenge, task #1: a book published posthumously.