Douglas Adams has a pleasant writing style and this was a very fun little read.

By his own admission, Douglas Adams was not a great writer. When you list the names of the authors who have advanced the English language, Douglas Adams will not feature in that pantheon, though it must be said that he loved the language more than most. But never mind that, for his place is secure in a far more important list: Greatest Thinkers. In the simplest sense of the word, Adams was a philosopher. Like his friends in Monty Python, he used comedy “as a medium to express intelligence” and to communicate ideas, the way comedy should be used. Although this isn’t the book that he intended to deliver to the world, it has served as the perfect goodbye to an author who died well before his time.

The book is divided into four parts—the first three being Life, the Universe, and Everything, obviously, followed by a fun short story that I’d read before,  Young Zaphod Plays It Safe, and finally, the unfinished sequel to  The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul. In the first three parts, the editor has presented a collection of Adams’ speeches, interviews, website entries, book recommendations, introductions to other books/editions and some unpublished stuff rummaged from his many, many MacBooks. In other words, this is a book for those of us who are already familiar with Adams and were left wanting more, those of us to whom Douglas’ idiosyncratic wit and charm feel like a warm, comforting hug.

In his introduction to this book,  Stephen Fry elaborates on this feeling:

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“Douglas has in common with certain rare artists the ability to make the beholder feel that he is addressing them and them alone: I think this in part explains the immense strength and fervour of his ‘fan base’. [...] When you look at Blake, listen to Bach, read Douglas Adams or watch Eddie Izzard perform, you feel you are perhaps the only person in the world who really gets them. Just about everyone else admires them, of course, but no one really connects with them in the way you do. I advance this as a theory. Douglas’s work is not the high art of Bach or the intense personal cosmos of Blake, it goes without saying, but I believe my view holds nonetheless. It’s like falling in love. When an especially peachy Adams turn of phrase or epithet enters the eye and penetrates the brain you want to tap the shoulder of the nearest stranger and share it. The stranger might laugh and seem to enjoy the writing, but you hug to yourself the thought that they didn’t quite understand its force and quality the way you do—”

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What I love about DNA’s writing is his tendency to flit from topic to topic at supersonic speeds and draw comparisons between apparently unrelated subjects, like Newton and Darwin, for example. It takes a peculiar kind of intelligence to draw such elaborate connections. But Adams has this in common with both Newton and Darwin: a sense of wonder. My Physics professor used to say that to be a physicist, one must first be a philosopher, completely in awe of the universe and everything in it, just as Douglas was until the very end. But members of both professions also refuse to settle for a limited world-view, discontented to be living in ignorance. That same sense of wonder puts them on the quest to seek answers and so, they steer the human race forward. Douglas Adams understood and appreciated this and, in his humour and philosophy, he retained a deep respect for science. His strength lay in the fact that he could convey this reverence without ever sounding arrogant:



The Salmon of Doubt provides extensive insight into Adams’ thoughts and beliefs. As is evident, I particularly enjoyed his commentary on religion and atheism, which he wrote with an uncanny understanding of not only science and religion but also the human psyche. If you think atheists are a tiresome lot, you’ll be blown away by DNA, who had to have been the most affable and amusing atheist in history. Where his good friend  Richard Dawkins incites anger in those who cling to religious beliefs, on reading Adams you can’t help but laugh at your own (il)logical fallacies. (Incidentally, this edition includes an utter tear-jerker of an epilogue by Dawkins.) Such is the power of a good joke, as DNA unfailingly demonstrated:

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“This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, ‘This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn’t it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!’ This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything’s going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for.”

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I hope that someday I can acquire his unique skill and ability to discuss heavy subject matter in a light-hearted manner, such that his audience is left with much to ponder over but never overwhelmed. Another joy was to read about his profound love for music. To read his essays on The Beatles and Bach is to see that Adams admired those who dared to do something different, who were imaginative and creative and avant-garde. Rare is such a person who could talk about almost anything under the sun: from subatomic particles to manta rays, technology to Jane Austen, architecture to evolutionary biology. The world suffered an incalculable loss when he passed. The Salmon of Doubt may not have gone where it intended to go, but I think it has ended up where it needed to be. It belongs in the compendium of every DNA fan who adores this writer and wants to know his thoughts on everything from Earl Grey tea to the letter ‘Y’. If you’re not a fan yet, I can’t imagine what you’re waiting for!

So long, DNA, and thanks for all the laughter.

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.

This work is unpolished, unfinished, and it's totally obvious. It cuts off as abruptly as the final piece of Bach (BWV 1080), leaving a vague disappointment and a void that won't ever be filled. I never met Douglas Adams, and I'll never have a chance to, but perhaps one day I'll visit his grave.

Douglas Adams was unique in his ability for existential satire. From his portrayal of transgalactic airports to the way Norse gods would act in modern London, all his work shows a delightful talent for combining the surreal and the mundane. He mixes them, like a fancy drink, garnishes it, and offers you one of the most pleasingly different word cocktails that you'll ever taste.

The Salmon of Doubt didn't contain this in the same density as his other novels, and perhaps if I were reading it without the necessary context of his writings I would be left confused and underwhelmed. But knowing Adams' oeuvre makes it almost-make-sense, in the way the first cut-off half of an absurdly complicated mystery novel might. I'm rating this five stars regardless of the unpolished writing because of the emotions it instills in me- the guaranteed sadness, the sense that I lost someone important to me before I'd ever even met him.

I got this book because I love Douglas Adams, since he died & will no longer be writing another novel. Anything from his notes however incoherent was good enough for me to buy.

I did not expect this book to be such a life-changer for me. It was a catalyst that triggered a flood of ideas/books/authors that followed for the next few years. My rating of this book is purely for what this book has meant to me, not exactly the book itself.

Otostopçunun Galaksi Rehberi'nin son kitabı olarak pazarlanan Kuşkucu Somon'u severlerine tavsiye etmem. DNA'nın gazete yazılarından oluşuyor 3/4'ü. Son hikaye olan Kuşkucu Somon ise DNA'nın Dirk Gently karakterine ait bitmemiş bir hikaye. Devam kitabı denmesinin tek nedeni ise DNA'nın bu hikaye daha çok Otostopçu'ya benzedi ona evrilebilir diye bir açıklaması olması vakti zamanında.. Anısına okumak isteyen okusun tabii.

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.

So sad that this unique writer is lost of us. Douglas Adams was the author of the hilarious Hitchhikers Guide to the Universe series, are there is no one like him. Include interviews and essays, very rich. Listened to the audiobook. It's purely a pleasure.

I resisted reading this for a long time because I was under the misapprehension that it was merely a presentation of the sections of the Dirk Gently novel Adams was working on until his untimely death in 2001. Having seen multiple references to it in Neil Gaiman's excellent Hitchhiker's companion, Don't Panic, I finally broke down and got it from the library, and I was glad that I did.

The last third of the book does indeed contain the unfinished Salmon of Doubt, but that was to my mind the least interesting part of the book and could (and perhaps should) have been left out. Adams didn't yet know where he was going with it, and in fact, he was apparently thinking of changing it from a Dirk Gently novel to one set in the Hitchhiker's universe. The first two-thirds of the book comprise many different writings by Adams on topics ranging from computers (his beloved Macintoshes) to how to make tea to his atheism, as well as speeches, letters, and interviews with Adams. It's really an eye-opening look at the wide-ranging intellect and knowledge that underlies the seeming frivolity and true hilarity of his books.

An enjoyable but utterly pointless book.

I'm a huge Douglas Adams fan but sadly this book doesn't deserve his name. It's not that it's filth, or worthless. In fact this is has some lovely moments in the book and that's what gets it 2 stars from me.

But the issue is it's a book that shouldn't exist. This should be free on the internet, or some other format. You get a large amount of articles, a few random chapters from a book, a book that no one even knows what series it belongs to exactly, and that's about it.

The only author I felt worse about passing was Micheal Crichton, and his posthumous book was an almost finished manuscript, this unfortunately is just the building blocks.

The worst book in the world would be one you talk about with the author, read all the chapters out of order, and piecemeal, read a rough draft, read an almost final version, and read the final copy.

This is just the second step by itself, and because we all know there won't be a final book, it feels like a hollow last hurrah in my mind. I'll always miss Douglas Adams, but I'll honor him with his classics. Not what probably should have remained unpublished and unnecessary tidbits of his life.

There's honestly really no way of me writing about this book without gushing all over the place. Despite the undeniable brilliance of his other books, Salmon of Doubt very quietly takes you into the mind of the introspective and thoughtful Adams that must have spent time staring deeply into the unknowable. It gets to the core of what he wrote about and why; his fascination with science which he would eventually find amusing and eventually have it evolve into jokes that he'd write into his books. And to draw all of this together, the infuriating ease with which he places words together. Though he was notorious for procrastinating and finding the writing process as arduous as almost anyone can testify, Adams was also known (after being forced to) for being able to sit down and write straight for two weeks and come out with a book. And his humor from his blog writings are so casual and flippant that there's no way to not feel awful about how unfunny and unwitty you are.

I appreciated this book for the glimpse it gave into Adams' mind, which turned out to be a minutely aware and self-searching one about technology, about himself, about life, the universe, and everything. A bittersweet compendium celebrating the man he was and mourning the future books he'll never write, the observations he'll never perfectly word in a single apt sentence.

UPDATE ON "2ND" READING:
Technically it's not my second reading, but it's been a really long time since I sat down and read the whole thing again from start to finish. It's a book I remember huge chunks of, listen to the audiobook when I'm feeling restless, dip into it when I half remember a passage and want to reread the whole section and then end up reading the whole several following chapters. In a way I've read it quite a lot. But it's been a while since I really read it all the way through, taking in every word and really parsing everything he says.

Turns out that I've grown up a lot in that time.

I read it, incidentally, as a break from reading another one of my favorite writers whose most current work hasn't been evoking a lot of enthusiasm in me. What could be more appropriate, when disappointed by an author whose current work I feel like is somewhat regressive, than reading an author whose work never had time to grow?

Adams died at the relatively tender age of 49. It was unexpected, heartbreaking, and every time I go through this book, either briefly or wholly, I am struck by the sadness of that. He never got to see all the ways that the internet has exploded, for better or for worse - and the thing about Adams was the fact that, for the most part, he was expertly attuned to seeing technology as being for the better. His writings in this book about technology are the stuff I come back to the most. At a close second are his religious philosophies. What I got from his books at the time was not a resentment of religion but a fascination in our physical world. That our world was amazing and beautiful enough that religion wasn't required - but that didn't necessarily mean doing away with it or imposing that on other people.

And that's where I get a little relieved that I didn't have to watch Adams evolve. Because I've watched Dawkins do it, I've watched Fry do it. I've watched it turn into a spurning of religion in any form. Adams manages to hang onto his acknowledgement and understanding of it, but it's with a hint of European condescension and not exactly a difficult hop, skip, and a jump to the atheists of today. He paints it as something for the primitive locals to accept and the educated foreigners to understand. In that way, I'm glad that Adams is trapped forever in 2001 and older. It's one thing for someone to say that then; it's another thing for that mindset to holdout to this day. And I wish and want and hope and believe that he wouldn't have kept his foibles for another 16 years.

And by god are his foibles reflected well in what was left over of Salmon of Doubt. He's never been the greatest with female characters - I believe that it helped massively that Lalla Ward and Mary Tamm were sharp enough people to input personality into anything for the times he wrote Romana. They're invariably "attractive" (a massive pet peeve of mine being that female characters are introduced with a quantifier on that account - something, incidentally, that the book I was avoiding did) and often inscrutable. Richard and Arthur are both, in a way, bland, but are also both, in a way, interesting characters with interests and focus. His fumbling with characters like Kate and Trillian, bland with no personality or interests (or interests that change wildly from one story to the next), brings to sharp relief how bad he was at writing them. I don't exactly understand what was so incredibly inscrutable about the women-folk to Adams, but it does make me glad I don't have a book from him to be disappointed by. And yet, at the same time, I suffer under the missing half of Salmon of Doubt - about a cat that is missing its bottom half, like some sort of hellish ironic parallel. It remains unfinished, unfound, and despite apparently an entire well of writing in his harddrive, unknowable, taking the fate of Gusty Winds with it.

I love Adams - when I think of people whose works I've been invariably changed by, influenced by, Adams sits on top of that tower, beaming beatifically. But I'm old enough to opine myself, to have perspective and opinions separate from him (I didn't, once), and with that perspective, it's not that he's fallen in my eyes, it's that I've risen a lot since I last really perused him. This book is still incredibly important to me, and I won't deny that reading Dawkins' eulogy at the end still brings me to tears.

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.