Douglas Adams died in 2001. The Salmon of Doubt is a collection of his writing that the author's fans will appreciate.

The selections are wonderful and include a wide variety of pieces that Douglas was working on when he died.

The title refers to an unfinished Dirk Gently book which is included here. Though Adams originally intended the new book to continue the Dirk Gently saga, he hinted in an interview that he might instead turn it into a sixth Hitchhiker book.

This is not a finished novel and is rough around the edges, but Adams' fans will not want to miss this glimpse into the mind of this groundbreaking author. ( )

Genius as always from Adams. ( )

This is a posthumous collection of Douglas Adams' writings. It's tragic because I hate to think of a world without Adams' wit and insight, because I hate reading the first handful of chapters of what would have been "Salmon of Doubt" and knowing with a sickening feeling in my gut that now it will never, ever be finished.

This is a collection for true Adams fans. If you are a casual reader who has never read Adams' work before, give this a pass. If, on the other hand, you have read all five Hitchhiker's books and the two Dirk Gently novels nothing will stop you from getting hold of this book, will it? Of course not.

There is a touching forward by Stephen Fry, as well as some biographical information about Adams at the start of the book. Then we have a collection of his non-fiction essays, depending on your interests you may or may not enjoy them. Some, especially the anecdotal pieces, really show all of the warmth and humor of his fiction writing. My personal favorite is his account of two dogs that weren't really his, but that spent a lot of time ignoring him in Santa Fe. The more technological pieces may pall on readers who don't share those interests, and some of them are quite dated now, as well.

The collection also contains some curious odds and ends, like introductions he wrote for various books, speeches or interviews he gave, and unfinished oddities recovered from his various computers after his death.

There are two short stories, both related to the Hitchhiker's universe, "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" and "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe." "Young Zaphod" is classic Adams, and feels exactly like a "missing scene" from one of the first three Hitchhiker's books, and any fans who haven't read it before will want to pick up a copy of this collection for this short story, if for nothing else, I'm sure.

Then at the end we have the first few chapters of what would have been a new Dirk Gently novel (although Adams was considering turning it into a Hitchhiker's book, what we have here makes use of the Dirk Gently characters and universe). These chapters are very rough and unfinished, but they're still brilliant and in a way that makes it all the worse - you want to know how he would have brought all the plot threads together, what else would have developed, how it would have ended. It's funny and it's engaging and anyone who loved "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" will absolutely love what's there and be left wishing for the rest. And of course none of us will ever know the rest.

Douglas Adams was one of the greats. He will be missed. ( )

An interesting little volume filled with Adams' musings about a wide-ranging array of topics. Some of the essays and articles here are quite good, and others are, well, not quite so good. But they are all written with Adams' trademark zany wit, and you certainly won't be bored.

The good:
As usual, his observations about the foibles of life, whether it's his mortification about having to wear short pants to school because they didn't make long trousers his size, or the story about the stranger stealing his cookies, are hilarious. And his passionate enthusiasm for his personal values, whether it's technology or the Beatles, shines through in every line and is therefore quite contagious. He has a way of turning a phrase to bring an abstract point down to earth, especially when it comes to his criticism of theism. And some of his analogies between evolution and computer science are quite illuminating, particularly his observation that computer code is analogous to the genetic code in showing how evolution operates by performing simple operations millions of times over.

The bad:
As an amateur biologist, however, Adams does tend to get carried away with the computer analogies---no, Douglas, your baby is not "rebooting." Combine this tendency with his otherwise virtuous enthusiasm, and, like many computer scientists, he carries it to the point of assuming that we are on the verge of creating "artificial intelligence," i.e., that in the near future there will be conscious computers. This failure to distinguish between the biological and the man-made plays right into the theists' hands---after all, that's the basic fallacy behind the argument from design (the Celestial Watchmaker and all that), Adams has just kind of done it in reverse. And his playing at being a naturalist is at times almost embarrassing---like when he wants to ride a manta ray, which would probably be pretty cool, and then feels all stupid when told he can't, or when he hikes to Mount Kilimanjaro in a ridiculous rhino suit (although he does recognize the pretension of telling developing nations that they preserve the resources that Western nations "exploited" during their own development).

As for "The Salmon of Doubt" itself, I haven't read either of the previous Dirk Gently novels yet, but I thought this one was shaping up to be, with more polishing, an interesting book. Of course, in its rough form, and with no ending, it is a bit unsatisfying. Overall, however, this collection is well worth reading, but unless you're an Adams collector you can probably stick with the mass market version (or visit your local library). ( )

This is a compilation of writing gathered after the death of the author. While the individual passages are of good quality there is no real flow.
After having read the book I would not have bought it ( )