The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

Rating

7.5

The Pequod Review:

Published in 2002, one year after Douglas Adams's death, The Salmon of Doubt is a partially-complete Dirk Gently novel that picks up where The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul left off. The book's ten chapters are fragmentary and will probably only be of interest to serious Adams/Gently fans. I liked this observation though, which reminds us that trendlines sometimes break suddenly:

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.

The book also includes a handful of essays, magazine pieces and interviews drawn from across Adams's career.