The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously unpublished material by
Douglas AdamsDouglas Noel Adams was an English writer, dramatist, and musician. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a...
. It consists largely of essays about technology and life experiences, but its major selling point is the inclusion of the incomplete novel on which Adams was working at the time of his death,
The Salmon of Doubt (from which the collection gets its title, a reference to the Celtic myth of the
Salmon of WisdomThe Salmon of Wisdom or Salmon of Knowledge is a creature figuring in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.The Salmon figures prominently in The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn, which recounts the early adventures of Fionn mac Cumhaill...
).
English editions of the book were published in the USA and
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
in May 2002, exactly one year after the author's death.
The original intention of
The Salmon of Doubt was a
Dirk GentlyDirk Gently is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul...
novel.
The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time is a posthumous collection of previously unpublished material by
Douglas AdamsDouglas Noel Adams was an English writer, dramatist, and musician. He is best known as the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which started life in 1978 as a BBC radio comedy before developing into a "trilogy" of five books that sold over 15 million copies in his lifetime, a...
. It consists largely of essays about technology and life experiences, but its major selling point is the inclusion of the incomplete novel on which Adams was working at the time of his death,
The Salmon of Doubt (from which the collection gets its title, a reference to the Celtic myth of the
Salmon of WisdomThe Salmon of Wisdom or Salmon of Knowledge is a creature figuring in the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology.The Salmon figures prominently in The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn, which recounts the early adventures of Fionn mac Cumhaill...
).
English editions of the book were published in the USA and
UKThe United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is a sovereign state located off the northwestern coast of continental Europe. It is an island country, spanning an archipelago including Great Britain, the northeastern part of Ireland, and many small islands...
in May 2002, exactly one year after the author's death.
The Book
The original intention of
The Salmon of Doubt was a
Dirk GentlyDirk Gently is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul...
novel. Adams commented that some of the ideas he developed in
Salmon of Doubt were not really working within a
Dirk GentlyDirk Gently is a fictional character created by Douglas Adams and featured in the books Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul...
framework. Those ideas would have been salvaged, undergoing necessary changes on the way, and put into a sixth
Hitchhiker'sThe Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is a science fiction comedy series created by Douglas Adams. Originally a radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1978, it was later adapted to other formats, and over several years it gradually became an international multi-media phenomenon...
book; as he thought that the last book in the series,
Mostly HarmlessMostly Harmless is a novel by Douglas Adams and the fifth book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series. It is described on the cover of the first editions as "The fifth book in the increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhikers Trilogy"....
, was a very bleak book and wanted to finish on a slightly more upbeat note.
The plot, set a few weeks after the events in
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the SoulThe Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul is a 1988 humorous fantasy detective novel by Douglas Adams. It is the second book by Adams featuring private detective Dirk Gently, the first being Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency....
, involves Dirk Gently refusing to help find the missing half of a cat, receiving large amounts of money from an unknown client, and then flying to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. Dirk pays a visit to Kate Schechter (who had first appeared in
The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul) and tells her that prior to the potential client, he had been so bored that he had started a habit of dialling his own phone number and discovered he'd answered his own calls.
A faxed summary reprinted before the text mentions travelling "through the nasal membranes of a rhinoceros, to a distant future dominated by estate agents and heavily armed kangaroos."
The version in the published book is the strongest content from several unfinished drafts that were written.
Versions
There are slight differences in varying editions of the book. The UK edition includes a foreword by
Stephen FryStephen John Fry is a British actor, writer, comedian, author, television presenter and film director. With Hugh Laurie, as the comedy double act Fry and Laurie, he co-wrote and co-starred in A Bit of Fry and Laurie, and the duo also played the title roles in Jeeves and Wooster...
, and the US edition, instead, has an introduction by
Christopher CerfChristopher Cerf is a U.S. author, composer-lyricist, and record and television producer. He is perhaps best known for his musical contributions to Sesame Street, for co-creating and co-producing the award-winning PBS literacy education television program Between the Lions, and for his humorous...
. The audiobook edition consists of 7 CDs, mostly read by
Simon JonesSimon Jones is an English actor, most famous for his appearances in the television and radio series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in which he played the lead role of Arthur Dent from 1978 to 2005...
, but also includes both of the introductions, read by their respective authors, as well as the tributes written and read by
Richard DawkinsClinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL is a British ethologist, zoologist, Neo-Darwinian evolutionary biologist and theorist and a popular science author....
. US paperback editions have yet another introduction, written by
Terry JonesTerence Graham Parry Jones is a Welsh comedian, screenwriter, actor, film director, children's author, popular historian, political commentator and TV documentary host. He is best known as a member of the Monty Python comedy team....
, and omit some material due to issues with copyright.
Editions
- US Hardcover edition, published by Harmony: ISBN 1-4000-4508-8
- UK Hardcover edition, published by Macmillan: ISBN 0-333-76657-1
- US audiobook edition (CD), published by New Millennium Audio: ISBN 1-59007-151-4
- US trade paperback edition, published by Ballantine: ISBN 0-345-46095-2
- US mass paperback edition, published by Del Rey: ISBN 0-345-45529-0
- UK paperback edition, published by Pan: ISBN 0-330-41956-0
- Canadian paperback edition, published by Pan: ISBN 0-330-32312-1
- US audiobook edition (CD), published by Phoeniz Audio: ISBN 1-59777-006-X
Adaptation
BBC Radio 4BBC Radio 4 is a domestic UK radio station that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967.-Outline:...
had commissioned a third Dirk Gently six-part radio series for broadcast in summer 2010, based on the uncompleted chapters of
The Salmon of Doubt, and written by
Spice WorldSpice World may refer to:*Spiceworld , second album by British pop group the Spice Girls, released in 1997*Spice World , the Spice Girls movie*Spiceworld , the sellout world tour of the Spice Girls...
writer
Kim FullerKim Fuller is a British writer for film, radio and television. His brother Simon Fuller also works in television. He is also notable as a contributor to The Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book and as a writer of material for Lenny Henry, Tracey Ullman, Red Dwarf, Not The Nine O'Clock...
. However, these plans have been dropped in favour of creating a television adaption of the two complete novels.
External links