Customer Reviews
The Benefit of Doubt. - By: Ian Wood, Author of 'Here's 2 Absent Fathers', 30 Jul 2008 
`The Salmon of Doubt' is a posthumously published collection of words put into a fantastic collection of arrays by Douglas Adams whom had previously been assembling wordsin a very pleasing mannerin the various incarnations of `The Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy' & the `Dirk Gently' novels.
The book contains tributes from comic actor & writer Stephen Fry, Nicholas Wroe, scientist & writer Richard Dawkins & the editor of this collection, Peter Guzzardi. All of which give some insight into Douglas but nothing like the insight Douglas gives of himselfin the collection of articles, drafts of speeches & letters which have been prised from the hard drive of Douglas' beloved Apple Mac.
The pieces have been assembled into three sections, Life, The Universe & Everything but the themes don't really add anything to the writing of a man whom could have paraphrased the phone bookin a manner that would leave us weeping with laughter.
The best part of the book is the quarter given over to `The Salmon of Doubt' an abandoned rather than incomplete Dirk Gently novel. Adams had apparently decided that the ideas he was exploring did not suit Dirk Gently & was considering rewriting the piece as a Hitch Hikers novel.
Although it would have possibly being a great novel as Adams then saw it I have to say that I enjoyed reading what he had actually written & am only disappointed that I will never get to marvel at the clever conclusion that not only tied up all the loose ends I'd noticed but ten or twelve others I wouldn't have noticed until rereading the book for the nth time. The beauty of Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently books was that every time you reread them you found something new which you hadn't noticed before.
A look into an awesome mind - By: E. Marsden, 26 Jun 2008 
If you have read every Douglas Adams book but still don't feel close enough to the great man himself, this is the book for you. You can see how the master thinks, how his everyday musings were written with the same wit & wisdom as his greatest works of fiction & read a wonderfull workin progress. As he says of 'Sunset at Blandings' (unfinished due to the author's death) by PG Wodehouse, you can seein DNA's first Chapters of his new Dirk Gently novel, the craftsman at work, the sentences are unpolished, the work has not even been through its first proof-read & it is all the more wonderful because of this. This book is fact, fiction & autobiography all rolled into one. Read it. It will blow your mind.
Be aware of what you're getting - By: Mr. R. Wenman, 07 May 2008 For those who know Douglas Adams' work, chances are you are aware that The Salmon of Doubt is the last of Adams' work before his untimely death & is incomplete. Thus for those with an interestin Adams' work this is your last insight into what would have been the third bookin his Dirk Gently series. Or perhaps the sixth bookin the Hitchhikers series? Who knows what this may have ended up as.
This book will give you your last Adams' fix but be aware. Although the book is listed as 336 pages, the actual in-progress novel The Salmon of Doubt is tucked away at the very end of the book & constitutes only a small portion of the entire book. The majority of the content is a compendium of Adams' work ranging from speeches to columns to random notes. It's a chance to see a little more of Douglas Adams for those who are fans, but for those who just bought it for the novel you may feel a bit ripped off.
Don't um, don't ah, just buy and read. - By: Paul Castle, 30 Apr 2008 This lunchtime I finished reading The Salmon Of Doubt, the first work of Douglas's I've read since he died all those years ago. I've not really put off reading it, books often stayin my teetering/tottering piles books for *years* before passing the rubicon of my having read them & getting filed on the bookshelves/book-chest-of-drawers like so many hunting trophies, but I have to say that I didn't relish the prospect of reading a book that I'd never get to see finished. I was wrong: this is possibly my favourite of all his books, not because of the Dirk Gently novel-in-progress, but because it's a treasury of Douglas writing as-himself about things that interest or annoy him. That makes it feel more personal than any other work of fiction, & the Salmon chapters are added on the end of the book like coffee & mints after an excellent meal, rather than presented as a main course where their unfinished state would have disappointed. This book is an ideal tribute to a wonderful man.
A look into the personality of DNA, + a weird story - By: Alex Wilson, 11 Aug 2007 I got this book from my step-brother, & although ithe storyin it was unfinished & a little confusing, the short stories & intos that Douglas Adams had written through the many years of his writing career were entertaining & made me wish i'd started reading his books before. If you're a DNA fan then you should definitly get this
