The Salmon of Doubt

The Salmon of Doubt (Original Title: The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time ) is a 2002 book published with partly unpublished texts of the late 2001 British writer Douglas Adams. The German translation was published in 2003 by Heyne Verlag.

The book is not, as the subtitle " For the last time hitchhiking across the galaxy " suggests a continuation of Adam's " Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy " series represents, but also includes a collection of newspaper articles, lectures, notes and interviews by be added the first part of the novel, where the " Dirk Gently " should continue series. However, a novel design prefixed interview with Adam suggests that he had already set to work on the fragment, because he had come to the conviction that the action plan would be more suitable for a new " Hitchhiker " novel. The working title of the novel fragment used the editor Peter Guzzardi as the title of the book. In the preface writes Guzzardi that he has taken from the texts used a CD- ROM with 2579 files. This CD -ROM was Adam's agent Ed Victor created when he secured the data from the hard drives of the various computers Adams after the death of the writer. In selecting the texts, the widow and friends of Adams helped.

The book is divided into three sections with the headings "Life ", " The Universe " and " And all the rest ." This classification roughly structured loosely strung together texts. The three chapters is preceded in the form of a newspaper article by Nicholas Woe on the life and work of Adams a prologue. The conclusion of the book is an epilogue in which the dirge Richard Dawkins, published in the newspaper " The Guardian" shortly after the death of Adam, is read.

The texts in the individual chapters cover topics with which Adams has repeatedly occupied: atheism, computer (especially the Apple Macintosh), travel and the outdoors, music ( The Beatles and Procol Harum, two of his favorite bands ). The texts also contain autobiographical sections especially about Adam's childhood and youth. The extent of texts ranges from the first 11 chapters of the aforementioned novel fragment through various newspaper articles, letters and interviews to short notes without surrounding context such as on page 140:

" What is the advantage to correspond with your fans by e -mail? - It's faster, easier and you do not lick so much. "

The subtitle of the book " For the last time hitchhiking across the galaxy " refers to, also contained short story "Young Zaphod plays it safe - ". It is about Zaphod Beeblebrox, a main character of " The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series of novels.