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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : A : Adams, Douglas
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The Salmon of Doubt is the late Douglas Adams' third comic novel about "holistic detective" Dirk Gently. Ten tantalising chapters of this unfinished project are padded to book size with about 50 short Adams pieces, mostly non-fiction.Additional material includes introductions by Stephen Fry and editor Peter Guzzardi (who stitched together the Salmon fragment from disk drafts), The Guardian's Adams biography, Richard Dawkins' farewell piece, and the order of the memorial service.
The non-fiction by the man himself ranges from perhaps a dozen meaty articles and speeches to brief squibs, interview/questionnaire answers and tiny asides like:
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works. How do you recognise something that is still technology? A good clue is if it comes with a manual.
There are enjoyable pieces on computers (especially), atheism, dogs, manta rays on the Great Barrier Reef, the Save the Rhino stunt climb, and PG Wodehouse. Much of the rest is ephemeral; you can't help reflecting that Adams himself never chose to collect all this lightweight newspaper work.
Lovers of his fiction will welcome the Hitch-Hiker-related short stories "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" and "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe", despite the latter's dreadfully dated political punch line.
What of The Salmon of Doubt itself, a quarter of this book? There's a glimpse of a far-future estate agent's utopia, a woman asking Dirk Gently to investigate a cat that's literally only half there (his puzzling reluctance to take the case may echo Adams' own feelings about the novel), Gently's capricious trip to America in response to an unknown client's total lack of instructions, the tragic death of a rhino as perceived by the rhino... Many teasing questions; we'll never know the answers.
Overall it's a must-have for devoted Adams fans and completists, a likely disappointment (though with pleasant exceptions) for new readers. --David Langford
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Tertiary Phase is a new six-part dramatisation of the third book in Douglas Adams's "Trilogy in Four Parts", Life, the Universe and Everything. We rejoin Arthur Dent--after his anticlimactic revelation of the meaning of life and his unceremonious return to earth--to find him living in a hideously miserable cave in prehistory. However, just as he thinks that things cannot possibly get any worse, they suddenly do. He discovers that the Galaxy is not only mind-bogglingly big and bewildering, but also that most of the things that happen in it are staggeringly unfair.Many of the cast of the original BBC Radio 4 series have been reunited for superb sequel, which features 20 minutes of material not heard in the broadcast version. The sound is crystal clear and the running time is a massively entertaining 3 hours and 10 minutes. Among the returning cast are Simon Jones as Arthur Dent, Geoffrey McGivern as Ford Prefect, Susan Sheridan as Trillian, Mark Wing-Davey as Zaphod Beeblebrox and Stephen Moore as Marvin the Paranoid Android. And even the delightful Joanna Lumley pops up unexpectedly. --Paul Eisinger
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