Introduced by Stephen Fry, THE SALMON OF DOUBT & OTHER WRITINGS comprises 50 pages of the late Douglas Adams' unfinished novel, The Salmon of Doubt, along with writings from 3,000 unpublished files stored on his computer harddrive. This collection is the unique last word from one of the world's most successful and best loved science fiction writers and represents an important, fascinating and characteristically hilarious legacy. Other potential inclusions are transcripts of the radio series HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE FUTURE and Adams' essays, articles, and lectures.

About the Author

Douglas Adams created all the various and contradictory manifestations of The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy: radio, novels, TV, computer game, stage adaptations, comic book and bath towel. He lectured and broadcast around the world and was a patron of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund and Save the Rhino International. Douglas Adams was born in Cambridge, UK and lived with his wife and daughter in Islington, London, before moving to Santa Barbara, California, where he died suddenly in 2001. After Douglas died the movie of Hitchhiker moved out of development hell into the clear uplands of production, using much of Douglas' original script and ideas. Douglas shares the writing credit for the movie with Karey Kirkpatrick.

Reviews

When Adams died unexpectedly in May 2001, he had not written fiction in ten years. The success of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series and the peculiar adventures of Detective Dirk Gently had made Adams an sf icon. His fans kept hoping for at least one more weird and wonderful galactic adventure. The Salmon of Doubt is a loving tribute to the author by his friends, who decided that the best way to salute his life and work was to collect some of the more unusual bits of it and let the world share the mind of a wonderfully talented man, with a unique viewpoint on almost everything. The book comprises selections from a huge amount of material, a fascinating collection of bits and pieces of a busy writer's life. Articles on a variety of subjects written for various magazines and newspapers, introductions to books, speeches, personal interviews, and glimpses of a well-enjoyed life are included. Adams describes the traumas of his school days, his love for the Beatles and Bach, an illicit liaison with someone else's dogs, and his fascination with evolutionary theory. Among the fiction entries is a tale from the private life of Genghis Khan and a Zaphod Beeblebrox short story. The narrators were all personal friends of Adams's: actor Simon Jones reads the largest portion of the book and does a wonderful job; Stephen Fry also takes a turn, and Christopher Cerf reads a eulogistic introduction that he wrote for the print version. Fans will be both happy and sad to experience this final chapter of Adams's journey through the galaxy. Highly recommended, but libraries will want to repackage this audio for circulation.-Barbara Rhodes, Northeast Texas Lib. Syst., Garland Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.

'Douglas Adams created a new comic genre, and peopled a whole other world through his work' FINANCIAL TIMES 'His ability to connect cosmic ideas with the banal commonplaces of everyday life was unique' STEPHEN FRY

Edited by Peter Guzzardi and with an introduction by Christopher Cerf, this bittersweet collection comprises letters, fragments of ideas for books, films and TV, ruminations on a diverse array of subjects and a good bit of a final unfinished novel by the author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series, who died in May of last year. Included are a letter to the editor of a U.K. boy's magazine (written in 1965, when Adams was 12); a reminiscence about his lifelong love for the Beatles, written when he was in his 40s; a 1991 piece from Esquire entitled "My Nose"; and an undated article for the Independent espousing his preference for whiskey. Also on hand are a q&a in which he identifies the most interesting natural structure as being a "2,000-mile-long fish in orbit around Jupiter, according to a reliable report in the Weekly World News"; a spiritual encounter with a giant manta ray while testing a mechanical diving device at Australia's Great Barrier Reef; an affecting introduction to P.G. Wodehouse's unfinished novel, Sunset at Blandings; an account of a Save the Rhino pilgrimage across Africa; ruminations on computerization; and a philosophical address about the authorship of the universe entitled "Is There an Artificial God?" Two sketches "The Private Life of Genghis Khan" and "Young Zaphod Plays It Safe" from the Utterly Utterly Merry Comic Relief Christmas Book, 1986, are also here, as are 10 chapters from various versions of the title novel-in-progress. National advertising. (May 7) Forecast: The audience for this will be Adams completists, but there are enough of them to make for respectable sales. Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.