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The Salmon of Doubt

Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time: Dirk Gently

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The Salmon of Doubt

By: Douglas Adams
Narrated by: Richard Dawkins, Stephen Fry, Stephen Mangan
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About this listen

Read by Stephen Mangan (Green Wing, Dirk Gently) and featuring an introduction written and read by Stephen Fry, and an epilogue read by Richard Dawkins.

The Salmon of Doubt is Douglas Adams's indispensable guide to life, the universe and everything. It includes short stories and eleven chapters of a Dirk Gently novel that Douglas Adams was working on at the time of his death, and features an introduction by Stephen Fry.

This sublime collection dips into the wit and wisdom of the man behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, uncovering his unique comic musings on everything from his school-trousers to malt whisky and from the letter Y through to his own nose, via atheism, hangovers and fried eggs.

These hilarious collected writings reveal the warmth, enthusiasm and ferocious intelligence behind this most English of comic writers; a man who was virtually an unofficial member of the Monty Python team.

Douglas Adams on his passion for P. G. Wodehouse, The Beatles and the perfect cup of tea alone make this a must-have collection and a remarkable sign-off from one of the best loved writers of all time.

Start from the beginning of the surreal Dirk Gently series with Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency.

©2002 Douglas Adams (P)2024 Macmillan Publishers International Limited Adventure Anthologies & Short Stories Humorous Mystery Private Investigators Science Fiction Short Stories Witty

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Critic reviews

An astonishing comic writer (Neil Gaiman)
Few recent writers have had such an infectious prose style as Adams. With his fondness for paradox, his galactic perspective on things and his wonderful way with meaningful nonsense his are the books which have launched a trillion quips (Robert McFarlane)
All stars
Most relevant  
A posthumous collection of writing recovered from Douglas Adams’s various Apple computers, plus 11 chapters of an unfinished Dirk Gently novel. I preferred the earlier essays and fragments. But the Dirk Gently stuff is quite interesting because it’s a sequel to “The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul”. It has provided me with further oxygen and direction for my Douglas Adams deep-dive.

Posthumous essays and an unfinished Dirk Gently novel

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I'm a big fan of THGttG trilogy and Dirk Gently books but this was dire. It is just a mishmash of various writings, letters, emails etc and not amusing or interesting for the most part. I had to skip multiple chapters that were just moans, rants, pompous musings and several-times just obnoxious.

I had not read the description so did not know what to expect, but I was expecting more of the actual "Salmon of Doubt". If I had read the Wikipedia description "It consists largely of essays, interviews, and newspaper/magazine columns about technology and life experiences" I would have been for-waned. If I had read the audible blurb I would have been misled: "sublime collection dips into the wit and wisdom..." and "hilarious collected writings" does not describe what I listened too.

So while the THGttG trilogy and Dirk Gently books gets an easy 5 stars from me, this gets a 2 mostly for the actual "Salmon of Doubt" chapters, and I wanted to reserve 1 star for THGttG film which is in my top 5 most awful films.

From a fan the THGttG & DG books - Gah!

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This should never had been written as a Dirk Gently book. A random collection of the work Douglas Adams would have been so much better. I came away from the actual Gently part of the book lost and dissatisfied with the outcome. This may be a bad version of the book as there is no forward and Stephen Fry is no where in the book and only mentioned once by Stephen M. at the end in the acknowledgement.

Disappointed

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It is a mish mash of stuff the DA didn't want to publish. I love his stories and his writing style. This has no story and is very disappointing.
I skipped through the early chapters and gave up half way through.

clearly not something Douglas would have published if he was still alive

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