Salmon in doubt

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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(Original title: The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time ) is a book published in 2002 with partly unpublished texts by the British writer Douglas Adams, who died in 2001 .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

The book is not, as the subtitle “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy for the Last Time” suggests, a continuation of Adams' series of novels “ The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ”, but contains a collection of newspaper articles, lectures, notes and interviews that were conducted by the first part of a novel should be added to continue the Dirk Gently series. An interview with Adams preceding the draft of the novel indicates, however, that he had already stopped work on the fragment because he had come to the conclusion that the plot was better suited for a new “hitchhiker's guide” novel. The editor Peter Guzzardi used the working title of the novel fragment as the title of the entire book. In the preface Guzzardi writes that he took the texts used from a CD-ROM with 2579 files. Adams 'agent Ed Victor created this CD-ROM when he backed up the data from the hard drives of Adams' various computers after the writer's death. Adams' widow and friends and acquaintances helped with the selection of the texts.

The book is divided into three sections with the headings "The Life", "The Universe" and "And All the Rest". This classification roughly structures the loosely strung together texts. The three chapters are preceded by a prologue in the form of a newspaper article by Nicholas Woe on the life and work of Adam. The book closes with an epilogue in which Richard Dawkins ' lament for the dead , which was published in the newspaper " The Guardian " shortly after Adam's death, can be read.

The texts in the individual chapters deal with topics that Adams dealt with time and again: atheism , computers (especially the Apple Macintosh ), travel and nature, music ( The Beatles and Procol Harum , two of his favorite bands). The texts also contain autobiographical sections mainly about Adams' childhood and adolescence. The scope of the texts used ranges from the first 11 chapters of the already mentioned fragment of the novel through various newspaper articles, letters and interviews to short notes without any further connection, such as on p. 140:

“What is the advantage of corresponding with your fans via email?
- It's faster, it's easier and you don't have to lick so much. "

The subtitle of the book “For the last time the hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy” refers to the short story “ Jung-Zaphod plays it safe ”, which is also included . It is about Zaphod Beeblebrox, a main character in the series "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

literature

  • Douglas Adams: Salmon in doubt. Heyne, Munich 2003, ISBN 3453868641
  • Douglas Adams: The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time. Harmony 2002, ISBN 1400045088 (English)