Review: The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time

The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time by Douglas Adams
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a collection of pieces from Adams, an anthology gathered from the dead man's hard drive (R.I.P.) and odd pieces from here and there. There are some themes that emerge. This includes the yearslong, frustrating effort to get a Hitchhiker's Guide movie made. While that project was not getting sufficient interest, Men in Black, the 1997 movie based on the Aircel comics book bought by Marvel came out. Adams reports this disproved any notion that sci fi comedy wouldn't work. Also Adams felt miffed at how some elements were overly "familiar". He doesn't cite specifics, but I think his list must include:
* When K reveals there are about 1500 aliens on Earth and most of them are on Manhattan just trying to make a living, James asks "Cab drivers?". This is a reference to writer Douglas Adams's 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' novels, particularly the final novel 'So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish', where archivist Ford Prefect's entry in the Guide hints that driving a cab is a good way to make a living for aliens visiting New York.
* The final scene reveals that our universe is seen to exist in a gaming marble, just like the miniature galaxy. Both the scene and concept of the miniature galaxy were was inspired from Douglas Adams's novel 'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy', where Ford Prefect tells Arthur Dent he knew of a planet that got used in a game of inter-galactic bar billiards and was potted into a black hole ("only scored 30 points, too").

There is also a fair amount about his atheism, stance against dams as more harm than good, and frustrations and excitement with personal computing, especially around Macs. I would have loved to work with him in gathering user stories for software design. He had an eloquent and unwavering vision for how ease of use should present in consumer technology.

Also, this reminds I need to someday read the Dirk Gently books. His future plans for that are only a small percentage of the content here.

View all my reviews