Douglas Adams is probably best known for the radio series / TV series / book trilogy* / computer game / towel / feature film*The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. But that was not his only achievement. As well as a couple of other computer games, a couple of collaborative books, and countless other interesting projects - such as the site on which this text appears - he was the creator of another memorable "world": the world of Dirk Gently, Holistic Detective.

Dirk Who?

The first novel to feature Dirk Gently, Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency was published in 1987*, and featured the eponymous detective working with a several-hundred-year-old Cambridge University professor and a thoroughly confused man named Richard. Following his policy of solving mysteries based on "the fundamental interconnectedness of things", Gently starts looking for a cat and ends up saving the world - I won't tell you more than that, because I don't want to spoil it*, but suffice to say it's as wacky and enjoyable as the rest of his work. Oh, and yes, there really is a good explanation for the sofa being stuck like that...

It is interesting to note that fans of quite a different character might recognise some of the elements of the story, and even major characters - from an uncompleted storyline Adams wrote for Dr. Who. Over the years, he had written many episodes for the series, but this particular one was the unfortunate victim of circumstance, and filming was never completed due to industrial action*. That was in 1979; in 1992, the existing footage was released on video for avid Who fans; then, in 2003, the BBC and Big Finish adapted the script, entitled Shada, as an audio series and animated webcast. Most intriguingly, the character of "Professor Chronotis" is very clearly the same professor that Gently came to meet later - and it makes a lot of sense that he should be a Time Lord. And an office whose door opens onto different times, and different places? Why, that's a TARDIS, of course!

The Sequel

Clearly, Adams' enjoyed writing about Dirk, and his audience enjoyed reading it, because the following year came The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul, in which Gently finds himself answering the question - "if that was an act of god, which god, and what was it doing in the departures lounge of Heathrow Airport". The answer, you might like to know, is the Norse god of thunder, Thor - who for some inexplicable reason is always accompanied by a large Coca-Cola vending machine, and who finds it very frustrating fitting into the world of mortals.

Where the first book dealt in travels through time, and played with the paradoxes and entertainments of time travel and ancient University traditions, the second deals with the notion of realities separated by neither time nor space - realities reached by "slipping behind a molecule". It deals with acceptance, fitting in, relationships, and the nature of reality. And the need to buy a new fridge when the old one hasn't been opened in several months...

Another Trilogy?

After this, Adams' writing slowed down a little - he moved on to other projects, such as CD-ROMs, websites and various attempts to bring Hitchhiker's to the cinema. In 1992, he wrote a fifth, somewhat bleaker, book in the "increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker's trilogy". A few years later, he decided to start another Dirk Gently book, entitled The Salmon of Doubt - but his imagination stalled. Coming back to his notes, he realised that maybe these ideas would fit better in the Hitchhiker's series than the Dirk Gently one, and began work afresh. Sadly, he died before this story was completed, and we have only the first few chapters from which to guess where he was intending to take us next.

Additional Directions

In an interview for the Onion A.V. Club in 1998, Adams described how he'd watched a stage production of Dirk Gently, and started thinking about which bits worked, how it could be improved, and what it might look like in the cinema. He suggested that once the Hithhiker's movie was finished, he might look into giving Dirk Gently the same treatment - only, one presumes, without the fifteen year delay that preceded the final production of the former! Of course, he will now not be around to see the completion of even one of these films - but who, knows, maybe "Svlad Cjelli" will live on...