h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was surfing the internet, looking for a release date to 'Salmon of Doubt', and when I came across the news about DNA's heart attack, I felt just like I lost a friend.
I can't explain why I like his books so much. The HHGTG of course, which is certainly the funniest sci fi book ever, but also the Dirk series and the classic 'meaning of liff'.
He was to me some kind of a Monty Python, a nonsense genius, a real visionnaire (especially concerning his approach to computers and information), and , well, I don't know, I liked the guy.

Forty-two? Six by nine? He found out our universe had no sense.

Where is he now? When I think of him, he's in front of a table in this restaurant, where when he looks to the ceiling, the entire universe collapses again and again and he smiles to his unfinished salmon.

Sounds better than fluffy white clouds and angels and stuff isnt it?

Just finished "Salmon of Doubt" -- the posthumous book pulled from DNA's zip disks. [it is mid 2002] It was jerky and uneven ... but there is NO WAY I would not read & love it.

Agreed ... when I learned via email from a friend that Doug Adams was gone (a couple months after-the-fact in June 2001), I too felt lost and missing a close personal soul friend.

Perhaps keeping h2g2 alive and over-filled is the best homage to its reluctant creator. [he says, in the Welcome letter, that he was a 'reluctant hero' ... that he had no idea what he was suggesting ...]

Just look what you hath wrought, Mr. Adams!!!

i was really hesitant about reading salmon of doubt, i dreaded it, but by the end of the first few pages he had made me laugh so hard with his wondeful descriptions and logic that i was so glad i had got it. i was in the middle of the irish sea around 2 am when i heard he'd died i could,;t belive how miserable it made me. He was an inspiration and a jooly funny chap.

I came across the book yesterday in glasgow. for many personal reasons dateing back to august 1980 I have been keeping a casual eye on Mr Adams books and other work. This book seems to be put together just how he would have done it if he had known how. It just took his death to get it all together. I have read half of it. some in John Lewis glasgow while waiting for my wife to try on some cloths and then some when I got back to Durham last night. I stopped at 1oclock this am and went to bed. I havn't picked it up yet this morning as i'm supposed to be working, but i am almost certain that I'll be feeling 'Farnham' by this afternoon as a result of watching the cricket and reading this wonderful collection of articles and unfinished works. lets not try to finnish the work by second guessing but leave the hints to ponder upon for a while. I spent a good hour sitting outside in my garden in the quiet humid dark thinking about life and death and all the other bits in between and feel much better for it I might add. i'm going to read it slowly and mull over it a bit. Is there a collection of Mr Adams newspaper collumns at the indy and others? They make for good loo reading material.
thanks to everyone who put this together. I hope it helps you all who must miss him so much.
Will H Perry

I bought the Salmon of Doubt on Friday and finished it in one session. I spent all day Saturday reading the book. It was miserable outside and the book, although disjointed, was the perfect tonic to a dreary day. The humour and amazing insight that DNA had was fantastic. He is such a huge loss to, not just the literary world, but mankind itself.

Douglas Adams, you will be missed

Carmo

I (like many others) have recently gotten hold of a copy of "The Salmon Of Doubt" although I was (up until more recently) only a vague follower of his work I always enjoyed it, and although I don't remember where I was when I heard he'd died (I have trouble remembering where I've been today), having begun reading this book & realising there is no more, this closes the book (excuse the pun) on his literary creations containing as it does all there is of the book he was in the midst of writing when he died and a wealth of other articles interviews and tidbits, THe profound loss is sinking in & I have the urge to remind myself of how good his other books were (again). Ok I've run out of steam now, I'll wrap up with my appraisal so far of the book: in the words of Adrian Belew (King Crimson) "I Like It!"
A sad loss to literature, but memories that will last a lifetime.

I really don't know how I can contribute to this conversation, everyone else seems to have read much more of Douglas Adam's books. I only read The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (hereafter reffered to mysteriously and ambigously "the guide") last summer. In June through a series of strange conincidences I spent about three or four hours in a Barnes and Nobles with my boyfriend. There sitting on a "Summer Reading table" was The complete "guide" triology in all its unabridged glory. I started reading it on the way home, and didn't stop until I had muddled my joyous way through all five sections. It was a life changing experiance. I discovered the simple joy of reading humour again. After two years of bleak dystopias and simple novels. I re-remembered the joy in satire.

Unfortunetely I was reading the Onion a few days after my aquisition of "the guide" and saw the ad for The Salmon of Doubt and realized with a growing pang that I'd just missed him. The regret as I read The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul, and The Salmon of Doubt grows too, because I'll never have the expectation of the next book.

Douglas Adams, If only I had gotten stuck in a book store a few years earlier.

~Claire

I'd just like to throw my two cents in. I've been reading DNA's books since the mid 80s and just love his work. I've derived my sense of humor from it, along with many other things. I would also like to add that I am, unofficially, of course, in the process of finishing Salmon in hopes that I could perhaps carry somewhat of a torch for our dear friend. When it is finished, I will post it, somewhere, so that all may read it. If anything, it's to fill in the rest of the book, but it is an honor for me to do so. I welcome all feedback on it.

I was a fan of DNA already when I bought the Salmon of Doubt. I don't remember exactly how I got the Hitch Hiker's trilogy on my hands. Somehow a good friend recomended it to me during one of his trips with LSD. Since I read that book I changed my mind about human mind.
DNA said some funny things about airports which I don't remember right now but it was in an airport where I bought the Salmon of Doubt. I was bored and walking in a bookshop at the duty frees when I spotted that book. I had no second thoughts.
I read the back page and I was devastated. I was about to ask the cashier to change my book with another Salmon of Doubt cause the one I had was wrong at one point:DNA can't be dead,I couldn't beleive it!
I enjoyed the book as much as I was sad. Douglas is one of those men that even if you've never met him, he reaches so close your heart that he seems to be a friend of yours for ages.
What a man!

... yeah i think that he is out there sitting in milliways watching the world fall apart. soudns alot better than clouds and angles , he is in his own hevan , one he built for himself, and he will live in it forever throguh his books in our minds, we will all miss him but his legacy lives on, this is proof , as long as we keep this site up we keep him alive.

It is true. Salmon of Doubt was well presented and I am very happy we were allowed to consume this work representing a small portion of his final endeavours. I had been pointed toward this website while still in college and just today visited again for the first time since then thinking that if it is still up and running I will register. I was not disappointed in the community which I had known would keep the guide bouyant. Thanks to you all for being here and I look forward to the future and the legacy DNA, however inadvertantly, left for the world to find.

I read The Salmon of Doubt a while ago and was bitterly disapointed when I got to the middle of the story as this is also the end. I wish I could know what happened to Dirk but I never will. The chapter about his nose made me laugh til i cried (my brother also has a very distict nose so I read it to him). I now know how to make the perfect cup of Tea, Ta much Douglas.