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So Long, and Thanks for all the Fish.
Dec. 16th, 2002 12:10 amI just finished reading The Salmon of Doubt, by Douglas Adams. It was published posthumously from data retrieved from his hard drive. Before I tell you what it is, I must tell you what it is not. It is not the sixth book in the Hitchhiker's Trilogy. It is not the third book in the Dirk Gently series. It is not a collection of half-written garbage intended to make a few bucks for people interested in making a few bucks off his name.
It is the story of a man of brilliant genius in music, science, and literature, and his quest to miss every deadline imaginable. It is the tale of how a man who has made so many laugh practices his craft, and how a man whose job it was to make as laugh at how stupid we truly are discovered some of the things that make us so infinitely stupid. The book begins, after page after page of introduction, with the first piece of published material he wrote, journeys through various articles, the ideas if not the text of which will be familiar to anyone reading this, and then journeys into the abruptly and tragically ended chapters of what would have been the next Hitchhiker's book, or Dirk Gently's book, or perhaps something else. Whatever it was going to be, it is what it is, and if you remember nothing else about Douglas Adams, remember only this:
Whatever happens, happens.
It is the story of a man of brilliant genius in music, science, and literature, and his quest to miss every deadline imaginable. It is the tale of how a man who has made so many laugh practices his craft, and how a man whose job it was to make as laugh at how stupid we truly are discovered some of the things that make us so infinitely stupid. The book begins, after page after page of introduction, with the first piece of published material he wrote, journeys through various articles, the ideas if not the text of which will be familiar to anyone reading this, and then journeys into the abruptly and tragically ended chapters of what would have been the next Hitchhiker's book, or Dirk Gently's book, or perhaps something else. Whatever it was going to be, it is what it is, and if you remember nothing else about Douglas Adams, remember only this:
Whatever happens, happens.
