Douglas Adams' Last Book

mixedbag writes "A BBC news article suggests that a sixth book in Douglas Adams's Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy series will be published next May. It will be unfinished from files found of his computer. The title is to be A Salmon of Doubt."

Comments

unfinished art

[colmore]

I don't know how I feel about this. While I'll be glad to have another book from such a great author, I worry that this will in some way corrupt the memory by putting an unfinished work-in-progress up against his polished final drafts. I hope at least they'll leave it unfinished, and not have some hack come in and tie things up for him.

Original Source

[VA Software]

The original source of the story is the Sunday Telegraph.
There is a little more information here than at the BBC.

Sad?

[Kidbro]

Once again, I'd like to refer to what Neil Gaiman wrote in his journal once he heard of Douglas' death: I hope that his death isn't followed by the publishing of all the stuff he hadn't wanted to see print. (the Saturday, May 12, 2001 entry).

Unfinished Works

[BrianArm]

Everyone complaining that the idea of publishing Douglas Adams' unfinished book posthumously seems somehow wrong, might find it interesting that Douglas himself wrote the forward for his own favorite author P. G. Wodehouse's unwished book "Sunset at Blanding". In it he wrote:

"This is P. G. Wodehouse's last -- and unfinished -- book. It is unfinished not just in the sense that it suddenly, heartbreakingly for those of us who love this man and his work, stops in mid-flow, but in the more important sense that the text up to that point is also unfinished."
...
"Will you, anyway, find much evidence of the great genius of Wodehouse here? Well, to be honest, no."
...
"But you will want to read Sunset for completeness, and for that sense you get, from its unfinishedness, of being suddenly and unexpectedly close to a Master actually at work -- a bit like seeing paint pots and scaffolding being carried in and out of the Sistine Chapel."

So I don't think Douglas himself would really object to this.

Re:So many questions...

[PurpleBob]

That explanation is very clever and very wrong.

Arthur found the WRONG question, because his evolution had been tainted by the Golgafrinchans. It is not a typo, and it is not base 13. It is simply supposed to be wrong.