Talk:The Salmon of Doubt

Chills
It literally sent chills down my spine when I read that last note regarding the appearance of 'salmon of doubt' on the cover of a 1988 edition of Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective agency. Douglas Adams was more incredible and talented than any of us may ever know. He really knew where his towel was.
 * It spooked me perhaps even more when, having finished The Salmon of Doubt, I pulled my copy of Dirk Gently off the shelf so I could read it and saw the blurb on the cover. I thought time had looped back on itself. --Ashibaka 03:30, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

How did that happen? I mean, by that point he can't have even begun to write it. Julieb42 21:32, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

are you sure those aren't reprints of that 1988 edition? otherwise it just doesn't make any sense--Chnt (talk) 05:09, 8 July 2009 (UTC)

Controversy
I seem to recall some controversy around the publication of Salmon of Doubt, as it was basically his hard drives, printed and bound, including a great deal he nver had published for a reason.

Of course, Franz Kafka asked in his will that his (largely unpublished -- I think all but Amerika) works be destroyed, too. --Charles A. L. 14:29, Mar 11, 2004 (UTC)

Speculation: Dirk Gently
I've toned down the suggestion that DNA was planning to have this story link the two series together - I'd never heard that speculation before, and have certainly seen no sign that this was what he "promised". The Salmon of Doubt was purely a Dirk Gently book, but he couldn't make it work, so he was going to reuse the ideas for a Hitchhiker's book instead - he actually says in the title that the result might not even have the same title. It's a fun idea, though; I wonder if anyone will ever write a completion of the story, as a tribute... - IMSoP 12:15, 24 Jun 2004 (UTC)


 * This isn't at all impossible, if his estate can find the right writer (Lloyd, maybe?); Robert "Spenser" Parker has done this a couple of times; finishing and writing a sequel to a classic detective novel whose name eludes me for the moment. --Baylink 04:23, 17 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I don't think this should be listed as a Dirk Gently book because: 1) Most of it isn't the "Salmon of Doubt" part. 2) It's not realy known if that would have been a Dirk Gently book, a Hitchhiker's book, or maybe something else entirely.

German title
German title of the book is "Lachs im Zweifel" (literally: salmon in doubt), dunno if that fits in here anywhere (clem 19:46, 7 May 2005 (UTC))


 * It may also be worth noting that the German paperback doesn't have "The private life of Genghis Khan" either. --JohnDBuell | Talk 03:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Thor
wasn't Kate mentioned by name in the book? why the speculation about trillian? Morwen - Talk 09:26, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * I just reread the 11 chapters and the only woman I saw mention Thor was Kate. (unless there's a serious change in another edition?) --JohnDBuell | Talk 16:22, 12 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Through a rhinoceros
"As promised in the beginning, we do not go through a rhinoceros.". Huh? That is probably too obscure for those who have not read the book.


 * Yes, I found that sentence a bit puzzling, too - mostly because it's rather ambiguous. What it actually means is that the summary (the fax reprinted in the book) promised we would go through a rhinoceros (or "through the nasal membranes of a rhinoceros", to be precise) but that this never happens in the existing text. I've tried to tidy up the plot info a bit. - IMSoP 14:55, 5 August 2005 (UTC)

It is possible that Adams' reference to time travel through a rhinocerous nasal passage may have something to do with something he said on a television program he [co]hosted a couple of years before he departed Earth. I don't recall which program it was, only that it was a science/nature show talking about sensory perception and animals. In it, he was describing the incredible sensitivity of a rhinocerous's nasal senses, and that one could detect odors as faint as those four days old. He said that this presented an interesting sensing of past time, in that a rhino could sense past events with its nose. — Loadmaster (talk) 00:15, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Origin of the name?
Does anyone know the origin of the name The Salmon of Doubt? It seems reminiscent of the Irish folk tale of the Salmon of Knowledge. Angr/ talk 08:16, 13 February 2006 (UTC)


 * I believe it was meant as a parody of that name. We'd probably have to search Google's archives of alt.fan.douglas-adams or the douglasadams.com forums to verify. --JohnDBuell 17:53, 13 February 2006 (UTC)

The statement that Kate Schecter's appearance in Salmon of Doubt is the only time a character other than Dirk has creappeared in the series is false. Gilks appears both in Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency and in The Long Dark Tea-time of the Soul.

the salmon of doubt synopsis (fax to the editor)
Could anyone please include the synopsis (fax to the editor) in the main article? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.66.218.142 (talk) 16:32, 16 November 2007 (UTC)

Kim Fuller and the unmade Salmon of Doubt radio series
I've always been intrigued by the claim in the article that Kim Fuller (Writer of Spice World, as well as working on episodes of Red Dwarf, Spitting Image, and on Lenny Henry and Tracey Ullman's sketch shows) was going to adapt the Salmon of Doubt for BBC Radio 4, as stated in a 2009 article by The Stage. I actually interviewed Kim for my podcast in 2021 and not only did he tell me that he'd never listened to the radio series, but (In a segment I cut from the podcast for time) he also explicitly denied that he had ever signed any contract or wrote anything for the radio series. What Kim had worked on was a 1998 TV pilot which ended up being shelved because Douglas wasn't happy with the script and subsequently lost confidence in the project, and Kim's original script for this unmade show seems to have ahistorically gotten mixed up with the abandoned Salmon of Doubt radio series. So I would like to correct the record if at all possible.

From what I understand from reading Jem Roberts' 2015 book The Frood: The Authorised and Very Official History of Douglas Adams & The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy The director/writer of the first two Dirk Gently radio series was Dirk Maggs, who in 2009 left Above the Title Productions to form his own Perfectly Normal Productions. Maggs stated in a September 2008 BBC blog that he was using notes in Douglas' archive for "The Old Salmon" (Later renamed The Salmon of Doubt) to inspire and inform his adaptations of The Long Dark Teatime of the Soul and The Salmon of Doubt. However, the Adams estate felt that the scripts for the radio version of Salmon of Doubt were straying too far from the source material, with Ed Victor saying of the writing: "There was not enough of Douglas' in the project to make it worthwhile." It seems that the reason the BBC cancelled the Salmon of Doubt radio series was a combination of the Adams Estate and Ed Victor shifting focus to the 2010 Dirk Gently TV pilot, and the BBC being unable to hire a new writer/director to finish the project. Edstertainment (talk) 22:10, 8 April 2023 (UTC)