The Salmon of Doubt - will it ever be finished?

Because I'd quite like to see how it ends.

I think Neil Gaiman or Jasper Fforde should take a crack at it.

edited 7th Oct '10 5:50:51 PM by EddieValiant,Jr.

I don't think it needs to be. As it is, it ends at the right place, even if you don't get the answer to the mystery. That's part of the fun: trying to imagine where Mr. Adams (keep seeing him called Ad Bop for some reason) was going to take the story.

Ad Bop is his fan nickname because that's what his illegible signature looked like.

I'd still like to read the end of the story, though, even if it'll never be quite "real". I believe in continuing things that are good.

It's frustrating because it has at most one act out of three.

I agree with the indication that he felt he'd lost the character. A lot of chapters feel like one-off ideas that aren't sure if they belong there, especially the ones from the draft that's narrated in first person. The chapter where Dirk is taking notes about himself reads more like an exercise than something that would have made it recognizably to the final draft.

To hijack the thread, what does everybody think we'd have seen next? Is Dirk his own time-shifted client, or did he just get his past self's affairs wrapped up so he could come to America and collide with the real case? Would Kate and Thor have been present in a finished Dirk Gently novel? Kate seems like a placeholding expository.

In one place it's indicated Adams was thinking elements would have fit better as a Hitchhiker's story. What would that have been like? Would we have seen Arthur led into an adventure by a series of events set up by his future self? In another place it's indicated he was thinking it would be its own new thing, not Gently or Hitchhiker's. Is there anything in what we have that suggests what that might have been like?