Posthumous Novel from Douglas Adams
Posted by Micah (MCAH) on Wed 6 Jun 2001 - 08:58
According to SF Wire, Douglas Adams's publisher is piecing together the remains of his last novel from his computer for publication. The novel, The Salmon of Doubt, will also include some extras like a screenplay and some email essays. Personally, I'm not sure how I feel about a publisher trying to patch up an unfinished manuscript by a dead author for publication posthumously. What do you guys think?
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It's been done before. Can't let that cash cow go.
I don't know, it doesn't sounds like they're piecing too much together, it sounded like most of it was done. If they don't tinker with it too much it could be a good thing, I guess.
-Feren
"We use them for divine retribution."
It depends on how they do it. If, basically, they take what he left behind and publish it with some commentary by someone who knew him and can write, that will be okay.
If, however, they're taking a tiny amount of information and writing a bunch of awful stuff to fill in (like the new Dune books -- horrid stuff), I'm not interested and I don't see much value to Adams' legacy.
BTW, I found this wonderful lament at Douglas' passing written by famed biologist Richard Dawkins.
I don't like publishers printing stories that they "found" after the writer's death. I've yet to see any postmortem work even marginally as good as the works put out by the writer himself and I suspect a fair bit of this "found" material is whipped up by the publisher after the fact just to make a quick buck. There's always a burst of sales when a well-known writer or artist passes on - I wish people wouldn't be so greedy and just settle for that. My view is that the contract with the publisher dies when the writer dies. When the well is dry, the well is dry.
Reality is not only stranger than we think, it's stranger than we CAN think!
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