This collection, complete with foreword by Stephen Fry and epilogue by Richard Dawkins, will certainly please those who are already committed to Adams family values. If you have not read, or do not love, the five volumes of the "increasingly inaccurately named Hitchhiker trilogy" and the two extant Gentlys, then The Salmon of Doubt will seem like an excellent party to which you have not been invited.

Nevertheless, whether hymning Bach and The Beatles or Wodehouse and the Pythons, recounting the joys and frustrations of computer geekhood, observing endangered species or coining epigrams like they were going out of style, Adams demonstrates the wit, compassion, eccentricity and generosity of spirit which his admirers sorely miss.