SOLVED. Adult Sci Fi (or Fantasy?) book with flash backs to a muddy river with a tower. [s]

[Simon]

Hello,

I'm trying to find a sci fi book in which there are flash backs or perhaps flash forwards to an individual walking down a muddy river in a dark valley, they see a tower with a light (pulsing light?) Inside of it and slowly approach, when they get to the tower i believe it turns out to be a crashed ship. These events are broken down into several different flash backs slowly explained throughout the book.

I thought it might have been a book by alastair reynolds. Any help is highly appreciated, thank you.

P.S. could.this be a fantasy book which i am entirely confused about? Perhaps.

[Kris]

Simon, is this book for adults or teens?

Around what year did you read this book? A range of years is fine.

What's the location (country, region, well-known city, small town)?

[Daisy]

One of the The Dark Tower series by Stephen King?

[Simon]

It is not one the dark tower series.

It is a book for adults, which i read a few years ago, sometime between 2015-2018 i would say, though i dont remember if it was newly released.

[Sarah]

I rather suspect it's Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, by Douglas Adams.

It's a flash back, and a flash forward, and a time machine, and a professor, and a holistic private detective - oh, and a horse in the bathroom and a ghost leaving an answering machine message.

A quote:
It was a blackened stump of a tower. It stood like an extrusion of magma from one of the more pestilential pits of hell, and it leaned at a peculiar angle, as if oppressed by something altogether more terrible than its own considerable weight. It seemed a dead thing, long ages dead.

The only movement was that of a river of mud that moved sluggishly along the bottom of the valley past the tower. A mile or so further on, the river ran down a ravine and disappeared underground.

But as the evening darkened it became apparent that the tower was not entirely without life. There was a single dim red light guttering deep within it."

A quote from the book that gives you a better idea of the book:
“Just as you required actually to see a time machine in operation before you could accept it,” returned Dirk. “Richard, I commend you on your scepticism, but even the sceptical mind must be prepared to accept the unacceptable when there is no alternative. If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family Anatidae on our hands.”

“Then what is a ghost?”

“I think that a ghost…” said Dirk, “is someone who died either violently or unexpectedly with unfinished business on his, her — or its — hands. Who cannot rest until it has been finished, or put right.”

He turned to face them again.

“Which is why,” he said, “a time machine would have such a fascination for a ghost once it knew of its existence. A time machine provides the means to put right what, in the ghost’s opinion, went wrong in the past. To free it.

“Which is why it will be back. It tried first to take possession of Reg himself, but he resisted. Then came the incident with the conjuring trick, the face powder and the horse in the bathroom which I– ” he paused — “which even I do not understand, though I intend to if it kills me."

[Simon]

Thats it!! Thanks so much Sarah! Exactly correct. I was digging through my hard sci fi collection trying to find it, i would never have figured it out since it was hiding with Dirk Gently, a genre bender if there has even been one.

So satisfying to remember where its from. Ill have to go reread the excellent stories of Dirk Gently once more.

Thanks again, i would never have figured it out on my own.

[Simon]

I'm not sure how to add solved to the title of this thread, but this has been SOLVED and the book in question was Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency. Thanks so much!!

[Sarah]

You're welcome, Simon! Now I want to go re-read the books as well. :)

[SamSpayedPI]

BTW, Dirk Gently is based on two episodes of Doctor Who that Douglas Adams wrote for the BBC: City of Death and Shada (which was never completed or aired, due to a BBC strike) ("Professor Chronotis" is actually a Time Lord).