Books - Last Chance to See

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	Books - Last Chance to See

The book Last Chance to See by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine was first published in 1990, as a companion to the BBC radio series of the same name.

The Observer Colour Magazine initiated moves in 1985 to send a zoologist, Mark Carwardine, and a writer, Douglas Adams, to Madagascar, to search for the aye-aye, a nearly extinct lemur. Later this developed into several journeys to find various species, including the Komodo dragon on the island of Komodo in Indonesia, gorillas and white rhinoceroses in Zaire, Kakapos in New Zealand, the Yangtze River Dolphin in China, Rodrigues fruit bats (megabat) on the island of Rodrigues, and various other species in these locations. Many of these excursions became the basis for the BBC Radio 4 series of the same name.

Many, although not all of the excursions were written into the companion book (due, allegedly, to Douglas' notorious writing delays). An example is that of the Amazonian Manatee, covered in a radio episode first transmitted on 18 October, 1989, but not in the subsequent book.

The first American hardcover edition was published by Harmony Books in 1991 (under ISBN 0-517-58215-5) and the first German paperback edition was published in 1992 by Heyne (under ISBN 3-453-06115-2). These varying editions are notable for carrying slightly different photographs of the journeys.

The Voyager Company also published a 2 CD-ROM set (for Microsoft Windows 3.1 and Macintosh System 7), in 1992, featuring over 800 still photographs, Douglas reading the complete book, Mark reading fact files on the species they searched for, and extracts from the BBC Radio 4 series.

The progress of all the animals are brought up-to-date at .

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