# Authors you wish would/could write another book **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [October 16, 2009, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001 "2009-10-16T05:58:57Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/81 "2009-10-19T03:56:39Z")
Carl Sagan’s another one. ---
**Author:** ![Martini\_Enfield](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/martini_enfield/32/11123_2.png) [@Martini\_Enfield](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martini_Enfield)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/82 "2009-10-19T04:01:50Z")
> [@chorpler](#): > > And I sure wish Douglas Adams was still around; I’d like to see more Dirk Gently too. And of course I’d’ve loved to see what his version of the sixth Hitchhiker book would have been like. Not that Eoin Colfer’s version is bad (so far, that is – I’m in the middle of it now), but it does differ from Douglas’s style. I’ve noticed that too. It’s certainly a _Hitch-Hiker’s Guide_ book and it’s very entertaining and enjoyable, but it’s not quite the same in a way I’m having trouble putting my finger on. Which is, ironically, very true to the spirit of the franchise… ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/83 "2009-10-19T04:04:19Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > Carl Sagan’s another one. I would have liked to read more fiction from Sagan. I know a lot of people are dismissive of _Contact_, but I like it quite a bit. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/84 "2009-10-19T04:12:18Z")
I liked _Contact_, both the book and the film. ---
**Author:** ![notquitekarpov](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@notquitekarpov](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/notquitekarpov)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/85 "2009-10-19T16:40:57Z")
Sir Patrick Leigh Fermor DSO OBE. He’s 94 so, if he is going to finish the trilogy of travel books of which \*A Time of Gifts \*and _Between the Woods and the Water_ made up the first two volumes, then had had better get a move on. It was nine years between the first two and twenty-three years have passed since then. If you have not read them you are in for a treat. He walked from 1933 to 1935 across pre-war Europe from the Hook of Holland to Constantinople at an 18 year old. He left us at the Iron Gates on the Danube on the border of Serbia and Roumania. I just know it’s not going to happen now. Bastard. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/86 "2009-10-19T18:30:15Z")
> [@](#): > > Yeah, what I would like is a “Heinlein without the hard-on” book again. > > Many of his later books, including and after Stranger in a Strange Land (which sucked), devolved into some kind of sexual fantasy of his. Start out with the begining of a good plot line, fill up the cast with pretty women, and let the thing fall apart like Dan Brown writing a romance novel. > > I still like the Lazarus Long character. I think the book, Time Enough for Love had 3 or 4 good, full books in it that should have been written, and still could. Thank God nobody has yet tried to condense that story into an hour and half movie. > > But what we got after was To Sail Beyond the Sunset. 400 pages about Lazarus, the key Heinlein character, going back in time to bone his mother. WTF? > > And to try to wrap up his Future History world with the Number of the Beast, what ever that was about, just left me feeling as if the author had died, and left it to a high school literature class to sort out the ending of his life’s work. > > Semi-rant over…move on… nothing to see. Unfortunately all true. Heinlein’s last really good book was _The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress_ in 1966. The last twenty years of his writing career went off track. I can even remember when _Friday_ came out in 1982 and a lot of reviewers were essentially saying “this isn’t as bad as his other recent stuff.” ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/87 "2009-10-19T18:34:18Z")
I miss two good pseudonymous thriller writers who both died in 2005: A. J. Quinnell and Trevanian. ---
**Author:** ![Fleetwood](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fleetwood/32/271_2.png) [@Fleetwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fleetwood)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 7:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/88 "2009-10-19T19:51:13Z")
John D MacDonald. I miss Travis McGee and Meyer. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/89 "2009-10-19T20:00:46Z")
> [@](#): > > Unfortunately all true. Heinlein’s last really good book was The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress in 1966. The last twenty years of his writing career went off track. I’ll mostly agree. When **The Number of the Beast** came out, it was the first one of his that I read “new”, and I was severely disappointed. I, too, felt some relief when **Friday** came out, because it waasn’t as bad. And I liked **Job** and **The Cat Who Walks THrough Walls** , but not as much as his earlier stuff. But I have to disagree about the last good book being in 1966. I thought **Expanded Universe** in 1979-80 was really good. I’d already read _The Worlds of Robert Heinlein_, which it’'s purportedly an “update” of. It goes far beyond that, and a surprising amount is new stuff, not reprint. ---
**Author:** ![BrotherCadfael](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@BrotherCadfael](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrotherCadfael)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 9:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/90 "2009-10-19T21:18:45Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > I can even remember when _Friday_ came out in 1982 and a lot of reviewers were essentially saying “this isn’t as bad as his other recent stuff.” I always said that _Friday_ had the outlines of half a dozen excellent novels in it - but none of them went anywhere. I’d love to have seen more of the California Confederacy - “a pure democracy run wild”, or hear more about why the supermen (from _Gulf_) left the planet, or how the Pope became the Pope in Exile. I suspect he didn’t think he had enough time left to finish them, so he crammed them all into one omnibus novel. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 11:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/91 "2009-10-19T23:24:48Z")
> [@BrotherCadfael](#): > > I always said that _Friday_ had the outlines of half a dozen excellent novels in it - but none of them went anywhere. I’d love to have seen more of the California Confederacy - “a pure democracy run wild”, or hear more about why the supermen (from _Gulf_) left the planet, or how the Pope became the Pope in Exile. Whoever those “self-styled supermen” were, they couldn’t have been the nightmare version of Mensa that features in [_Gulf_](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_(Heinlein)) – because it is made clear near the end of the book that Friday’s Boss, who deeply disapproves of the “supermen” (he’ll pay for Friday to relocate **anywhere else** but their planet), is Hartley “Kettle Belly” Baldwin from _Gulf._ I would’ve liked to know more about the Chicago Imperium, and why they called it that, and why Friday considered it the best place to park her funds. ---
**Author:** ![FoieGrasIsEvil](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/foiegrasisevil/32/16638_2.png) [@FoieGrasIsEvil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FoieGrasIsEvil)\ **Post date:** [October 19, 2009, 11:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/92 "2009-10-19T23:32:08Z")
Aldous Huxley. ---
**Author:** ![statij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c2a13f/32.png) [@statij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/statij)\ **Post date:** [October 21, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001/93 "2009-10-21T17:36:11Z")
> [@Nametag](#): > > I believe you’re referring to John Kennedy Toole, who wrote _A Confederacy of Dunces_ and _The Neon Bible_, the latter of which is the one which I suppose you’ve read. It’s a favorite of mine, too. > > Since no one has mentioned it, I wish Sterling Lanier had managed to write the third novel of the _Hiero_ trilogy; he had a stroke that wiped out his vision for the book, and died without making progress on it. I believe it’s actually Tristan Egolf, who wrote Lord of the Barnyard, one of my favorites. He committed suicide a few years ago after submitting the manuscript for his third book, Kornwolf. He was also arrested in the Smoketown Six episode, protesting George Bush in a nude pyramid of people. That’s who I came to mention, along with John Kennedy Toole and David Foster Wallace. Living author: David James Duncan. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/authors-you-wish-would-could-write-another-book/514001.md?page=4)