My #1 choice would be Jane Austen, by far. She completed only six novels, and began a seventh just a few months before her death. I wish for her own sake and the rest of the world that she’d at least been able to finish Sanditon before she died.
Like several others here, I wish Terry Pratchett would be able to write books forever…or at least for many years to come as he continued in good health.
Another vote for George MacDonald Frasier, Donald Westlake and…why the hell has nobody mentioned Tony Hillerman?
Still alive but blind and over ninety is Jack Vance.
Oh, hell yes, Tony Hillerman, too! I’m sure he had some adventures in mind for Jim Chee and his new wife, Bernie.
Rumor has it he is still writing up in his hole in Connecticut, just not publishing – But I’d like to read something new by JD Salinger. I think the odds are good that he wandered off the deep end and wrote miles and miles of boring philosophical-religious musings, but I’d wade through a lot of crap to get another For Esme, With Love and Squalor or Catcher in the Rye.
Speaking of awesome short story writers, how about Ring Lardner? He was only, what, 45 when he died? He could have been a much larger force in 20th century literature; who knows what he could have done during the Depression and second world war. Although, I guess somebody who died in 1933 might be outside the bounds of this thread, or else I’d like some more Dickens and Shakespeare as well, please.
That’s who I came in here to nominate. Teeth of the Tiger was only half a book. I want the other half! I’d also love to know what Jack is up to, how Kealty became president and how various other (Clark, Chavez etc) are doing.
I’ve heard that Clancy stopped writing because of his divorce, which lands his ex-wife half the profits from any Jack Ryan enterprise. In that case, he could always just say screw it and come up with new characters which seemed to be where he was going with ToTT. But I think the larger problem is that he’s run out of bad guys and evil plots. After all, we’ve already had a near-nuclear war caused by nuclear terrorism (SoAF), a major 9/11 style terrorist attack (DoH), a biological attack (EO and R6), a traitor in the President’s inner circle (EO), an attempt at the Pope (RR and I realize it was based on the actual attempt way back when), Japan attacking the US (DoH), China attacking Russia (TBaTD), Iran and Iraq combining and attacking the Middle East (EO) and a nuclear missile inbound for DC (TBaTD). What else is left?
I’d also read another Vampire Chronicle from Anne Rice even bearing in mind the drop in quality since about The Body Thief. I’d just hope it wouldn’t be about Lestat though because he’s so damn powerful in the books now that there’s no suspense to any story with him in it.
Now as for authors who actually have talent, I’m anxiously awaiting the next John Varley book which I believe is forthcoming in the near future.
Ayn Rand. I’m a big fan.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Sandford is still writing Prey novels. Phantom Prey was published in 2008 and Wicked Prey in 2009.
As for who I wish was still writing books:
TRUMAN CAPOTE X 10
I wish Carl Hiaasen would stop writing children’s books and get a new novel out. Pronto.
Another vote for George RR Martin (living) and Patrick O’Brian (deceased).
How lucky! I’m waiting for it to come in at my library. I’m 3 of ten on the list, though, so shouldn’t be too long. I love Ruth Rendell, and it’s sad to think of there being no more Wexford books. And like you I can’t help devouring them…no matter how long they are, it’s so hard not to go tearing through the books. I do love Wexford.
George Orwell was only 47 when he died. I wish he had lived to be a centenarian – I would have loved to read his political commentary all throughout the Cold War and its aftermath.
James Herriot, rest his soul.
Susanna Clark. I really want to see something else written by her that’s set in the universe of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell.
It seems like she hasn’t written anything since then.
It could be a prequel that went into the old celtic faerie stuff, or something coming after.
Someone referenced **John Cramer **over in a GQ thread about the Large Hadron Collider. He is a practicing physicist and professor at the University of Washington, and he wrote two science fiction books: Twistor and Einstein’s Bridge. The last was published in 1997. They are both very hard sci-fi, which I appreciate. I liked both books a lot, and I used to periodically check the bookstores for anything new from him, but he doesn’t appear to be working on another novel.
Katherine Dunn hasn’t published a novel since *Geek Love *came out in 1989. She apparently writes about boxing, and Wikipedia says she has a new novel that was supposed to be published in 2008. *Geek Love *is one of my all time favorites, I’d really love to read more fiction from her.
It always seem like a long wait for a new Paul Quarrington novel.
This thread prompted me to check to see if he’d published anything since Galveston (which was I was a bit disappointed with,) and Google gave me good news/bad news.
Good: He did, last year, and it’s on the list.
Bad:He’s been diagnosed with lung cancer.
I do hope Paul Quarrington can write another book. 
And he even just came out with a trilogy of Known Space books, cowritten with Edward Lerner, called Fleet of Worlds, Juggler of Worlds, and Destroyer of Worlds (though Destroyer of Worlds won’t be out for a few weeks, I have an ARC and it’s quite good). Although almost all of his recent stuff has been collaborations, not pure Niven, I think they’re mostly living up to his standards.
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 loved reading Rex Stout, but I sure wouldn’t want him to pick up where he left off.
I want another book from John Welter. He wrote three in the 90’s, each good, each better than the previous one, and the last one an absolute jewel*, and now what? He had a newspaper job for a while, and it’s been a while since I could find him even there.
*I Want to Buy a Vowel, 1996
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. 
She was planning on writing a shorter novel after Atlas Shrugged, “more intensive than extensive,” but decided to focus on nonfiction instead.