# Creative legends you thought you'd mourn, but didn't **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 12, 2016, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-legends-you-thought-youd-mourn-but-didnt/742875 "2016-01-12T00:33:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MacSpon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/34f0e0/32.png) [@MacSpon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MacSpon)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 12:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-legends-you-thought-youd-mourn-but-didnt/742875/1 "2016-01-12T00:33:11Z")
As a counterpoint to [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=780683)… Who are the creative geniuses who, at some point in your life, you were certain you’d mourn—but when they actually died, you _didn’t_? People who you were once sure that their death would leave you heartbroken…but it didn’t work out that way. Maybe because you and they moved in different directions, or maybe some other reason. Here’s a couple for me: **Robert A. Heinlein** and **Terry Pratchett**. In both cases, it was because their later books…just weren’t very good. In Heinlein’s case, there came a point (I think it was probably from _I Will Fear No Evil_ onward) where he pretty much stopped revising and tightening his books before publication, because he found that the publishers would take 'em anyway, and they’d still sell. Most of his later books, I just didn’t like; so when he actually died, I was a bit sad, but mostly for the author of the books I’d read many years before. In Pratchett’s case…well, partly it’s because we all knew it was coming; and partly it’s because, again, his latter books were…less good, inevitably because of his illness. (I didn’t _dislike_ the later books, but I wasn’t all that enthusiastic, either.) So when he died…I was mildly sad, but that was all I could really feel. How about you? ---
**Author:** ![Stealth\_Bragg](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/4bbf92/32.png) [@Stealth\_Bragg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Stealth_Bragg)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 12:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-legends-you-thought-youd-mourn-but-didnt/742875/2 "2016-01-12T12:59:46Z")
I was like this when Edgar Froese of Tangerine Dream fame died in January 2015. I have listened to TD since 1979 and seem them live many times but come the end it was a relief really, as the music of the last fifteen years or so has left me a bit cold. ---
**Author:** ![scabpicker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/scabpicker/32/8268_2.png) [@scabpicker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/scabpicker)\ **Post date:** [January 12, 2016, 2:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/creative-legends-you-thought-youd-mourn-but-didnt/742875/3 "2016-01-12T14:48:22Z")
Hmm, mine was probably Vonnegut. His later books were pretty good, but I wasn’t the same person reading them anymore. Plus, he had a pretty long run, and had mused on his own death for many years.