I was trying to think of well-known stories (novels or films) with unfinished business, either by choice of the author, or because the author died.
A couple of examples:
In his trilogy of novels about Lisbeth Salander (and Mikael Blomkvist), (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Girl who Played with Fire, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest), Stieg Larsson mentions (mostly in the last two books) the twin sister of Lisbeth Salander, who seems to have disappeared. But Lisbeth must know something about what happened to her twin sister! I want to know too, and it bugs me that we never will.
I’m positive that Jasper killed Edwin Drood in The Mystery of Edwin Drood, but still, it would be nice to know for sure.
Can anyone come up with any others? Not just unfinished works, but unfinished works that contain a mystery or important plot point that you would like to see resolved.
Arthur Conan Doyle left lots of tantalizing references to past Sherlock Holmes cases in his stories. Sherlockians know and relish all these – The Case of the Giant Rat of Sumatra, Colonel Warburton’s Madness, The Mysterious Worm Unknown to Science, and so on. Plenty of pastiches have been written about these, but they introduce other mysteries of their own, as if in compensation. But I, for one, would like to know about The Politician, the Lighthouse Keeper, and the Trained Cormorant.
In Roger Zelazny’s second “Amber” series, the ending comes out of the blue, and leaves a million loose ends hanging. I was quite angry when I finished reading it. Then he died of cancer, and I felt bad about being angry at him. I guess he was trying to finish it as best he could before he died.
There are five short stories written by Zelazny that are set after the end of the second Amber series. Zelazny was planning to do more, but then he died.
The end of Tom Reamy’s Blind Voices leaves one of the more appealing characters trapped and helpless. Reamy was probably planning to deal with that, but he died while editing the book.
Not so obvious: Betty Smith’s Maggie-Now and Tomorrow Will Better. Joy in the Morning could be tossed in, with Carl, Annie and their baby thinking he is going off into a wonderful life after he graduates law school…in June of 1929.
In the anime series Cowboy Bebop–nothing is settled!
Did Spike survive? We don’t know.
Will Edward prosper with her (yes, her) father? We don’t know.
Does Faye recover her lost memories? We don’t know.
And Ein? The dog with mystery data encoded in his genes? The series ends with the mystery unexplored.
I was going to suggest H2G2 too (that’s hard to say out loud) because Douglas Adams died while writing the last book, the Salmon of Doubt, which I have and looked to be pretty good.
Well if the wrangling between Larsson’s family and his long-term girlfriend regarding his estate is ever resolved you may get your wish. It appears there is a manuscript for a further book in the Millenium series which his partner is holding, the book in question apparently introduces Lisbeths twin sister Camilla. Lots of rumours abound about the book and whether it will ever see the light of day, however.
Hmmm…I must be more dense than most. All these years I’ve just thought either
a) Deep Thought was so complex it confused itself in identifying the Ultimate Answer
b) Deep Though was so confused it programmed Earth I incorrectly so the wrong question was the result
c) Arthur’s ‘divining method’ wasn’t worth crap
In Joel Rosenberg’s Guardians of the Flame series, a college professor hosting the campus Fantasy Role-Playing club starts out by sending college kids to his alternate universe intending to use Karl and Andrea’s kid in some major showdown. Subsequent books have seen their twists and turns and a spin-off series about the kid and his friends was interesting, but that original plan has been forgotten and the author’s interest in that mileu seems to have been shot (pun intended, for those who know about the author).
He? Which “He”?
Yeah, Karl is Dead (but The Hero Lives :D).
But it seemed the grand plan was to involve Jason.:eek:
And I thought the Faerie involvement was partly anti-slaver help (it has always felt like a deus ex machina solution to the situation, each time I’ve read it) and partly a weak explanation for a source/land of magic into which various characters were tapping. That element of the milieu seems horribly vague, but not relied upon too heavily, either, so I tend to gloss over it.