Personally I can’t wait for Hunters and Sandworms of Dune. They are based on Herbert’s notes and will contain some of his writings, and he will be credited as one of the authors. As someone who is dying to know what happens next (Chapterhouse ended on a pretty big cliffhanger) and as a rabid Dune fan, I have to say not all of us are upset with this.
Manny Lee and Frederick Dannay left an outline for a an unfinished ELLERY QUEEN novel THE TRAGEDY OF ERRORS. in 1973l. IN 1999 the outline was published.
Parker actually did a fairly reasonable job of finishing it… although, IIRC, there was some “modern” sex-type scenes.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!
Speaking of which, does anyone know where Kevin Anderson lives? And Brian Herbert? And perhaps the location of any tall buildings nearby?
Why? No reason…
Well, I’ve already invested so much time on Harry Potter, and with only two books left, it’d be like a punch in the gut if anything should happen to JKR before she finishes the series.
This thread reminds me of Terry Pratchett, for some reason. How’s he doing and when’s the next Discworld book coming out?
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. However, I felt that it was best that you heard it from me, rather than having the shock of seeing it in a bookstore unforewarned.
He’s doing fine, and Thud is due in November. 
There was another series featuring an officer who took a bullet in the throat and lost his voice, so the only job he can get is as an investigator (read: spy) for the Admiralty. I liked the two or three that exist, but the author died before he could do any more. (I made a note of his name and the titles but don’t have it here. Anybody?)
Back to the OP: Don’t forget the Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake. He intended at least four books, but developed Parkinson’s and barely finished the third. It’s still great stuff.
A Confederacy of Dunces – the author committed suicide because he couldn’t get it published. His mom eventually got it published, and it was a best-seller. It seems set up for a sequel we will never see.
I thought John D. MacDonald’s last book was meant to be the end of the Travis McGee series. That’s why the daughter was brought in, and it starts with people we know from other books being mentioned as being dead–a sort of “life goes on” theme.
Just as well, really–it was one of his weakest.
I just thought of another one: Kafka’s The Trial. Although it does have an ending, he left some gaps and unfinished chapters that he never got around to completing before he died. IIRC, none of his novels were published until after his death, and several of those were incomplete.
The series has ended. RIP Ed McBain/Evan Hunter
Ed McBain finished Craig Rice’s The April Robin Murders after she (yes, she) died.
Rice and Stuart Palmer had written a series of short stories about their characters, John J. Malone and Hildegarde Withers. They plotted them together, actually, and Palmer did the writing. After Rice died Palmer continued the series from notes and outlines that Rice had left.
Then after Palmer died, Fletcher Flora finished Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene.
The mystery world used to be a very small one.
BTW, Arthur Byron Cover is his real name. We went to Clarion together about a million years ago. He was alive last time I heard, not that we’ve talked in a while, and I’m going to assume that it was the publisher’s decision, not his, to not bother with the third book in that series. Because 99% of the time, that’s the way it works.
*Dobrou Vojak Svejk * which is one of the foundational texts of Czech literature (and some would say of the Czech psyche) was only 2/3 complete (IIRC) when Jaroslav Hasek, the author died. Of course, in English, there’s only one terrible translation of the entire work.
IIRC, Christopher Marlowe’s The Massacre at Paris was incomplete when he was killed. What there is of it has been published anyway. And any play about the murder of thousands of Frenchmen can’t be bad. 
Jack
Darn it, I was intending to name Edwin Drood, Hornblower, and Salmon of Doubt, but they were all done within the first ten posts.
So instead I’ll just complain about Darcy Sarto leaving his last detective novel incomplete, with just one page left to go. Of course, it’s the important page, the one where Johnny Oxford reveals the murder’s name. Of course the books are formulaic. We know the guilty party will try to escape through the window. Johnny will always puff on his cigar and say that ‘New York is now a safer place’ but who done it? This has been bugging me for years. 
I’ve always been really sad that Olive Ann Burns died while writing “Leaving Cold Sassy Tree.” “Cold Sassy Tree” is one of my favorite books. They published the extant chapters of the sequel (I think about 15) and left them in their “crude” form, no rewriting. It always makes me cry to read them and her friend and editor’s reminiscences. Good stuff.
I was going to submit the comic book / soap opera Omaha the Cat Dancer, which I thought died for good with Kate Worley, but I just checked Reed Waller’s blog (http://rwaller.blogspot.com/ ) and it seems he and Kate’s husband have gone on with the project working from her notes; so never mind.
I was going to submit the comic book / soap opera Omaha the Cat Dancer, which I thought died for good with Kate Worley, but I just checked Reed Waller’s blog (http://rwaller.blogspot.com/ ) and it seems he and Kate’s husband have gone on with the project working from her notes; so never mind.