Hmm. e-books both, from the looks of things (I can’t find print copies). No wonder I missed them.
I would dearly love to read some more Hornblower, providing they were any good, but maybe they could fit some more short stories in while Hornblower was a midshipman and lieutenant on the Indefatigable or while he was on the Renown before Captain Sawyer becomes paranoid and before Bush joins the ship.
Or just pretend that the Lydia went off on some missions before being sent to foment rebellion with El Supremo.
I can forgive messing with the timeline if the stories are good enough, and in the spirit of the original. Which is, of course, a big If.
And not just that it messed with the time line - the hero worship that Bush had for Hornblower is not psychologically realistic if Bush had ever been Hornblower’s superior officer.
It’s not that Bush was jealous - Bush was a born second-in-command, and he admired Hornblower tremendously. But he and Hornblower were friends when they served together - they even went out and got drunk and blew their prize money together at one point. Bush loved Hornblower, but it was the love of a superior, not a peer.
Bush would not have spoken of Hornblower as he did when discussing him with Lady Barbara in the first novel. Bush knew Hornblower’s strengths and discerned his weaknesses, but the speech makes it sound like he knew the weaknesses from observing Hornblower as the captain hiding his feelings under a mask of immobility.
Lady Barbara comes to understand Hornblower in the same way, by observing him from the same level. But she loves Hornblower without hero worship, because she was never superior to Hornblower as Bush was.
Plus she falls in love with him because of the evenings spent by the taffrail discussing literature.
A beautiful, rich woman who likes to talk about books. One of my hopes as an adolescent.
Remind me not to eat or rest until I have tracked these stories down.
Regards,
Shodan
That’s why I didn’t count that as a real part of the series. But I knew if I didn’t at least mention them, someone else would.
For what it’s worth, there have also been unofficial versions of Flashman’s Civil War adventures by other authors.
Two were published in Colliers, the third in Argosy. I tracked down the Colliers stories in the Boston Public Library. I’ve since learned that the three have been republished in anthologies.
Have a look here
You can find the others stories here (an e-book again! Although I know they’ve been republished in print, as well):
Here they are in print:"
https://www.historicnavalfiction.com/book-title-index/anthologies/hornblower-one-more-time
This only has one, but is more accessible:
https://www.historicnavalfiction.com/book-title-index/anthologies/the-mammoth-book-of-hearts-of-oak
[Moderating]
Gray Ghost, I know that it’s been a while since the TV show ended, but let’s still avoid spoilers, shall we?
It’s five months since the show ended, with possibly millions of webpages detailing what happened in Season 8. You’d have to be the Geico ‘guy under a rock’ to not know what happened at this point.
I mean, thanks for the edit, I didn’t realize I’d committed a faux pas. So I don’t do it again, how long in the past must something have occurred before we can discuss it sans spoiler tags? Is saying what “Rosebud” means, OK?
Don’t open that box!
There are people around here who scream bloody murder if anybody posts anything that even remotely spoils something they haven’t gotten around to reading/watching/eating. Even if said something was completed decades, nay centuries ago. Best to just spoiler your whole post and leave them guessing!
There is a chronicly overdo Last Dragonslayer book, too.
A reasonable amount of time must pass. More than five months. Less than seventy-eight years.
First one was only published in 1996, actually. Gaps between books:
1-2: 2 years
2-3: 2 years
3-4: 5 years
4-5: 6 years
5-6: Unkown, currently at 8 years with no date set
I sensed a spoiler coming, so I scrolled past as quickly as I could. But I’m one of those “I’ve been too busy with kids and work; I’ll watch that when I’m retired” people.
So I go through major mental gymnastics to avoid plot points for The Sopranos, The Wire, Mad Men, Battlestar Galactica (both of 'em)…
… and Lost in Space (do NOT tell me how Dr. Smith dies!) (or Jack Bauer or Darren Stevens or Gilligan).
I’d love to see more of Hornblower and the Crisis: who “completed” it?
Shodan, here’s a site where you can read “Hornblower and His Majesty”; I don’t remember where I found the other 2 but I think it was on a Russian site?
As for books that we’ll never see: the last of Sue Grafton’s Kinsey Milhone alphabet series; I don’t think that she even had a title for it.
And Jane Austen’s Sanditon and The Watsons, both of which have been “completed” by later authors, but IMHO not very well.
The OP mentioned Donald Kingsbury. Well, he apparently spent 20 years writing Courtship Rite and in the meantime has published Psychohistorical Crisis clearly an extension of Asimov’s Foundation series (except with all the names changed to avoid copyright problems–for example, Trantor was changed to Splendid Wisdom). He never mentioned to me that he was working on a sequel to Courtship Rite. We were colleagues, although both long retired.
I rather doubt that Steve Brust will ever finish the last five books of the Vlad series. He seems to have lost interest and is currently working on the sixth Khaavren romance. And he smokes like a chimney.
I wish Sharon Shinn would write the obviously required fifth book of her elemental blessings series, but she told me she has no intention of doing so.
And I wish Laura Anne Gilman would write another couple of Wren stories, but I guess she has no intention of doing so. Or more Bonnie stories. She has about the most sympathetic heroines around. As does Sharon Shinn.
Peace Talks (the next book in the Dresden Files series) is done and in the hands of the publisher. It should be out next year.
Jim Butcher had a whole lot of crap going on in his life (divorce, his dog died, his new house construction was delayed by a massive amount due to incompetent contractors, etc.) that made it difficult for him to write. He’s back on track now, so I think we’ll start seeing the books coming faster.
Aye. :mad:
Stephen R. Donaldson (yes, him) will prolly never write another Mick Axebrewder book even tho he says he’s working on one.
As long as he gets back to the Cinder Spires sometime soon I’ll forgive him the delay on the Dresden Files.
Kingsbury has completed drafts of the book and publishers have seen it so the manuscript does exist in some form.
It’s apparently one of the earliest things he wrote. I found a 1982 interview where he spoke of it and at that point he said he had been “polishing the manuscript” for thirty-five years. In a 2006 article, he said he was still working on it.
The Finger Pointing Solward may not really be a sequel to Courtship Rite. The two novels share a common background; The Finger Pointing Solward was written first but is set later than Courtship Rite.
So we apparently have a novel that’s been around in some completed form since 1947 but still is being revised for publication.
I linked to two of the completed versions in post #34.
The C. Northcote Parkinson book is available here.
NM
Can we include movies?
I doubt we’ll ever see:
- History of the World part II
- Spaceballs III - The Search For Spaceballs II.