Ever come across a series that never finished?

[JunkMonkey]

The Anthony Villiers books by Alexei Panshin. Three published, the title of the next one announced.... then 50 years of total silence

 

[Provincial]

The Anthony Villiers books by Alexei Panshin. Three published, the title of the next one announced.... then 50 years of total silence

Is Panshin still alive? Or has the book never been translated, and is available in ‘foreign’?

If it is that long ago, perhaps you could write the fourth book yourself, without breaking copyright laws et cetera?

 

[Danny McG]

There's the Worldsoul trilogy by Liz Williams, she wrote book one in 2012 and hasn't done anything else with it

 

[CupofJoe]

The unwritten works of Sir Terry Pratchett.
There were lists of what he planned to do next. But "next" never arrived.
Even his last "finished" Discworld book The Shepherd's Crown feels unfinished.

 

[MalazanMage]

Dark Border never finished because Paul Edwin Zimmer died.

Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens excellent "Chronicles of Galen Sword" stopped short for no apparent reason after a very Special Edition release of "Dark Hunter" by Babbage Press in 2003. They are still writing, but doggone it, we waited YEARS for Dark Hunter and now DECADES for another part of Galen's search for a place to call home...in the First World or ours?

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

Doesn't Melanie Rawn have a long-outstanding novel for her Exiles series? The trilogy is Ruins of Ambrai, The Mageborn Traitor, and the unwritten finale is Captal's Tower, but Mageborn Traitor was published in 1997.

Doesn't seem like Rawn is terribly interested in finishing the Exiles story. Has she written much else since? I enjoyed the Dragon Prince and Dragon Star trilogies in the early 1990s.

Rawn has written 8 novels spanning three series since "The Mageborn Traitor." She has repeatedly promised to return to the series, and has just as often offered excuses for why she hasn't. I have given up all expectations that she will ever complete the series, but haven't quite given up hope.

 

[Galactic Bus Driver]

Good call Clansman, yeah she has written other stuff, but when questioned on her website about the Ruins of Ambrai she basically said that she wasn't going to finish, giving no reason other than that.

It is still listed as forthcoming, and according to Amazon the date it will be out is 2009....

I hadn't heard she actually decided not to finish. Sad. That was a good yarn she was telling...

 

[Lostinspace]

A very good unfinished series is Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman Series, although there is still hope. The first volume was first published in 1989 and we have so far only had four of possibly six volumes. Jo Walton writes Not only science fiction, but more science fictional than anything else: Rosemary Kirstein's Steerswoman books - Reactor "if you can stand reading a series written by someone brilliant who writes excruciatingly slowly but has no inconsistencies whatsoever between volumes written decades apart, you’re really in luck". There are other reviews at Review: The Steerswoman Series by Rosemary Kirstein or The Steerswoman and I found a new one today by Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic: Rosemary Kirstein’s “The Steerswoman” (04 May 2024) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow (which is why I remembered to write this). I should warn readers of the reviews that there is a serious problem of reviewing this series without too many spoilers.

 

[reiver33]

Walter Jon Williams - Metropolitan (1995), City On Fire (1997), then a protracted publisher/rights issue. As of 2022 the culmination Heaven In Flames is ‘in progress’, according to his blog, but I can only live in hope...

 

[JunkMonkey]

Oh here's one that I should have thought of earlier:

The Ballad of Halo Jones - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Toby Frost]

Still an awesome comic, even unfinished!

 

[JunkMonkey]

Still an awesome comic, even unfinished!

It is, and since remembering it for this thread, I have been wanting to read it again. I've been unsuccessfully searching the house all day for either of the two copies I know we have... and found a third! Belongs to daughter Number One and is still shrink wrapped so I have as her permission before liberating it.

 

[Provincial]

I have seen Alan Moore twice on his tours. Someone in the audience asked, both times, if he intends to continue with the series but, though he is aware of the interest (because apparently someone always asks), he doesn't appear to be interested in writing any more of the story. I suspect that he didn't really know where he was going to take the story at the time, and isn't interested in retreading old ground.

Such a pity. I particularly liked the story of the invisible girl and the rat king, and thought he might be going to create a nemesis for the whole universe out of that plot line. I expect that is just my overheated imagination, however.

 

[Toby Frost]

I read my own copy of Halo Jones last night. It's very good. The depiction of poor-but-legal life in the future is very good. The third part clearly owes a lot to The Forever War, which in turns reflects the Vietnam War, but it is its own thing as well. I'm surprised how grown-up it feels. There's a lack of patronising of the characters, who are mainly working-class women with unexceptional lives and hobbies, which goes beyond merely drawing the women with their clothes on. I think it takes the characters seriously even when their interests are trivial. And the way that the story is told is great. Episodes like the sniper who gets older after her death feel completely believable.

My only issue is that the artwork, while very well-drawn, is quite hard to make out at points: it would perhaps benefit from being in a slightly bigger book (although I doubt the comic was any larger). I quite like the slightly grotesque, slightly cartoony style of the human characters, but it can feel a bit scribbly, especially towards the beginning.

 

[JunkMonkey]

My only issue is that the artwork, while very well-drawn, is quite hard to make out at points: it would perhaps benefit from being in a slightly bigger book (although I doubt the comic was any larger).

If you have the Hachette 200ad Ultimate Edition the art is presented at 200mm from top frame line to bottom; the original as printed in the weekly comic measured 250mm from top to bottom. Not sure what size the original art would have been but the only piece of original 2000ad art I own (by a different artist) is 410mm.

 

[Karapace]

Oh here's one that I should have thought of earlier:

The Ballad of Halo Jones - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Halo Jones is fantastic and although unfinished does feel fairly rounded in the three volumes. We see Halo go from ordinary kid trying to make ends meet, to hostess on a star ship, to disturbed war veteran and finally a woman in command of her own destiny.

 

[Karapace]

I always wonder how the Gormenghast Trilolgy would have ended had Mervyn Peake lived. Titus Alone always felt flawed to me

 

[Orcadian]

CJ Cherryh's Foreigner series is still open. She is no spring chicken now and I'm not sure whether she plans any more books in that world. There are (I believe) 21 books at present but many characters & storylines remain pregnant with possibility.

 

[ablackenedrose]

The Dinosaur Lords featured medieval knights riding dinosaurs, the kind of thing that appeals to my inner 9-year-old. Popcorn fantasy they were, but the three books are still fun reads.

Sadly, the author died only three books in when the narrative was clearly meant to continue on, so we're just left to wonder what could have been.

 

[Laura R Hepworth]

Yes, multiple times. This was especially frustrating when I was working in library and trying to make up series labels for books only to find out (after labeling them) that a book that said it was (or was going to be) a series suddenly was no loner a series because it was never continued for some reason. One book even included the title and excerpt for the second book in the back matter, but the publisher apparently changed their mind about it.