13 Never-Finished SF/F Books We Wish We Could Read
Writing is often a long and difficult process, and, tragically, sometimes readers never get to see the fruits of an author’s labor. In compiling this list of a baker’s dozen SF/F books likely never to see the light of day, we’re discounting those long-overdue books that we’ve know are being written and will likely eventually be published (in other words, keep your George R.R. Martin and Patrick Rothfuss jokes to yourself).
These are novels that were left unfinished, and while you can buy some of them in incomplete form, some we’ll likely never get to read.
The Mask Beneath the Mask Beneath the Mask, by Ray Bradbury
Ray Bradbury is one of the genre’s greatest authors, revered for classics like Fahrenheit 451 and the The Martian Chronicles. Despite his prolific output, there were several books he never completed, most notably The Mask Beneath the Mask Beneath the Mask. He submitted about 30 pages of sequential episodes and 40 pages of other fragments as part of an application to be considered for a Guggenheim Grant in 1949. He didn’t earn the grant, but continued to work on the project through the middle of the 1950s. It wasn’t the only book to remain incomplete: All On A Golden Afternoon, Dial Double Zero, Farewell Summer, Interval in Sunlight, Nemo! and Where Ignorant Armies Clash By Night are other partial novels left unfinished.
Octavia Butler’s unfinished sequels
Octavia Butler passed away in 2006, shortly after publishing her final novel, Fledgling. That blood-soaked, sexually provocative vampire novel ended a period of writer’s block for the author, but according to io9, its ending led many to suspect Butler had plans for a sequel, although no hard evidence exists to suggest she’d begun working on it. However, Butler had started writing a third installment of her Parable series, tentatively titled Parable of the Trickster, shortly after completing the second installment, Parable of the Talents.
Michael Crichton’s Last Novel(s)
Two of Michael Crichton’s final novels were discovered among his papers following his death in 2008: Pirate Latitudes, which was largely complete, and Micro, which was finished with the help of Richard Preston. There has been speculation that there are other novels or fragments of novels lurking in his files.
Last year, ICM Partners signed a deal with Crichton’s estate to bring unadapted works to film and television; the deal is said to cover unpublished works.
Andrew Liptak
Philip K. Dick’s Ring of Fire and The Owl in Daylight
Philip K. Dick famously began a sequel to one of his best-known novels, The Man in the High Castle, but work stalled; the author admitted it was subject matter that he wasn’t keen on returning to. The novel would have explored a hybrid American-Japanese culture; time-traveling Nazis also feature in two completed chapters, which you can read in The Shifting Realties of Philip K. Dick.
Dick started another novel that was left unfinished when he passed away in 1982: The Owl in Daylight would have followed the alien abduction of Ed Firmley, a composer for B-movies. Dick’s wife Tessa wrote her own version of the story, which she self-published, but it was removed from publication at the request of the author’s estate.
The Mystery of Edwin Drood, by Charles Dickens
Charles Dickens had planned out a 12-part serialization of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, to be published between April 1870 and February 1871, but he died after completing half of the installments. The supernatural-tinged story explores the strange disappearance of Edwin Drood, who mysteriously vanishes. A few writers have posited their own endings, while others have used its incomplete nature as a jumping-off point for their own narratives. Notably, Dan Simmons’ Drood features Dickens as a character.
Harlen Ellison’s Last Dangerous Visions
Among science fiction’s best known anthologies are Dangerous Visions and its sequel, Again, Dangerous Visions, edited by Harlan Ellison in 1967 and 1972, respectively. The books helped to define sci-fi’s New Wave movement, and Ellison planned out a third installment, Last Dangerous Visions, which was to encompass three volumes and include stories from James E. Gunn, Bruce Sterling, Anne McCaffrey, Lisa Tuttle, Jerry Pournelle, Edmond Hamilton & Leigh Brackett, Orson Scott Card, and many, many more.
The book was supposed to be released in 1973, but kept getting pushed back. In 2007, Ellison hinted that he was still intent on publishing the book, to the point that he quibbled with writers seeking rights to their unpublished stories; some 30 stories commissioned for the book have since been published elsewhere.
Update: it's now available.
Andrew Liptak
Neil Gaiman’s sequel to American Gods
Neil Gaiman’s novel American Gods was published in 2001, and quickly ranked as an instant classic of contemporary fantasy. Since then, there have been various attempts to adapt the novel for film and television. In 2011, Gaiman mentioned that the first season of a proposed HBO series would encompass the entire novel, and that he planned to write a sequel to form the basis of another season.
Gaiman noted he had a “boxful of stuff” to include in the book, and hinted it would focus on the gods of the world. Soon after, the HBO show has collapsed (eventually to be replaced by a much more promising incarnation from Starz). It remains to be seen if Gaiman is still working on the book.
The Plant by Stephen King
In the early days of e-publishing, Stephen King jumped into the game with The Plant, dusting off a project that began as a series of short booklets he published for friends between 1982 and 1985. He started releasing installments through his website, and promised to continue doing so as long as at least 75 percent of the readers contributed money to the project. The Plant didn’t exactly, er, flower, and the late installment was released in 2000; the story remains unfinished, but you can read the six existing segments on King’s website. As publishing experiments go, the serial novel The Green Mile was rather more successful.
Midnight Sun by Stephanie Meyer
In 2008, Stephanie Meyer was one of publishing’s biggest writers: Twilight turned her into an overnight sensation, and she wrapped the series, she began working on a new project: Midnight Sun a parallel novel told from the point of view of Edward Cullen. After the first twelve chapters leaked to the internet, she halted her work, posted the first chapters to her website, and moved on to other things (if the tenth anniversary gender-flipped retelling of Twilight counts as another thing).
Melanie Rawn’s The Captal’s Tower
In 1994, Melanie Rawn published the first book of her Exiles trilogy, The Ruins of Ambrai, and followed it up with a sequel in 1997, The Mageborn Traitor. She then set the trilogy aside, and never returned to complete the final novel, titled The Captal’s Tower. On her website, Rawn promises the book is forthcoming; according to Kate Elliott, Rawn is still planning on writing the final installment, and she’ll get to it after finishing the Glass Thorn series.
Michael A. Stackpole’s Third Crown Colonies Novel
In 2010, Michael A. Stackpole published At The Queen’s Command, an alternate history of the early days of the American colonies, and followed up with a sequel, Of Limited Loyalty, in 2011. Stackpole noted that the series was sold as a trilogy, but following the publication of the second book, his publisher, Night Shade Books, ran into significant financial problems and was sold to Skyhorse Publishing. The third book, Ungrateful Rabble, has yet to appear, though Stackpole previously indicated he wanted to see it published.
The Notion Club Papers by J.R.R. Tolkien
J.R.R. Tolkien has an extensive library of papers from which new books have regularly appeared, from The Silmarillion, to a recent translation The Fall of Arthur, to The Story of Kullervo. One tale that hasn’t been completed is The Notion Club Papers,written in 1945, about a fictional literary group called The Notions (similar to his own group, The Inklings). Tolkien at the very least drew up fictional meeting papers and a history of the group, and those fragments were published in The History of Middle-Earth.