As evidenced by our previous discussion, it’s easy to ask “more please” when the author in question is still alive. The desire for new books and stories becomes far more frustrating when author existence failure is the primary obstacle.
Stephen Robinett, for example, first published under the regrettable pen name Tak Hallus. Over the course of about a decade he published enough short pieces to fill a collection (Projections,1979) as well as three science fiction novels: Mindwipe (1976), published as Steve Hahn, Stargate (1976), and The Man Responsible (1978). Robinett later published two mystery novels: Final Option (1990) and Unfinished Business (1990). After that, silence. Over the years, I wondered on and off what ever became of him. An obituary cleared up the mystery: sadly, he’d died in 2004. Ah well. I’ve not read Mindwipe (because it was from Laser Books; do I need to explain that? Editor: yes you do1 ) but his short work was top-shelf and his novels were always engaging.
Still, even an author’s demise doesn’t always rule out the possibility of new works, or at least new editions of works previously overlooked or rescued from obscurity. As the following authors show, death is not, necessarily, the end of the story…
Robert Stallman’s career as a published fantasist ended just as it was beginning. He lived long enough to see 1980’s The Orphan hit print. The concluding two volumes of the science fiction/horror Book of the Beast trilogy, 1981’s The Captive, and 1982’s The Beast, were published posthumously. The Book of the Beast is rough in places but promising; sadly, Stallman was denied the opportunity to write more books.
Janet Kagan wrote two novels: the science fiction mystery Hellspark (1991) (which has many devoted and voluble fans) and the Star Trek novel Uhura’s Song (1985). She also published Mirable (1991), which is a collection that verges on a fix-up: the stories are glued together with new interstitial material. Reference sources slot this as a collection.
Kagan died in 2008. But aha! The comparatively recent The Collected Kagan (2016) collects twenty of her stories. As far as I know none are original to the collection, but if you’ve only read her novels and fix-ups, the material may be new to you.
Tom Reamy’s work includes one novel, Blind Voices (1977; published posthumously), and enough short material to fill a collection. Specifically, the collection San Diego Lightfoot Sue and Other Stories (1979), which contains the majority of the stories Reamy ever published. Although his professional career was short and his body of work small, his dark horror often placed well in the Locus awards and earned him two Nebula nominations, two Hugo nominations, a BSFA nomination, and a Balrog nomination—as well as a Nebula for Best Novelette, a Balrog for Best Novel, and a Campbell for Best New Writer. If you’ve not heard of him, it’s likely because he died aged only forty-two, way back in 1977.
Buy the Book
Warrior of the Altaii
In Reamy’s case, there is at least one unpublished story yet to be revealed. Reamy’s novella Potiphee, Petey and Me was purchased for Harlan Ellison’s The Last Dangerous Visions, the unpublished finale to Ellison’s Dangerous Visions series.
It should perhaps be added that Reamy was a well-known and well-liked SMOF.
Octavia E. Butler is the odd one out in this piece: she published a lot. Over the course of her three-decade career she wrote a dozen novels, which tended to fall into series:
- the Patternist novels (in which mutants and other changelings struggle to determine humanity’s future): Patternmaster (1976), Mind of My Mind (1977), Survivor (1978), Wild Seed (1980), and Clay’s Ark (1984). (Incidentally, Wild Seed is now being adapted into a television series, to be written by Nnedi Okorafor and Wanuri Kahiu.)
- the Xenogenesis Trilogy: Dawn (1987), Adulthood Rites (1988), and Imago (1989).
- the Parable of the Sower duology: Parable of the Sower (1993) and Parable of the Talents (1998).
…as well as two standalone novels, the horrifying Kindred (1979) (which I wish more time travel romance authors would read) and the vampire novel Fledgling (2005). Not to mention the collection Bloodchild and Other Stories (1995).
It’s a respectable body of work, but her death was premature and she might have so much written more. Fortune smiled, however: the 2014 Unexpected Stories released two previously unpublished stories.
When I say “fortune smiled,” what I mean is that two of Butler stories slated for Last Dangerous Visions were finally withdrawn and published. LDV is something of a potential goldmine of material (The table of contents is here.). Enough time has passed since Ellison accrued the material that many of the authors have passed away—as has Ellison himelf. All that’s between the stories trapped in LDV’s contract hell and actual publication are suitably determined estates. (Side note: in an alternate timeline accessed by Jo Walton, Ellison’s LDV was published.)
So let’s not despair: A lost Heinlein emerged a generation after his death, while Jules Verne’s Paris in the Twentieth Century first saw print nearly nine decades after its author’s passing. Who can say what treasures are hidden away in drawers or archives, or lurking in poorly labelled folders on hard drives? There is always reason to hope.
In the words of Wikipedia editor TexasAndroid, prolific book reviewer and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll is of “questionable notability.” His work has appeared in Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews and Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis). He is surprisingly flammable.
[1]Laser was Harlequin Books’ 1975 effort to become to science fiction the unstoppable juggernaut they were to romance. To this end, they hired Roger Elwood, a notorious...er, I mean “seasoned” editor, to helm the line. Using stringent editorial guidelines that had been successful in romance, they published 58 books by authors both now obscure and others who are quite well known. The line was not commercially successful and folded in 1977. The novels had pretty Kelly Freas covers but tended to be rather bland. Additionally, [blatant understatement] not every author was keen on the editorial changes made to their work. [/blatant understatement]
I must have read “San Diego Lightfoot Sue”, or that collection, back in the early 80’s, as the name is vaguely familiar.
H Beam Piper’s works were gathered together and republished by Ace in the 80’s, with good Whelan covers. Paratime, Federation, and Empire were collections. “Fuzzies and Other People” was found in a trunk sometime in the 80’s and published.
Ace’s reprint of Piper started in the 1970s. I remember encountering Little Fuzzy in … 1977, I think.
As you hint, a potentially very notable future posthumous publication would be The Last Dangerous Visions.
I can’t believe you didn’t mention all those posthumous L. Ron Hubbard books! :)
Another thought — H. Beam Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen.
@2, well I discovered them in high school, which I started in 79.
Another great column. I read some of Reamy’s stuff in F&SF and was glad to lay hands on that posthumous collection when I have a chance. Haven’t reread it recently, though…
But I’m really posting to defend the Tak Hallus byline. It may be (as Harry Harrison is supposed to have said ) “UGLY UGLY UGLY” but it’s memorable in a way that SR’s legal name is not.
The #1 posthumous author in sf, if you ask me, has to be Cordwainer Smith. He wouldn’t be known today if Ballantine hadn’t brought out Norstrilia and the story collections in the 70’s, long after his death.
Another major posthumous novel, Theodore Sturgeon’s Godbody, was originally contracted for porn publisher Essex House, whose only demand was for explicit sex — given this brief, Sturgeon writes about Jesus Christ! Who appears in the present, and is seen from the points of view of people who meet him. It comes with a beautiful introduction by Robert Heinlein, the last thing Heinlein published, and very much worthy of that distinction.
Haffner Press has recently announced that along with their upcoming 2-volume collection of Manly Wade Wellman’s “John the Balladeer” stories they will be shipping a 32-page chapbook edition of an unpublished Manly Wade Wellman story, “Not All a Dream,” that had been intended for publication in “Last Dangerous Visions.”
James, these columns act as a great TBR list.
What no Tolkien?
There will probably be more “new” Tolkien books as long as there are still people willing to buy “Tolkien’s collected shopping lists” or whatever else they can find in the attic.
Uhura’s Song is one of my all time favorite STAR TREK books. I still have my copy currently waiting to be rescued from storage . Hellspark also sounds vaguely familiar but I’m not 100% sure I’ve read it. It’s to bad we won’t get anymore books barring luck.
Terry Pratchett?
12. Good luck reassembling Pratchett’s hard drive.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2017/aug/30/terry-pratchett-unfinished-novels-destroyed-streamroller
A lot of Stanley Weinbaum stories also fit into this category – more than were published in his lifetime; he died young and there was a lot in the pipeline at the time of his death.
The sad counterpart to this is authors whose works become unavailable after their deaths; John M. Ford comes to mind.
Sometimes manuscripts that were never published are better off staying in Oblivion. Sometimes there’s a reason why it was stuffed in a drawer. Sir Pterry obviously thought so.
H. Beam Piper’s Fuzzies and Other People was found and published long after his death.
I dream of a chest full of unpublished Lord Darcy stories—by the original author.
Both are are past recovery, but…
Jane Austin’s loving family burned all her papers after she died. What a loss to literature.
Sir Richard Burton’s loving wife burned all his books and research after he died. What a loss to literature and history.
Piper’s Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen was also published posthumously, although only by a short time.
@12/@13 Technically “The Shepherd’s Crown” was a posthumous Pratchett book. It was 99% finished at time of his death though and the final bit was tidied up by his daughter, with whom he’d worked closely on it, for publication. That is what I heard at cons, anyway.
Can’t help thinking of Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia, published in 1942, 11 years after his death. Wikipedia says ” During his lifetime he published just one work of fiction, the short story “1915?” in the Atlantic Monthly for April, 1915.”
@@@@@ 19, Pat Conolly:
Can’t help thinking of Austin Tappan Wright’s Islandia, published in 1942, 11 years after his death.
Can’t help thinking of John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, published in 1980, 11 years after his death.
Twice is coincidence?
A considerable amount of Robert E. Howard’s short stories were published posthumously.
A couple of books by Michael Crichton came out after his death, albeit non-SF AFAIK.
Not speculative fiction but well worth reading are Stieg Larsson’s Millennium novels, all of which were released after his untimely death.
@16, Jane Austen’s beloved sister and confidant Cassandra burned certain of her sister’s private letters. The loss to purient curiosity is considerable, to history less and to literature nothing at all. Austen’s family treasured her stories and story fragments and published them all.
I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that Heinlein’s lost novel should have stayed lost. Sometimes things were set aside for good reason.
@23, Exactly.
Nobody has mentioned Robert Jordan and his forthcoming book?
@25, my thoughts exactly. I clicked on this article specifically because I saw the ad for RJ’s new book. Plus there’s the last 3 books of Wheel of Time, which were finished by Robert Sanderson but published under both names.
“the horrifying Kindred (1979) (which I wish more time travel romance authors would read)”
Why? They’re writing romance, for one, and they almost always have women returning to a past that’s either pretty rough on them, or that isn’t for explained reasons. But the point is romance, not a horrifying story, so things have to work out happily in the end.
I think good authors do quite well without having to try to write another genre, and who would want them too? If I want brutal realism I don’t head for the romance aisles.
I love this sort of kismet: Vonda McIntyre’s sad death prompted me to reread Jo Walton’s account of the 1979 Hugo year (when Dreamsnake won), during which Blind Voices was nominated, which made to add it to my TBR—and now I see it here!
Time to source a used copy, since I see it is out of print.
Walter M. Miller, Jr. Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman
If there were anyone whose lost stories I’d love someone to find, it’s Miller.
“Takhallus” is Urdu for “pen-name.”
@28 PS Publishing released a gorgeous limited-edition hardcover of “Blind Voices” in 2016. Copies turn up on eBay.
FWIW, last year I couldn’t stand not knowing, so I finally ran down a pb copy of the “fix-up” of the *Mirabile* stories. Don’t bother. The interstitial bits are a couple of paragraphs each, nearly unnoticeable in their absence from the ebook edition. *Hellspark* is a lesson in how different “normal” is among different cultures, and the *Collected Kagan* has some really great stories.
I’m also a long-time fan of the Fuzzy books from H. Beam Piper, as well as the spin-offs/sequels from William Tuning (sp?) and Ardath Mayhar from the 80s or thereabouts. John Scalzi’s take is interesting, but not worth hoping for a sequel, IMO. Less paternalistic than Piper’s tales, but not as charming. OTOH, not everyone likes charming.
And another H. Beam Piper “outline”, First Cycle, was finished by Michael Kurland; it has insufficiently characterized characters and some tone problems but not bad. Piper mostly did 2/3 dry humor to 1/3 shouting, First Cycle’s the other way, but the ending is Piperian.
Quite a lot of H.P. Lovecraft’s works were published after his death in 1937: by publication date