Five (SFF) Authors We Wish Had Written More
March 23, 2023 5:00 PM   Subscribe

In the wake of Cameron Reed's announcement that she is working on a new book and that Locus-nominated The Fortunate Fall is being republished next year, James Davis Nicoll points us at five other science fiction and fantasy authors whose careers ended too soon, for various reasons.

The post includes Goodreads links to the works of the cited authors:
  • Walter M. Miller, Jr., author of the Hugo-winning classic A Canticle for Leibowitz, who suffered from PTSD and depression due to his service in World War II.
  • Doris Piserchia, who stopped publishing soon after her adult daughter died.
  • Alexei Panshin, who won the Nebula for Rite of Passage, but then turned primarily to critique, for which he would win two Hugos.
  • "Alison Tellure", the pseudonymous author of five stories that Nicoll hails as "memorable forays into alien psychology". Nicoll admits, however, that we cannot be certain that the person who wrote those stories has stopped publishing entirely.
  • Alexis A. Gilliland is the only one of the five who is (definitely) still alive and could thus publish again, but in the decades since winning the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer (beating David Brin and Michael Swanwick), has become more famous as an artist, winning four Hugos for Best Fan Artist.
Note: Cameron Reed went by "Raphael Carter" when TFF was published. The Wikipedia entries for her and the book have not been updated.
posted by Etrigan (38 comments total) 27 users marked this as a favorite
 
Alexei Panshin, who won the Nebula for Rite of Passage, but then turned primarily to critique, for which he would win two Hugos.

Panshin's a breezy comic series centered on a feckless noble grifter named Anthony Villiers and his strange alien companion Torve the Trog. It ends with Villiers uncovering an assassin and and wondering who would want to kill him? Then we get an all caps narrator-voice saying "WHO INDEED WOULD WANT TO KILL A NICE GUY LIKE ANTHONY VILLIERS? FIND OUT IN THE SEQUEL, COMING SOON."

I discovered these in used bookstores in the pre-internet age and spent years looking for the sequel, before figuring out that he'd never written much else. Guess I'll never know who hired his killer; his father is a too-obvious choice. But he's on my short list of writers who should have done more and pleasantly surprised to see him featured. (I was less impressed with Rite of Passage.)

Since I'm recommending the series, I should warn the gender stuff in the Villiers novel is bad, in mostly a typical '60s fails-the-Bechdel-Test way, mixed with some male-gaze stuff in mostly the first book. I'm less forgiving than the Strange Horizons reviewer in my link.

But still, two of the books in that series are really good comedy-of-manners SF (which is rare enough to see done well), and the The Thurb Revolution is a work of genius.
posted by mark k at 5:44 PM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]


Every now and then I am reminded of Brian Daley’s delightful “Alacrity Fitzhugh and Hobart Floyt” books, which threw the titular space adventurer and earthly bureaucrat together for three books of galactic adventure. The end was wide open, it was clear he enjoyed writing three and would be delighted to write a lot more, but he died unexpectedly at 49.

https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/105184.Brian_Daley
posted by egypturnash at 6:09 PM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]


I’d really like more of the Steerswoman books, and Kirstein is still writing them, around day job and more distractions.
posted by clew at 6:19 PM on March 23, 2023 [11 favorites]


One memorable work is still one more memorable work than most people will ever manage.

True that. But St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman? Whoa, missed that one.

And all these people were like roman candles -- gone so soon due to circumstances beyond their control.
posted by y2karl at 6:23 PM on March 23, 2023


I’ve read a few startlingly good stories in anthologies and then found out that the authors had never apparently written anything else.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:54 PM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]


Barry Hughart wrote three fantasy-type novels and then called it quits due to publisher issues. Such great 3 novels, though!
posted by ashbury at 7:11 PM on March 23, 2023 [10 favorites]


oh shit The Fortunate Fall is amazing and deserves a wider audience. It still kind of seems like it came from *this specific future* that has unfolded since it arrived.

Thrilled to see this.
posted by Earthtopus at 7:17 PM on March 23, 2023


With regards to Barry Hughart, after I posted my last comment I started thinking about where I had heard of him and of course it was right here on metafilter. 17 and a half years ago. Reality check.
posted by ashbury at 7:21 PM on March 23, 2023 [3 favorites]


Tom Reamy, who died at his typewriter at 42.

Stanley Weinbaum, who wrote "A Martian Odyssey," dead at 33.

Good, sad post.
posted by doctornemo at 9:05 PM on March 23, 2023 [4 favorites]


mark k, the Ann Arbor bookstore where I used to work used to be big fans of the Villiers books. Sometimes we'd read tasty dialog out loud.
posted by doctornemo at 9:18 PM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]


I can think of few books I enjoyed more than the first two Barry Hughart books. My surname is Li and my personal name is Kao, and there is a slight flaw in my character.
posted by Ber at 9:23 PM on March 23, 2023 [6 favorites]


Oh man, Brian Daley. I always wanted a sequel to A Tapestry of Magics. I loved that book at the magic age and stole the name of the villains for my Amber campaign.

RIP good sir, you have inspired many happy hours in addition to giving me happy hours of reading.
posted by gentlyepigrams at 10:37 PM on March 23, 2023 [2 favorites]


I’d really like more of the Steerswoman books, and Kirstein is still writing them, around day job and more distractions.

She'd be on the top of my short list but I refuse to believe she won't deliver despite (checks dates) oh crap it's been twenty years since the last book is it time to give up?

mark k, the Ann Arbor bookstore where I used to work used to be big fans of the Villiers books. Sometimes we'd read tasty dialog out loud.

That's awesome. I've shared some jokes from it that go over well enough, but have never gotten anyone else hooked.
posted by mark k at 11:23 PM on March 23, 2023


A few of my suggestions:

Yevgeny Zamyatin; his novel We prefigured much of Orwell.

Octavia Butler, the mother of Afro-Futurism. We never got to see the completion of the Parable series.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 12:31 AM on March 24, 2023 [7 favorites]


I’m surprised nobody’s mentioned Pamela Zoline. I guess she’s largely vanished from fan memory.

Sharon N. Farber (a.k.a. S. N. Dyer), wrote a fair amount in the 80s and 90s, but seems to have mostly stopped in 2000. I haven’t tracked down all her stuff, probably not even most of it, but what I’ve read has stuck in my head.
posted by Kattullus at 12:53 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


Was honestly surprised not to see Janet Kagan on this list.
posted by kyrademon at 3:10 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


Others:

Joyce Ballou Gregorian: One great fantasy trilogy and a book about Armenian rugs.

Daniel Keyes: Flowers for Algernon, and a few other non-SFF or nonfiction books and short stories.

Georg Büchner: Woyzeck, a few other plays I can't even argue are possibly sort of SFF, a revolutionary leaflet, and a treatise on the nervous systems of tropical fish.
posted by kyrademon at 3:25 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]


Michael Ende: The Neverending Story and surprisingly few other books, although some of the others are also quite good.
posted by kyrademon at 3:56 AM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]


But St. Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman? Whoa, missed that one.

It's at least a decade since I read it, but I found it pretty underwhelming compared to Canticle. It's set during the middle period from Canticle and mostly deals with the politics of that time and place; I found it didn't have the same broad, cyclical view of society that Canticle takes.
posted by terretu at 4:18 AM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]


I really loved Daniel Keys Moran's sci-fi, but he took 20+ years off to raise a family. He just released his first book in like a quarter century last week, and I devoured it. The Great Gods
posted by wenestvedt at 4:18 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]


gentlyepigrams: Oh man, Brian Daley. I always wanted a sequel to A Tapestry of Magics. I loved that book at the magic age and stole the name of the villains for my Amber campaign.

One of the few writers whose Michael Whelan covers always matched the story inside.
posted by wenestvedt at 6:39 AM on March 24, 2023


Do you know that there is a Kindle edition of the complete works of Stanley G. Weinbaum for $1.99?

I'm pretty sure I've read some stuff of his that wasn't The Martian Odyssey but if so I can't tell you what it was.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:07 AM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]


Needs more Isabel Fall.
posted by Hogshead at 8:13 AM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]


C.M. Kornbluth. He had a satirical and really biting, memorable style, and was in the running to become editor of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction...but dropped dead of a heart attack on the way to the job interview. He was 34.
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 8:53 AM on March 24, 2023 [6 favorites]


R.A. McAvoy would be one of my picks. Apparently she's returned to writing, which is fantastic.
posted by TomFrog at 9:04 AM on March 24, 2023 [6 favorites]


One I think about a lot is William Hope Hodgson. He actually wrote quite a bit but his last published novel (though possibly the first he wrote), The Night Land, is one of the most imaginative works I have ever encountered, and I don't say that lightly! He was killed in WWI at 41.
posted by BlackLeotardFront at 9:12 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


Kage Baker, who wrote the wonderful Company novels (about time traveling immortal cyborgs who save historical artifacts) and died of uterine cancer at age 57 just a couple years after the series ended.

And, of course, Douglas Adams, who wrote quite a lot but also not enough before dying suddenly at 49. I would have loved to read a third Dirk Gently book.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 9:43 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]


Hogshead: I may be behind the times but I believe that (a) Isabel Fall is/will be writing more, by and by, but also (b) might be using a different name now.

Gender dysphoria is a hell of a [bad] drug.
posted by cstross at 10:04 AM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]


He was killed in WWI at 41.

He enlisted, was injured badly enough to be discharged, healed up, then re-enlisted! He was very hard to stop. Also, as well as being a writer, he was a body builder and managed to trick Houdini. Quite the man.
posted by GenjiandProust at 10:11 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]


Oh, Kage Baker's books were soooo good: neat ideas, empathetic characters, and a cool milieu.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:40 AM on March 24, 2023 [3 favorites]


It's sort of interesting for this to be up at the same time as a post about the hyper-prolific Brandon Sanderson.

It makes me happy that there's both -- your Brandon Sandersons and your Seanan McGuires writing multiple novels a year, and your Rosemary Kirsteins and Laurie J. Marks-es carefully crafting a book a decade.

Although it is sad when someone's output is limited by something tragic or unnecessary -- illness, disputes with publishers, books that found their audiences too late, or an early death. And that's the case for a number of authors that have been mentioned. But sometimes, people just are taking their time, or doing other things with their lives. And that's all right.
posted by kyrademon at 11:25 AM on March 24, 2023 [4 favorites]


Joyce Ballou Gregorian! I thought I was the only person who ever read those novels.
posted by suelac at 11:32 AM on March 24, 2023 [1 favorite]


I miss Iain M Banks. Ever so often i re-read the Culture books, and wish there were more.
posted by 15L06 at 12:02 PM on March 24, 2023 [11 favorites]


> "Joyce Ballou Gregorian! I thought I was the only person who ever read those novels."

Fun-ish story -- I read the first two as they came out, and after waiting many years for the third, I assumed that the trilogy was never going to be finished and gave up. Then a number of years ago there was a post about Kelly Link here on Metafilter, and Kelly Link herself showed up in the comments and casually mentioned that she was a big fan of Gregorian's trilogy and I was like HOLY HECK THAT TRILOGY GOT FINISHED? and tracked down a copy of The Great Wheel and FINALLY FOUND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO SYBIL. And that is also, incidentally, when I started reading Kelly Link, because I picked up Pretty Monsters out of sheer gratitude.
posted by kyrademon at 12:04 PM on March 24, 2023 [8 favorites]


Paula Volsky brought out roughly one fantasy novel every two years in the '80s and '90s, and then went quiet. I've just learned from that Wikipedia article that she published a trilogy under another name ten years ago, but nothing since.

I've kept hoping for more novels by Phyllis Eisenstein, but it looks as if I should probably stop hoping... I'm sorry to learn that she passed away in 2020.

And Michelle Shirey Crean, about whom I can find no information, wrote just one book, Dancer of the Sixth, published as one of the Del Rey Discoveries in the early nineties. I thoroughly enjoyed it, and waited eagerly for her next one... which never came.
posted by ManyLeggedCreature at 8:53 AM on March 25, 2023 [3 favorites]


Forty years ago I read The Sword of Winter by Marta Randall, a novel about a female message-rider who gets caught up in intrigue in a medieval-ish world. I waited and waited for a sequel, and it never happened.

And then just a few years ago, Randall self-published a more complete version of the original novel, and then published a sequel! Mapping Winter and The River South.

Sometimes if you wait long enough you will get the rest of the story!
posted by suelac at 9:27 AM on March 25, 2023 [4 favorites]


My neighbor and good friend has published 21 science fiction novels, the latest in 2005. He's won major awards. He's not that old, but he told me recently that he cannot imagine writing another novel. However, his 186th short story was published a few months ago, and he has a couple more in the pipeline. For the last few years he's been writing a nonfiction column for a popular monthly magazine, so that's where his brain juices flow these days.
posted by neuron at 11:19 AM on March 25, 2023 [2 favorites]


Very surprised Scott Lynch didn’t make the cut in comments here. He’s a phenomenal writer crippled by health issues, and there’s a good chance he’ll never finish his next novel let alone his planned series.
posted by anotherpanacea at 7:28 PM on April 7, 2023


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