Still waiting.

I have managed to amuse myself with one of his Star Trek novels in the meantime, however.

Now based on previous comments, the forthcoming book will most likely be set somewhere in the interior of the series chronology. Nonetheless, we apparently still have an Emersonian manuscript to look forward to....

I'm not sure whether or not to count The Children of Hurin But that's seventy years.

Thirty-plus books and counting. And while not all the same cha racters appear in all of them, it's recognizably the same world.

Alternatively, Bible -> Book of Mormon.

That'd make a, what, quadralogy? over the course of roughly thirty-to-forty years.

Patience....

I made an exception for George R. R. Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series and now am regretting it.

I don't count Brust's Vlad books. They are a series, true, but each book is a self-contained story and at least at the moment, Brust seems more interested in good individual stories than with the overall series story. I don't feel hanging at the end of any of his books.

Daniel Keys Moran reports that he may be getting the rights to _A.I. War_ back from Bantam.

I don't get a sense of deterministic narrative from it. I'm just seeing how he lives his life.

The Morrolan Books, those had me waiting to see how they turned out (even though I knew, sort of, I wanted to see how Steven resolved it to get to the places I knew it had to go).

Master and Commander, 1970.

Blue at the Mizzen, 1999.

20 volumes, almost 3o years.

I remember the joy of each new book as I worked my way to 13. Then the pain of waiting for each new one.

Anthony Powell's A Dance to the Music of Time series, beginning with A Question of Upbringing (1951) and ending with #12, Hearing Secret Harmonies, 24 years later.

For me, it's Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond/Niccolò series. 14 books. 39 years from The Game of Kings to Gemini.

Stopped reading four books back, personally. Will probably give the whole thing another try once they're all out in paperback.

And Supes has only been fighting Luthor for 67 years.

On the other hand, my frustration over that series did help me be a little more disciplined in my own writing, and I've actually finished stuff since then.

Venus of Dreams (1986)
Venus of Shadows (1988)
Child of Venus (2001)

Something happened in that 13-year gap between volumes 2 and 3, because the concluding volume felt very disconnected thematically from the first two.

Avram Davidson's Vergil in Averno -- a criminally unknown novel -- was published many years after The Phoenix and the Mirror, and there was supposed to be more to that series. And he never finished the story begun with The Island under the Earth, published a couple of decades or so before his death.

I think it's much more frustrating when it's one big overarching story, like the Jordan books, as opposed to a series of linked novels that are each complete on their own, like the O'Brian books. And while it took many years for O'Brian to complete his cycle, the gap between books is relatively short, especially compared to some of the other examples people have given.

Delany many years ago said to me that he had written Stars in My Pocket from joy, and then AIDS hit and he couldn't approach the story with joy any more. He intended to finish it, when he could write in the same spirit that he'd begun it. (rough approximation; it's been something like twenty years since the conversation)

Sherlock Holmes, 1887-1917 (or is that 1928?)
Thirty or more years.

Allan Quatermaine, 1885-1927(?)
More than forty years.

-jsq

As I understand it, the book is written, but there are rights issues which prevent it being published.

Phonetically close, still waiting for the next volume of The Chronicles of Amber... one day that ouija table will prove useful, damn it !

I read the first four when I was about 12. (I skimmed the 'icky bits'.) Then I waited. And waited. And waited. When the fifth finally came out, I'd just read a speculative fanfic which had been poorly written, trite, and cliched... and which captured the spirit of the actual fifth book remarkably well.

Dude! New Vicky Bliss?

I can't decide if I'm really happy or really apprehensive. I think the last one tied up her story very well and I wonder if extending it can be a good thing. But on the other hand I adore Vicky and John. I am conflicted.

I'm still hoping that the conclusion to the Tony Daniel trilogy that began with Metaplanetary will get published one day. No sign of that happening last time I looked.

For me, comics-wise, the biggest wait between installments I ever had was for Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls. It was, what, 1991 when it was first published in Taboo, and finally only released in its finished form last year?

Long may MPM write Emerson novels!! New Vicky Bliss? My joy is unalloyed. But I do sometimes wistfully hope we'd get another Jacqueline Kirby. I always liked them best.

And certain people are giving me books that are actually half the novel, and it's a very long wait until the other half when that happens.

Thus, I'd qualify Rosemary Kirstein's _Steerswoman_ series in the same class with the Potter books, but not the Discworld, even though some of them are set in recognizable series, since it wasn't like Pratchett set out to write the history of Anhk-Morpork.

#45: Aha, a kindred soul; I too like Jacqueline best of all MPM's series sleuths. My private theory is that Jacqueline is in fact the unnamed editor of the Emerson manuscripts, and I keep hoping that this might ultimately lead to a novel in which Jacqueline and Vicky end up crossing metaphorical swords....

Byzantium Endures: 1981
The Laughter of Carthage: 1984
Jerusalem Commands: 1992
The Vengeance of Rome: 2006

Like Ægypt, a four-volume novel rather than a series; but even longer in gestation.

At Book I everyone knew this was to be a seven-book series, so (some) people have literally been waiting for Harry Potter 7 for ten years, as opposed to serially waiting for the next book in the infinitely recursive series.

In that sense it kind of reminds me of all the talk after Return of the Jedi over the fact that there were four films left, when would they come out, how would the three prequels work, and would the last one return to the "original" cast, or be a larger view of the entire universe post-Jedi with all-new characters.

It is a slightly different style of waiting than "when is the next Discworld/Honor Harrington/Batman/Anita Blake" story coming out -- with no real anticipation of a pat, finite end to the universe.

The closest I can think of was back in the 80's, as the break away from fantasy trilogies started: The third book of Dave Duncan's "A Man of his Word" series had just come out. I grabbed and devoured it, expecting the story to end, only to find out at the end it was continued further. That was one of those cases where, like Potter, there was an expectation of (eventual) completion, an end point, which was being waited for.

At Book I everyone knew this was to be a seven-book series, so (some) people have literally been waiting for Harry Potter 7 for ten years, as opposed to serially waiting for the next book in the infinitely recursive series.

But the same was true of Ægypt and Between the Wars: both were specified to be four-volume works from the very beginning. In the case of Between the Wars, even the volume titles were known from the first.

I bought the first volume of each when first published, and so I really did wait 20 and 25 years, respectively, for the stories to end.

Yeah. I'm still waiting on the final book in Marvin Kaye & Parke Godwin's Solitude trilogy, which hasn't found a publisher.

The Masters of Solitude - c1978
Wintermind - c1982
Singer Among the Nightingales - ????

I've been waiting patiently for 25 years now and am worried that the authors will die before writing the end of the story.

The third Vergil book, The Scarlet Fig, was published recently, albeit in a pricey limited edition.

pedantic peasant @51:

I think A Man of His Word was always supposed to be four volumes. Unfortunately, Duncan's "Demon" series (as "Ken Hood"), which I am pretty sure he was planning to be three volumes when he started, clearly requires a fourth, but they did not sell well enough for publishing such to be feasible.

Kieran (34), I don't quite see what you're getting at.

Zander (42), more than one series has foundered when the author and zeitgeist changed. One writes fiction with one's whole self, health and worldview and expectations included. Try reading A Knight of Ghosts and Shadows, the last of Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry series, against the earlier books.

A general comment: I have a knack for remembering fiction in a fair amount of detail, even if I last read the work thirty years ago. I've often had cause to be grateful that I can mentally splice together the threads when I read the latest installment of a slow-moving serial work. Also, I internalized the principle early on that series aren't always finished -- or finished well.

If I've been living with an open-ended series for decades, I'd much rather have it go on being open-ended than have the whole thing be spoiled by a poor conclusion.

Terry @ 36: Thanks for the bad news. Somebody call in the rogue lawyers, please. Or willl it take torches, pitchforks, and beer?

(Yes, it's a collection, not a single-author work. Still and all, still waiting.)

I also got caught by the Chtorr series, though I've long since given up on seeing it continued.

I'm currently waiting for the next Turtledove books in the What-if-the-South-won-the-Civil-war series (we're up to WW2 now), and in the What-if-spacefaring-lizards-invaded-during-WW2 series, and also will probably keep going with the alternative WW2 where Japan invaded Hawaii, and the alternative present-day story where Germany and Japan won WW2 (derived from a deeply creepy short story called _In the Presence of Mine Enemies_.)

I think this implies something about whether I learn from experience....

Not a novel, but certainly one of the longer waits out there for finishing a long-awaited series.

Worth noting is the second teratology, in which it was revealed that the "Happily Ever After" ending was a terrible, terrible mistake. People live on, the world continues, and endings are rarely as pat as might be desired.

> [...] Dickson left copious and detailed notes
> and outlines, [...] Dave Wixon, who was for
> many years Gordy's writing assistant, has
> been working on filling in the missing books.
> [...]

This is the best Christmas ever.

teratology

Subtle pun, or beautiful typo?

So while we're talking about a series being finished off by someone else, is there any chance that someone really, really good would be inspired to turn the outline of "The Menzentian Gate" into the final book in the Barganax series by Eddison? I've been hoping for something more for a long time. Remember that the series languished OOP for years and then was published in the 70's (by Ballantine, wasn't it?), and did well enough that it was worth publishing the outline of the final book that was never written. I've even got an omnibus paperback of all the novels (weighs a ton) published sometime in the late 80s or 90s, so there might still be some market there.

According to a blurb for vol. 3 on the Princeton University Press website, Roy (Professor Emeritus of Chinese Literature at the University of Chicago) has taught the Chin P'ing Mei in his classes since 1967, which would make him 60-something today at the very least. That's not ancient or anything, but it does make me want to pray for Roy's health to hold up long enough for him to finish the last couple of volumes. That, and for him to type faster.

Sometimes one wishes this even with younger writers of shorter series. One of the things I regret about the recent death of my grandmother--the biggest Bing Crosby fan I know--is that she never got to read the second volume of Gary Giddins's excellent Crosby biography.

The first volume was published in 2001, so readers haven't been waiting too long in absolute terms. Even so, every day we lose more people who knew Crosby as a living cultural phenomenon as opposed to an icon, and it would be nice for as many of these people as possible to enjoy the second volume.

Teot's War - 1987

Bloodstorm - 1989

book 3 - ????

book 4 - ???? cubed

She sez she's working on them and that DAW's thinking about picking them and the old ones up and putting them out again, which would be groovy. She sez book 3's done, and that it kinda spawned book 4 by accident.

I just wanna read more Naga books, y'know?

Aubrey/Maturin does have occasional what next endings--long voyages where they're not yet home, for instance, but there's no predictable structure. Not even one-book-a-year-until-1815.

Honor Harrington does have a potential conclusion out there but there's nothing to force it, and it's broken away from the single-author/single-hero pattern.

If JKR had said, "I can't fit all of book 7 into one volume: there'll have to be a book 8", there would have been a world-wide primal scream, but it would have been a definite, predictable, conclusion. Harry Potter hunting down Death Eaters at university isn't the same as jumping the shark, but it would break the prediction requirement. And it certainly would risk an outbreak of amphibious death-quidditch.

Seventh Son: 1987
Red Prophet: 1988
Prentice Alvin: 1989
Alvin Journeyman: 1995
Heartfire: 1998
The Crystal City: 2003
Master Alvin: ???

That seems more like a standard case of SF/F authors being unable to count to three. I read the Alvin trilogy, and liked it well enough, and when book 4 came out I ignored it, because I knew there would be no end to the thing (and I didn't like it THAT well).

If I love a series, rather than just sortof like it, I'm willing to keep reading past the original trilogy, of course. Earthsea is up to 6 books now, (counting Tales From) with a significant gap from first to "last," and I've enjoyed all of them, to varying degrees. But, as some above have noted, if it's not projected as a finite set the waiting factor isn't such a drag. If I know a single story is going to stretch across volumes, I do tend to wait until it's all written before I start reading.

I have a friend who's mired in Robert Jordan, which apparently is supposed to end at 11 books, except that the last couple of books didn't count for some reason. I haven't read Jordan, but I'd expect something called The Wheel of Time to involve a significant heap of volumes...and perhaps to circle back on itself, providing opportunities for iterative stories within the series. Like Elfquest maybe.

#67: IIRC, Knuth said that he'd only write vols 6 and 7 if he felt there were things still left unsaid about context-free languages and compilation techniques when he'd finished volumes 1-5.

Personally, anything left unsaid or not, I still want to read his take on those topics. However, after finally finishing the first 5 volumes, I can understand why he might want a life back. I have to say, though, that developing and deploying your own markup language to do professional level typesetting may qualify as the greatest example of cat waxing ever.

Knuth's work poses a problem that you don't often see in a fiction series. The contents of each volume may be different depending on when you buy it. e.g., Volumes 4 and 5 refer to topics which logically belong in vols 1-3. So he will make new editions of vols 1-3 which include those topics.

And it's still unfinished.

#82 Jasper Janssen - Auel's Earth's Children™ is mentioned (although not by name) in #38

In both cases, I seem to have lost interest, although I'll almost certainly buy any Chtorr paperbacks that cross my path.

* before it went back to 5 again

And from her long un-updated website FAQ: "Melanie's had a few complications (including shoulder surgery) that have kept her from even starting it."

That same FAQ listed Spellbinder as unpublished, but its been out for awhile now. So it looks like she had to deal with several of life's curve balls in a row. From the few posts I skimmed on her message board, it looks shes started Captals Tower. Fingers crossed!

They'll have to reprint the first one if/when the others come out. I used to have a copy, but I think it got pruned somewhere along the way in a move. It was an interesting story.

http://theoverlookpress.blogspot.com/

Looks like The Solitudes (aka the first book, AEgypt) is out now:

http://www.overlookpress.com/author.php?author_code=820

John Crowley mentioned in his blog recently that he was copy-editing Love & Sleep for them.

Le Guin has been backfilling and spreading Earthsea rather than finishing a single multi-volume work. Some of the later work specifically contradicts earlier work; e.g., Tehanu is a response to the contempt for women's magic in the original trilogy. (cf Le Guin's later discussion of how different The Left Hand of Darkness would have been if she hadn't used masculine pronouns for Gethenians who were not in kemmer.) Tehanu does create a new symmetry by giving us young / old // Ged / Tenar, but that's not necessary to the original.

And then there's Darkover, where Bradley took ~20 years -- first giving us the aftermath of the fall of the Forbidden Tower, then edging up to the story itself, then saying she just couldn't write that book because she couldn't do tragedy.

#'s 20 & 61: \somewhere/ I recently read a blurb for a book covering the ]final confrontation[ between Hal Mayne and Bleys Ahrens. (I gave up on Dickson after The Final Encyclopedia, so I have no guesses whether the above really will be final.)

Charlie: I \like/ that definition.

Someone once suggested that the sequel to Stars in My Pockets was The Tale of Plagues and Carnivals, which really was about the beauty and misery of bodies and cities.

... I had one other example in mind when I started writing this comment, and now it has slipped my mind.

On the other hand, reading umpteen books a year and having little memory of them means I'm not left champing at the bit for sequels, so I can read even Martin's "Song of Ice and Fire" without worrying too much about what will come next!

How about the "Imaro" series by Charles R. Saunders? Books 1 - 3 published 1981 - 1984. My husband introduced me to them but didn't warn me that the fourth book had not been written - and may never be written. Argh!

Back in the late 1980s I read the Lee & Miller "Conflict of Honors, Agent of Change and Carpe Diem", waited and waited for more, gave up, then stumbled aross the newer books and chapbooks a couple of years ago. Now I'm enjoying/enduring the experience of reading "Fledgling" on-line at a chapter per week.

I started reading Patrick Tilley's "Amtrak Wars" series in my teens when the first three were out, but gave up on them before the rest were published. Ditto Alvin, I gave up after the first four.

And I do hate it when authors go and die before they've finished (I know, I know, I bet the authors themselves would have preferred not to die) - Gordon R. Dickson's Childe Cycle, in particular, but I was also wondering where Frank Herbert was going with Dune after Chapterhouse.

Alas, Meisha Merlin went under just as she'd worked out the outline for book #5, so there's no telling when (if ever) it'll appear.

Also, Zvyrf jnf cerggl jryy pevccyrq ol gur raq bs gur ynfg bar. Ur'yy tb ab zber n-ebiva', be fb vg frrzf. Znlor fur'yy jevgr obbxf nobhg gur arkg trarengvba, be znal trarengvbaf va gur shgher, be jung unccrarq whfg nf gur Gvzr bs Vfbyngvba jnf ortvaavat.

Reviewing the thread, I see I'm not the only Hodgell fan present. Clearly, we're all in it for the long term...

I rather regret not writing up the talk for my LiveJournal, but it was the night before Westercon started, and there is a limit to how much frantic scribbling I can do in one week...

It's not exactly been a long wait, but I'm waiting to see how long The Family Trade trilogy gets...

Yargh, now you have me agonizing about the rest of Barry Hughart's Master Li septology.

Nina Armstrong @73: And an honorable mention to Patricia Kennealy-Morrison for the Keltiad-- a ton of books projected, most not written.

PKM recently blogged that she's thinking about using Lulu to self-publish new Keltiad books, at least one of which is already extensively mapped out and underway:

"The Beltane Queen [is] the story of Aeron's great-grandmother Aoife Aoibhell, known as Vevin in her youth. She was both the Prince Hal and the Queen Victoria of Keltia: ran around with disreputable Falstaff and Doll Tearsheet types in her youth, ran away offplanet after she accidentally caused the death of a significant Keltic personage, became a street whore to support herself, was rescued by one of the mysterious Jedi-like Dawnhunters and returned soberly home to buckle down to duty. She had a Lord Melbourne-type domineering advisor, tossed him in favor of her Prince Albert-type husband Graham and lived to become the longest-reigning monarch in all Keltic history, prophesying (and naming) Aeron, on her deathbed in the presence of Aeron's father Fionnbarr."

(I saw a trade paperback revised version of book 1 at a local Borders some months ago. Haven't seen a revised version of book 2 yet.)

Just to inform you: Delany never uses the nickname 'Sam'; he's either "Samuel R. Delany" or "Chip." There's no second 'e' in Delany.

Michael I @ 105 - More good news! We'll start looking out for them.

When I was but a young lad I read A Canticle For Leibowitz and was delighted to read, in the brief biographical note at the end of the book, that the author was working on a sequel/parallel novel. The note even mentioned a title so, I concluded, it must be nearly done by then. That's when I learned not to be too optimistic about books I'm not holding in my hand.

But that's a series of the "no definite end" kind, along with O'Brien and the Vlad books, which is a quite different animal from the series of the "one book, many volumes" kind.

Since then, with only two exceptions, I haven't started a series that isn't explicitly noted from the beginning as a sequence of stand-alone stories until the last volume is in my hands. (Those two exceptions being Mr Wolfe's Soldier stories and Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars.)

And it's also a pretty good example of a long wait: Canticle For Leibowitz to Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman was 37 years.

Here's a link to Paul Di Filippo's review.

Despite the fact that Rosemary Kirstein's The Language of Power (Steerswoman series) came out in 2004, it feels like forever and ever -- largely because I seem to remember there was a promise of more in 2005, then 2006, then the promise disappeared, and now I wait. And hope. And fret.

And I've lost caring about the characters in Jordan's series, so will not rush out to buy no. 11. However, I am in thrall to George RR Martin and his Song of Ice and Fire series and also The Briar King series by Greg Keyes. Those books are inhaled, not read. Just as was no. 7 of Harry Potter--finished it in under 6 hours. It's an addiction, but a good one.

I thought that "A Civil Campaign" with its coda, "Winterfair Gifts" would have been a fitting end to the series. Much as I love the books & characters, it's beginning to look like "Children of Vorkosigan" or "Barrayar: The Next Generation" if the series goes on any further. I've really enjoyed her recent non-Miles novels & think that she should write more non-Miles stuff.

Lord Foul's Bane was 1977. The second of four books in the third chronicles (Fatal Revenant) will appear later this year, but the third and fourth are yet to be completed.

The third volume of William Manchester's Churchill biography.

Any of the rest of the social history of the United States that was promised in Albion's Seed (1989).

And poking about online it appears that the story's not done after Sidon, either. Argh.

Next...
A Gazebo for Girls

That's the Earth One Delany. The Earth Two Delaney is a cigar-chewing former pilot who was born a generation earlier, flew with the 332nd Fighter Group in the Army Air Corps and adopted the nickname "Sam" sometime during the war.

There's a collection of his letters with JRR Tolkein.

(I have nothing against trilogies, any more than I do with 3 minute-pop songs or limericks. Some divine work has been done in all these forms. But being the default option in their various niches they do attract more than their fair share of crap work.)

They put on a show in the barn!

See the chorine made Leading Lady!

"Let me do it, Mr Brodsky, I know I can! I fit all the costumes and I know all the songs!"

Just like Star Wars, only fiction!

Tarzan of the Apes (1912)
Tarzan and the Foreign Legion (1947)
is a 35 year spread.

But if you're willing to accept books published posthumously, then:

Tarzan and the Castaways (1965)
extends it to 43 years, not quite to Jack Williamson's Legion.

And if you're willing to include posthumous completions by another another, then:

Tarzan: The Lost Adventure (1995, with much Joe Lansdale)
brings the stretch out to 83 years.

And there were definitely people who knew about the fragment who were waiting . . .

The Mysterious Affair at Styles (1920)
Curtain (1975)

That's a 55 year spread, beating out Jack Williamson's not informidable 48.

If we're counting posthumous collaborations, then there's one more volume, a novelization of her 1930 stageplay by Charles Osborne:

Black Coffee (1988)

Of course, if you decide to include the related multiverse published in various media, all bets are off. And once that bag of worms is opened, Asimov's retrofitting of Robots to Foundation comes under consideration with a 58-year run.

Kevin has a history of posthumous collaborations, the most recent being the sequel to 1946's Slan. We received copies of Slan Hunter in the last week or so. Van Vogt has top billing, and may have more contribution than Lovecraft did in his beyond-the-grave works with Derleth.

I think it's been made perfectly clear that, sometime in the early 1980s or thereabouts, Knuth received an unexpected visit from a couple of well-spoken British gentlemen, who explained to him exactly why volume 4 should not be released to the public; which entities could be accidentally woken or invoked by a thoughtless hacker if it were; what this might mean for the future of the human race; and what the gentlemen and their employer would do to Knuth personally if he disregarded their advice.

Damn shame if there are no more Vorkosigans to come. I was rather hoping we might hear more about old General Count Pierre... he reminded me very strongly of my own grandfather.

Soon Lee 119: Personally, I'm hoping she'll write a novel where Zvyrf' terng-tenaqfba snyyf va ybir jvgu na Ngubfvna gryrcngu--nzvq gur hfhny snepvpny/gentvpbzvp/guevyyvat Oneenlnena-havirefr furanavtnaf, bs pbhefr.

And I must say that 'Oneenlnena' is the funniest Rot-13 since 'Ubabe'.

Dave 130: They're talking about a real series that already made that pun. I think it's about a star-travelling theatre company. I can't stand Stasheff's style, so I haven't read it.

Serge 133: See above.

Dave 138: And L. Ron Hubbard will never stop writing as long as Scientologists are required to buy his crappy books to get into heaven, or whatever Scientologists do instead.

"I am pleased to report that I have recently signed my first contract with Baen Books acting publisher Toni Weisskopf for a future book in the Miles Vorkosigan series. I have been working cordially with Toni for nearly as many years as I worked with the late Jim Baen, and I look forward to continuing a fruitful relationship.
"The new book will not be started until mid-2007 ..."

Which is pretty much what she repeated when she stopped by The Other Change of Hobbit for a drive-by signing last month.

T is for Trespass is due in December this year.

That's 25 years for 20 books, which means (if the average of 1.25 years/book runs true) 7 or 8 more years till we've got the alphabet. Over 30 years for one series*.

-----
* But it's still the 80's in Santa Teresa

I mean, they have *nutrient cycling* in them, in some baroque sfnal way. Soil science is sadly underrepresented in SF.

And the strip (which is in a slightly different universe from the books) started in 1962 and continued until 2001.

But I agree that open-ended series are not the same thing as Hasn't Finished The Story, Damnit incomplete trilogies and such.

Before last year it was Robert Anton Wilson's And the World Turned Upside Down, but I guess that's now one with the ending of Edwin Drood...

I would normally have ordered it and had it sent to my regular library, but I've tried it twice already and gotten the wrong MB book. I wanna start at the beginning, galdurnit.

There is also more about the beginning of the relationship in that book. My partner and I have the whole set of novels, and the other short story collection, Pieces of Modesty.

There is also more about the beginning of the relationship in that book. My partner and I have the whole set of novels, and the other short story collection, Pieces of Modesty.

Having read the first of the younger Herbert's continuations of the Dune universe, I've decided that my money is better spent on other writers.

The Last Lion: Winston Spenser Churchill: volume 1 was 1983 and the author died three years ago with the concluding volume unwritten.

Then of course there's The Canterbury Tales and The Faerie Queen, both of which are evoked in Ægypt as prototypes of vast schematic novels which were left unfinished, as the novel within the novel of Ægypt itself was, or wasn't, or might have not perhaps been.

The strips are currently being reprinted in nice big collections, which I am acquiring as slowly as I can manage (resisting temptation) so as to postpone as long as possible the point at which there are no more MB stories to read. They aren't as satisfying as the novels, but they're much better than nothing.

By the way, do you think Daniel Craig would be good casting for Willie?

What about David Wenham (too young?) or if we're casting against type, Sean Bean, and who would you cast as Modesty?

Lori... Sean Bean? I could see that. I thought of Craig as Willie because the first novel describes as a fair-haired big guy, and Craig isn't exactly small. As for Modesty, I can't really think of anybody who'd be perfect. Anyway, one must keep in mind that Peter O'Donnell would have loved his main characters played by Julie Christie and Michael Caine so it's obvious he was willing to skip the physical specifics as long as the characters felt right.

Craig just doesn't 'register' as Willie for me, I'm not doubting he can play the role.

Sean Bean comes across as having the solidness I picture with Willie, and seeing him as Boromir teaching the Hobbits to fight is what triggered, "hmm, maybe he could do it," response.

As for Modesty -- even though she's a bit long in the tooth for it -- Lucy Lawless; or the Asian girl from one of the Brosnan Bond films -- Lucy Liu, I think. (Just slap in a set of blue contact lenses for the latter.)

[blink] Er yes, where was I? Adding to the chorus of "Don't read Cobra Trap until you've read the other books." It's not just that the title short story should be read last of all, but that some of the other stories in the collection have spoilers for earlier novels. Fortunately they've been coming out as trade paperback reprints over the last few years, so it's now fairly easy to get hold of most of them.

And then there's Ivan, who has started to have flashes of competence - be interesting to see him forced to grow...

But I still want to see some of Miles - I like the little guy!

Dave Nee @ 138, James Nicoll @ 143 - I've looked at some of the Brian Herbert collaboration Dune books in shops, but in the absence of someone I trust saying "these are really good", I'm not sure I want to risk them.

abi @ 145 - I hadn't done the maths before with A is for Alibi etc. - I only discovered them a few years ago. Got one free with something else, then went and found all the available volumes, then started waiting for the new ones to come out. I'm now suffering from a combination of waiting hopefully for each volume and not wanting the series to end.

Kathy Li @ 22:

For me, it's Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond/Niccolò series. 14 books. 39 years from The Game of Kings to Gemini.

I thought that the linkage between Lymond and Niccolo was less than satisfactory, and actually detracted from Gemini to have it made so explicit. As if globetrotting master trader and schemer Nicholas de Fleury were notable primarily for being an ancestor of Francis Crawford of Lymond. So in my secret heart, I will continue to treat them as separate series.

Graham Blake @ 78:

Orson Scott Card's Alvin Maker series is the one that has had me gnashing my teeth over the years

Unfortunately, Mr. Card has had trouble shoehorning the whole Crystal City bit into the frame of an Existential War Against Islamofascists and Fifth-columnists. (Actually, I would probably still read the result if he succeeded, though for different reasons.)

Jasper Janssen @ 82:

I can't believe nobody mentioned Auel yet.

Me either, though in my case it's because of Zeborah's comment @ 38.

By the way, does that big book that Destiny has been carrying around since the beginning of time count as an ongoing series?

Contact lenses not required, I don't think; AFAIK she has brown eyes. The Asian part definitely fits; O'Donnell makes a point of using the word "Eurasian".

In a way, the original description reminds me of Honor Harrington. Tarrant sees Modesty for the first time, and he keeps thinking "the X is too big," "the Y is too big", while Protector Benjamin's first reaction to Harrington is along the lines of "My what a *big* woman".

So you want a fairly tall person, well-muscled, and definitely not rail-thin.

Yes. Yes, you do. Yes.

Incidentally, I do think there's a distinction to be made between "a series which takes a long time to go from start to finish" and "a series of books that form a single narrative that takes a long time to go from start to finish." AEgypt is the latter; Wolfe's Soldier is the former, as is (based on my reading of the first seven or so) the Vlad series.

Harry Potter is, to me, closer to the single narrative end of things because the overarching narrative is front-and-center from the first volume, as is the structure. Even most of the secondary storylines resolved in the last novel were begun in the first.

What? Where? (I'm in a coffeehouse taking a break from pondering the nature of villainy, instead of 8 feet away from the books.) This is a great surprise to me; I've been convinced for the last (literally) 40 years that her eyes were brown. Now Willie's on the other hand ... very blue.

S. M. Stirling is also a Modesty Blaise fan -- some of the female characters in his books are Modesty clones, right down to Eurasian and blue eyes...

That's what libraries are for. Being a "Dune" fanboy & not being able to resist *any* "Dune", I've read them all but only own one, a birthday present. I wouldn't say "these are really good".

My advice would be: don't expect anything aproaching the elder Herbert's gravitas, they're more like a Star Wars/Trek franchise book, and even then I'm probably being very generous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modesty_Blaise

One series I followed that's always struck me as Not Quite Finished was the cycle of Celtic/Cherokee contemporary fantasies by Tom Deitz that began with Windmaster's Bane. It always seemed to me that those were building up toward something that was still a novel or two away at the point where the books stopped appearing.

Modesty isn't especially tall - I think she's described as 5'6" at one point. And while I agree that she shouldn't be rail-thin (the actress in the latest movie was way too skinny), I don't see her as all that visibly muscled, either.

The first series was Philip Jose' Farmer's "Riverworld" series.

* To Your Scattered Bodies Go (1971)
* The Fabulous Riverboat (1971)
* The Dark Design (1977)
* The Magic Labyrinth (1980)
* Gods of Riverworld (1983)

I picked up the first two novels in early 1972, with the promise in the back of the second that the third book was going to be out shortly. I then had to wait six years (which is to say, forever, to a 12 year old) for the promised third book. I bought the third book in hardback when it came out, the first time I'd ever spent that much of my own money on a book, the first hardback I'd ever bought for myself. Only to discover, after devouring it in a single sitting that the promised last book of the trilogy had been expand into a three book series. Which took another six years to be published, making me twice the age finishing the series as I'd been when I'd started reading it.

The second was the Wandor series by Roland J. Green:

* Wandor's Ride (1973)
* Wandor's Journey (1975)
* Wandor's Voyage (1979)
* Wandor's Flight (1981)

Which doesn't look too bad, with only an eight year gap between the first and the fourth books. Unfortunately, it was meant to be a quintology from the very beginning. So, I've been waiting for thirty-four years for that last book (tho' not quite as anxiously as I did when I was a fourteen-year old adolescent male who really enjoyed sword-and-sorcery stories.)

So, between a series that grew from three books to five, and a series that never even ended, I finally learned my lesson. Now I have to think really hard before I start reading an unfinished series. [I'd read the first Harry Potter novel before I knew there was going to be a second one published. Mr. Stross' "Merchant Princes" series I bought deliberately knowing that it wasn't yet finished, as I'd read the first chapter of the first book in the store and it convinced me that it was worth whatever wait I'd be put through.]

Although since the most recent movie showed (unless I'm wrong) Modesty as a teenager, she could probably get away with being thinner there, simply because wandering refugees don't tend to be all that well-nourished, at least while they're wandering.

The Brian/Kevin "Dune-flavoured SF product" novels are not books I would recommend.

5'6" is fairly tall as far as I'm concerned. (I divide the world into short and tall--and the definition of the latter is anything taller than me. I'm 5'3".)

I was skimming through the first part of the book while stirring last night's zucchini risotto, and got about halfway through. The only midnight blue I found was the dinner jacket on her escort to the ballet (poor guy!)

Harking back to other threads, the MB novels were where I first learned to distinguish between British and American usages of words like "pants", since Modesty's always stripping down and re-dressing for action. And I love Modesty & Willie's obscure-word game.

Must wash brain now.

"...Willie Garvin's long-held view was that in these soft and secure days life was held too sacred, and that the high importance attached to it was no part of natural law. In the natural order of things, life had always been cheap. You came and you went and it didn't much matter. Only cruelty disturbed him..."

I could see a young Michael Caine thinking that.

[I presume this is ROT13, and this computer and associated software are new enough that, so far as I can tell, the only case in which I can read ROT13 is when it appears in someone else's NNTP newsgroup post -- I can't even create ROT13 text automagically.]

While I would in theory like to see more Hughart books, the trend of the published ones worries me. According to me, the first was brilliant, the second was good, and the third was merely OK. A fourth book of the same quality as the third I would read, but I'm already a fan - I wouldn't recommend it to a new reader, and I wouldn't be likely to publish it if I had to show a profit on it. A fourth book of lesser quality than the third I wouldn't even read.

I don't think there's anything wrong with the second or third books that couldn't have been fixed, given an editor who would point out where Hughart was overusing plot elements, misusing the real Chinese literary materials at hand, and introducing original bits that didn't fit well, and given a Hughart willing to listen to such advice.

199: Try this: http://www.rot13.com/

http://www.rot13.com/index.php

There's a good fan-written guide to the series on the US Amazon site.

The best one to start with is the first one, which is just called Modesty Blaise, but all the novels do a reasonable job of explaining the setup to those who came in late.

Note, though, if it's the kind of thing that matters to you, that several of the later novels contain spoilers for events earlier in the series.

(By the way, people who were wondering: The comic strip doesn't have a definite conclusion, the way the books do. It ends, like Calvin and Hobbes, with our heroes heading toward the horizon in search of the next adventure.)

Bwahahah!!!

ttyl
Farrell

So far I haven't spotted any explicit reference to her eye color, although towards the beginning there's a bit about "high cheekbones under dark, contemplative eyes," which is pretty inconclusive. On the cover she's got blue eyes, which is also inconclusive.

Anecdotally, I'm five-six, and have on several occasions been greeted by friends with "Oh good, you're here -- we need someone tall!" I'm the designated "get things down from high places" person in my office at work.

That was (in English, mind you) my father's favourite proverb.

A Bromo™ for Upset

A while back I realized that, when choosing which book to read next (usually in a hurried dither before leaving for work in the morning), I was favoring recently purchased books, comfort reading, and books that weren't behind something. For the I'd-like-to-read-that-someday books (we all have them, right?), "someday" was turning out to mean "never."

Rather than attempt genuine self-improvement, I opted for the quick-fix technological solution: a little Perl script to randomly choose books tagged as "unread" or "to_reread" from my LibraryThing catalog. I'm happy with the results; my reading diet has become more balanced, and a few of those "someday" books turned out to be startlingly good (Cannery Row: holy crap). It's a bit like shuffle-play for my books.

And then will she start writing Dr Suess mysteries for the letters 'on beyond zebra'?

But if Ellison ever actually published Last Dangerous Visions there would be a great disturbance in the Force, and Richard Lupoff's head would explode. I don't think we want that.

My apologies for misspelling your name.

Thanks.

a few of those "someday" books turned out to be startlingly good (Cannery Row: holy crap)

Keep going: Sweet Thursday is even better.

So, to adopt the terms from up-thread, you stand confessed to both Premeditated Tetralogy and Negligent Teratology?

NB: there must be a word for the sensation that accompanies the realization that one is thirteen hundred pages into writing something, yet barely a third of the way through it: raw, quivering terror isn't concise enough. (Let's just say, I live in fear of Riverworld syndrome. I've already aborted one series after two books -- I think gaining a reputation for doing so regularly, this early in a writing career, would be bad.)

That story had two brilliant first books, and yes there was a gap before it resumed, but it did resume. Unfortunately. But I don't expect that to happen with the Laundry. So, how does that syndrome apply to you?

You know what 'they' say. If it ain't Baroque, don't fix it.

Back to the topic of the post... count me in with the group waiting determinedly for The Door Into Starlight.

More frustratingly, Omaha the Cat Dancer ended just when things were getting Really Interesting, and my understanding is that there will be no more due to a breakup in the writing team. Waah!

Does anyone know whether/when Barbara Hambly will be writing more Benjamin January books? Those had also gotten to a Very Interesting point, and there's now been a multi-year break after 6 or 7 that came one-per-year.

And in the "things that will probably never happen" category, I'd love to see Michael Kurland do some more Lord Darcy pastiches. I really liked his take on the characters, but I think he's too busy writing his own stuff these days.

That was probably the Inquestor series, which begins with "The Light on the Sound". Bibliographies (like this) list 4 novels in that series, which accords with my memory of having read 4 novels, but IIRC there was a fifth volume consisting of short stories, with no single dramatic arc. I can't find that listed in the bibliographies, though.

My sister says my niece is starting to read fantasy stuff.

I'm not familiar with the Golden Compass / Dark Materials book.

Think they would be OK for a just-turned 10 year old?

Then have her read some Diana Wynne Jones, for good measure.

The books are undoubtedly well written, and pitched brilliantly; a bookish ten-year-old should get a lot out of them, and an adult reader gets even more. I don't mind the anti-clericalism or the explicit polemic against the Narnia series and by association against Christianity. But the admitted propaganda against any moral system at all bothers me.

It seems to me that so much children's literature is written with the opposite didactic intention that we tend to lose sight of the fact that it is, nevertheless, propaganda. Compared to the odious, insidious Christian apologia that is Narnia, "His Dark Materials" are a breath of fresh air.

(And as for the existence of "good" and "evil" I think these are at best abstract qualities, and at worst, imaginary ones; labels that we attach to things we like and dislike. You may differ, of course -- apparently a lot of Americans believe in good and evil and a cloven-hoofed devil to boot -- but you need to bear in mind that this is not a universally-held opinion, that disagreeing with it does not automatically turn people into serial killers and nihilits, and that learning that There Are Other Ways Of Thinking is a vitally important insight for any bookish ten year old in a socially isolated position; it's potentially a life-saver.)

Walter: "Nihilits! F***! I mean, say what you like about Piers Anthony fans, but at least they're reading something."

I've given Un Lun Dun and Coraline to girls in that age group, and they've loved them.

(Meanwhile, I noticed that the show's Gabrielle Anwar could maybe play Modesty Blaise. She is Eurasian and has blue eyes. Yes, she's a bit shorter than Modesty is supposed to be. Still...)

I invite you to consider the differences between "I would hesitate to give this book to a child" and "Nobody must be permitted to give this book to a child".

or the Asian girl from one of the Brosnan Bond films.

That was Michelle Yeoh - probably best known now from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Cool action heroine but teeny tiny.

Is a teratology a series with 1000,000,000,000 books in it? Or a series about monsters? Or a series about the earth?

In fact, this makes me want to go out and read the Golden Compass books, which I haven't done. I had no idea that there even existed an epic-type fantasy that denied good and evil. That's awesome! In general I avoid the epic fantasy specifically because I find battles between g&e snoozy and false.

"Clark, you were fourteen. Old enough to make your own decisions in that regard."

"I know, but... Did I disappoint you -- or offend you?"

"No. Not one bit. Clark, you could never disappoint me --"

"Except for melting that vase from Paris. And crashing thru the weather vane."

"And you would bend all the utensils in the house every time I made liver... Clark, my faith was my own. I brought it into your life so that you could have a foundation for making your own choices... I certainly think you've made good ones..."

(This exchange between Clark and Martha Kent is one of the reasons I've come back to reading Superman. I had always loved the character, but was never quite happy with how he was handled.)

The next thing was the Amber books. The first two had British publications and I read them. The third one (Sign of the Unicorn) turned up randomly and so unexpectedly that I squealed when I saw it in the bookshop (fortunately they were used to me in Chapter and Verse, did I mention going in every day just to check?) I had no idea there would be any more. Then I knew I was waiting for the others.

I've been in a state of waiting for specific other books, (as opposed to random new books by beloved writers,) ever since then, which would be about thirty years. It isn't a bad state to be in. It's like travelling hopefully. It isn't necessarily better than arriving, but it does mean there's always something to look forward to.

It does make it doubly sad when authors die, though, because it's not only the loss of them as a person, but the loss of the potential book as well. William Manchester would probably have been very surprised to have known how many of us were panting for volume III.

At the moment, my most desired specific book would be Aspects, shortly followed by Rosemary Kirstein's The City in the Crags.

Really? Cool. I guess I'm going to have to add those to my to-read pile after all. Wish I'd had something like that to read when I was a kid.

I gave up on Narnia a few books in, though I couldn't at the time articulate why they bothered me so much. I've stayed away since. Considering that when I re-read A Wrinkle In Time a few years ago I found it unbearably preachy, I definitely don't think Narnia would improve with age in my case.

I cry when one of my favorite living authors dies. Since I have never met any of them, it is pure selfish, "Oh no! No more books by Author ever!"

I'm also lucky enough not to be waiting for a series, as far as I can remember....

My mother's family has always gone on the theory that books, as such, are not harmful; I read The Plague and I right after I finished Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle's Farm one summer when the number of books I could check out from the bookmobile and the number I could read in a week were out of phase. It may have effected my sense of humor, but did not lead to a life-long obsession with TB and bad arts and crafts projects, any more than doing a report on Portnoy's Complaint for a high school "Media and Ethnic Literature" course corrupted my morals.

Of course my virtuous, hard working, civic minded, old-style progressive Republican Quaker grandmother wrote romances for pulp magazines, so we might all have been lost to salvation anyway.

Considering that I myself have a moral code and yet don't believe in Good and Evil, I don't see that as misleading at all. The problem I have with a lot of fantasy (a great example would be Diane Duane's wizard books, which I otherwise enjoy a great deal) is when Good and Evil are actual entities/forces/Powers/what have you. Of course certain actions can be described using either word, but that's not the same thing at all.

If several people here feel comfortable separating morality from good and evil, it's likely that Pullman also meant something different by his comment than what I understood. Which makes his position much less repugnant. Would those of you who are taking that line say that certain actions are morally wrong, but not evil?

I still take issue with the views presented in His dark materials of things like murder, underage sex, and responsibility. But I feel a lot better able to handle the idea that Pullman has come to different moral conclusions from mine, than the idea that he doesn't find moral distinctions to be worth drawing at all.

I remember reading an interview by/ article on Pullman, in which he said that Lewis had not let his children in Narnia grow up, and deal with the moral complexity that growing up entails. Maybe he tried to address that in His Dark Materials. (I'd need to go back and re-read them as a whole work instead of separate books in order to have an opinion on that.)

I think...describing something as "evil" is simply a shorthand for "morally wrong", generally speaking. It's more about the effect the action has (or could have, in the case of things like public policy) than the motive behind the action, if that makes sense. "Evil" isn't a force, or a motivator, or a goal, or an entity, and it's certainly not an absolute. The same goes for "Good".

I also think there are multiple values of "morally wrong", and "evil" is only a valid shorthand for the worst. An action may be morally wrong but not have the lasting and/or widespread effects needed to qualify as "evil". I guess I view it as sort of an intensifier, more than a concept in its own right.

Does that make sense?

They're not quite equivalent, for me anyway. I call "evil" people who aren't just morally wrong, but who are also morally extremely wrong. People like Bush, Rove, Cheney.

"God is like a mirror. The mirror is always the same -- but everyone who looks into it sees something different."

The original context of this was clearly Christian, but it extends far beyond that. I am a firm believer in the idea that we make God in our own images, rather than the reverse, and that this explains much of the variation in the way different people interpret the same religious texts.

"With or without religion, good people will do good things and evil people will do evil things. But to make good people do evil things -- THAT takes religion."

And that is SO true; it's much easier for a person to do something that they would clearly identify as wrong in a different context when their religion is telling them that this is what they SHOULD do. Very Orwellian blackwhite, that.

If a genie were to grant me one wish, it would be that ALL religion be removed from human culture. Yes, even my own; I believe that the overall benefits to everyone would far outweigh the things we'd lose.

As I recall, Pullman's point was that you make your own choices to do "right" or "wrong" and this is separate from the Powers that call themselves (or are called by the Establishment) "Good" or "Evil".

"God is like a mirror. The mirror never changes, but everybody who looks at it sees something different." — Rabbi Harold Kushner

Jewish in origin, not Christian...

"But to make good people do evil things -- THAT takes religion." - or other "certainty" - I'm always worried about those with absolutely no doubts, no room for the possibility that their way might not be the way, or might not be the way for others - whether its a "religious" way or any other. Particularly if they want to impose their way on others (if they don't, it's their own business).

Same for me - my mother actually bought me the book because my face lit up so when I saw it in the bookstore window. It was hardback, and expensive, and we didn't do that. But I found myself terribly disappointed by what I saw as "cheating" on Cooper's part, when Bran learned all this interesting stuff about himself, and he was made to forget it. Which I found terribly disappointing. Did you see that, or was it just my late teen self leaping to an unwarranted conclusion? I (of course) still have the books, though I haven't reread them since then - I think I'll have to check on myself.

Like I said a bit further on, it's only equivalent for the worst values of "morally wrong".

It's a matter of scale, I think; "morally wrong" covers a much wider variety of concepts than "evil", but they're equivalent for me in that my concept of "evil" is derived from my concept of morality.

Is that any better?

Especially added to the offense of knowing people with a cabin on Lake Chelan.

I'm all for YA books that are challenging and thoughtful, but I don't want to get my sister ticked at me . . . the nieces are being raised Catholic in a low-key way.

I think I'll read the books myself first, and give a set to my brother-in-law. He reads Harry Potter and Eragon and Tolkein and such. If the trilogy passes muster he can pass it on to his daughters.

I would put it a little differently: evil is knowingly and intentionally committing acts that are morally wrong. It's possible to do wrong by accident, or by unintended consequence, or by believing that one wrong act can prevent other and greater wrongness, but none of those is evil. Acting so as to cause wrongness as a final consequence is evil.

Lee @ 271

I'm very sympathetic with your view of religion, but I distinguish between personal religion, what an individual believes, and group or organized religion, what someone professes to believe to satisfy other people. I have a personal religion, though I doubt there are many people who would even recognize it as such, since God isn't really a part of it. But I do not believe that religion as a social phenomenon is a good thing. My motto is "Organization is to religion as meetings are to art".

That which is morally wrong is, quite simply, that which does harm, regardless of motive. We are morally obligated to, at the least, minimize the amount of harm we do, and, as an ideal, maximize the good we do. Blammo, moral code, absent good and evil.

A young Michael Caine is a pretty obvious candidate for Willie Garvin, casting him would almost be a cliche.

Refugee in WW2, and wandering afterward, as a child and teenager: she's definitely going to be short by modern standards. I think you would cast Willie and Modesty by relative height, but you'd need somebody who could get across the authority. That, and the script, has to convince the audience she is the boss, and why.

The Modesty Blaise novel started with the initial O'Donnell script for that movie, which was mostly rewritten beyond all recognition before it reached the set.

Eurasian? Recalling time and place of writing, I wonder if we should be thinking anglo-indian? Yes, there were places such as Hong Kong and Shanghai (and the Sino-Japanese War does provide reasons why a child from those places might have been in Europe by the time WW2 started), but I think it's a plausible reading.

(Anglo-indian and Michael Caine: we're straight into the casting territory of The Man Who Would Be King)

"Is Modesty Blaise the real name?"

"Real enough." She watched a seagull glide down in a wide curve toward the sea. "When you don't have a name, you have to choose one."

So are we told in Modesty Blaise (p.79). As for her age, that novel explicitly says she's 26 and that she spent the beginning of her life in a prisonner's camp in the Middle East. But she may age the way comic-book characters age in lomg-running series, meaning not at all.

Casting? Like I said before, Gabrielle Anwar...

As for another film from my teenage years, Terence Stamp may have been wrong for the part of sidekick in the original Modesty Blaise film, but boy was he dishy!

And he had a lot more hair, eh? Say, wasn't he in Far from the Madding Crowd, with Julie Christie, whom Peter O'Donnell would have loved casting as Modesty?

I always fall over laughing when Peter Cook takes Dudley Moore out to eat and hands him a long spoon.

By the way, did the stories and/or the strip itself ever venture into science-fiction territory? I ask because here's what he has Modesty say about Willie on page 128 of the first novel:

She nodded agreement. "He's a voracious reader, and he's got a good mind. With a different start, he could have gone anywhere.

"What does he read?"

"Biography, military history, technical books, science-fiction -- almost anything but general fiction and travel. And he has total recall."

Even if he didn't get into SF-inspired stories, it'd appear that he enjoyed the genre. That's a mark in his favor in my book.

Re women's height: I am 5'6", and don't think of myself as being especially tall -- but there are some venues (such as contradancing) in which it seems that there is a higher-than-normal concentration of short women, so that I end up being in the "tall women" group. It always feels strange when that happens.

I think the average is actually only around 5'3" or 5'4" in the USA--contrary to the damned designers's bigoted habits designing counters in banks and at airports, charge card stations in stores, US-made cars, etc. etc. etc.

More frustratingly, Omaha the Cat Dancer ended just when things were getting Really Interesting, and my understanding is that there will be no more due to a breakup in the writing team. Waah!

It goes beyond that--Kate Worley and Reed Waller will not be collaborating again, because the grim reaper intervened, taking Kate several years ago. I don't know about the details that caused it, but she lived with a high level of debilitating for years, after being in a car crash, and it affected her outlook on life--she had a sense of humor, but the crippling pain was constantly with her.

If I manage to get to the resurrected Fourth Street Fantasy Convention next year, I suspect that she'll be one of the people notable to me for the hole left by their absence.

I'd say so too, based on the ladies I see at the gym.

My memory has its perks sometimes, I knew I had kept that link (between Foton Record and photos of Tadao Ando's Church of the Light, that's fluorosphere synchronicity for you), which will probably prove more useful than the rest of my post.

Hope this will help.

Just found the paragraph that gives her age in this last story, as closely as she knows it. It's John Dall's Point of view:

***

...He was well content simply to look at her, remembering, and to marvel at how lightly the years had touched her.

She would be...about fifty-two? Impossible to be sure, for all memory of her early childhood had been wiped clean, but today her body would have passed handsomely for thirty, her face for the early forties. The legs were still those beautiful dancer's legs, and she still moved like a dream. There were more lines at the corners of her eyes now, and the jaw-line was perhaps less lean, but the column of her throat held firm and never failed to draw his eye.

***

That's the view of a man who's been in love with her for the last twenty years; but he's describing a woman who has physically aged but is still in very good shape, in part because the habits of a lifetime living on her wits and strength mean that she makes sure she stays in good physical shape.

Oh, and a couple of paragraphs on, it mentions her deep blue eyes.

He seemed to be trying to keep Modesty in the mid-thirties, just moving up when she was born. I believe this was in the comic strips. Newspapers traditionally run Modesty's origin when they start carrying the comic, and he wanted to give them a more modern alternative. I believe he said that the syndicate thought it was unnecessary, but I have a mind like a steel sieve some days.

Who is reprinting the strips, and where can I get these volumes?

A copy of The Ascent of Man was my Christmas request one year (granted).

I remember watching the scene that your linked quote came from (from a tape played in a high school physics class years ago). Profound.

Most of our current debacle comes from persons acting out of 'monstrous certainty'.

Yup. If you know that you're right, you can't possibly be wrong. That attitude hasn't served America well these last few years though.

It's also difficult looking for good pants in Petite -- or doing a lot of clumsy hemming. The only place I have an advantage is one indoor bank ATM that seems designed for wheelchair users. I can use it standing up, while my husband has to kneel. But oh, the curse of top shelves, anywhere and everywhere! (At least it's good exercise, standing on tiptoe a lot.)

*"I'm not dead yet"

I'm pretty short for a guy, and I like my guys even shorter. Pay any price, bear any burden to reduce my chances, that seems to be my libido's policy.

I could make a dirty joke about that, but I won't. Instead, I'll ask how tall you actually are.

Maybe I'm 5'8" in boots or something. Could be it. Or maybe I was 5'8" when I had hair, which is even more likely.

Of course, I'm 6'0" on Rollerblades™. Boy, does the world ever look different from up there!

It is lonely living up here among the Olympians.

I'm told you can stretch and 'decompress' your back with exercise (yoga, maybe?) but I don't know how effective it is.

Their work lacks sense, grandeur and equipoise,
and their heptalogies are so much noise.

Xopher, #317, or maybe you need your bone density checked. I'm 5'8" on my right foot and 5'7" on my left foot. It doesn't seem to bother my walking.

Spoilers, I guess

I feel so callous for writing the above statement. I enjoyed her books, and I like to think she was an interesting person.

I really, really regret the Julian Kestrel novels by Kate Ross, who died unexpectedly and far too young. Morally complex Regency mysteries that are as aware of Regency lowlife as highlife.

I think he said he was a Slitherout.

Not outright, that I recall. Some of them feature new scientific or technological marvels, but more in what I would call the technothriller vein than actual SF. I remember one with a vampire, and one with a time traveller, but they both turn out to be frauds in the end.

There are, mind you, numerous instances of psychic ability scattered through the series, but I gather that the author does not regard these as being in the domain of SF.

You're lucky; my neurosurgeon told me that one of the contributing causes to the rupture of the disk that caused a partial paralysis of my right leg is the 1/2" difference between the lengths of my legs.

In my youth (said the sage) I was 5'exercise 9 1/2" plus a large enough smidge to call myself 5' 10". After the surgery that repaired the disk I was just below 5" 9", but now that years and some have passed, I'm back to my old height. This doesn't help much at family get-togethers: my older son is about my height, and considerably more buff, and my younger son is 6' 1", so I'm the runt of the family.

Here.

...believed to be aged 26 : height 5'6" : weight 120 lbs. Black hair, brown eyes, hint of Eurasian features... First on record 1952, believed 17 yrs. old...

So it looks like you were right in the first place, joann. Sorry I didn't remember sooner.

Bruce Cohen, #341, my left side turned up partially paralyzed after the event that made the difference in my height. I broke my ankle nine places in three inches and there wasn't enough bone to put it all back together. The screws & pins were rejected by my bones, so I had to wear a brace for a long time, but I unexpectedly grew enough bone that I don't have to wear the brace anymore. I didn't grow enough bone for height, though. (I got arthritis in the ankle, the doctors had me take ibuprofen which killed my kidneys the first time, and I was in the hospital with the first renal failure when my BP went up and the doctor ordered the med that caused the big stroke and coma resulting in partial paralysis among other things. Not quite as direct as yours.)

Serge, I taped The Wackiest Ship in the Army which was after yours.

Clearly, you were not lucky, and I apologize for any distress my saying so gave you.

* I assume a very sibilant one.

Oh boy, now there's an interesting moebius twist on your world building!

(Scribbles notes, furtively.)

As for Farscape's possible return... Would you or any other fan of it watch it if Claudia Black weren't in it?

And I think he'd be perfect for Modesty. I might be a galloping fanboy, but I think he's got a much bigger range than people give him credit for. Hell, Jackie Brown alone proves that he can be faithful to source material while simultaneously being incredibly inventive.

I gots faith, basically.

PS: The NY Times obit for Ingmar Bergman, with a photo showing Max von Sydow as the knight playing chess with Death, includes some great quotes from Bergman. It also made me wonder if "The Seventh Seal" inspired Terry Pratchett to mischief.

I heart Barbarella.

I would even watch it if Ben weren't in it, but only if they had a really good male lead. (This is plausible...it could be set 100 years in the future. Crighton would be dead, but the others wouldn't.)

I'm hoping they just mean Nagubal Fvzpbr jba'g or onpx, orpnhfr Q'netb vf qrnq. Gubhtu gurl pbhyq oevat uvz onpx vs gurl jnagrq gb...gurer vfa'g n FVATYR Snefpncr punenpgre jub unfa'g orra qrnq ng bar gvzr be nabgure va gur frevrf be zbivr.

Unless played by Christopher Walken, or by Tilda Swinton.

Almost certainly...

SOMETIMES PEOPLE CHALLENGE ME TO A GAME. FOR THEIR LIVES, YOU KNOW.
"Does anyone ever win?"
NO. LAST YEAR SOMEONE GOT THREE STREETS AND ALL THE UTILITIES.
"What sort of game is that?"
I DON'T RECALL. EXCLUSIVE POSSESSION, I THINK. I WAS THE BOOT.

-- from Mort

But he's not very good at chess... there's a throwaway scene with a chess match between Death and (I think) the Time Abbot, in which Death considers the board and then says REMIND ME AGAIN HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE.

No apologies required; I skimmed right over that myself, while looking it up.

I hope gurl qb oevat Q'Netb onpx. Ur cebivqrf n yriry bs areibhf raretl gung gur pnfg arrqf gb qevir fbzr bs gur npgvba. V guvax gurl pbhyq qb jvgubhg Puvnan gubhtu. Pregnvayl vs vg jrer n pubvpr orgjrra Puvnan naq Nrela Fha ...

And #350, no, I kept thinking of snakes, too.

Serge, #353, that happened 20 years ago now. I still have the effects of the stroke, but it's not exactly shocking anymore. Sure, I'd watch Farscape. Black's character often just seemed annoying.

And ajay, thanks for those Mort quotes. I'll leave it for others to imagine games and discussions between Death and those two directors.

As I recall that movie the more appropriate line would be "I loin Barbarella". Although I would understand if you preferred the angel.

The Harry Potter books cover seven years, and took ten years to publish.

If you wiush, you can handwave about the first publication being a year-or-three after the events depicted. Call it mid-Nineties.

So the last book could conside with the post-9/11 political developments in the USA. Maybe even the year of the Iraq invasion.

There's certainly an applicability to some of the political background, and the apparent subversion of the Ministry of Magic in the fifth and sixth years.

It's clear that the subversion of the Ministry of Magic in books 5 and 6 is influenced by and perhaps commenting on real-world politics at the time of the writing, but Rowling doesn't intend for it to actually be taking place at the same time as the real-world events it suggests.

I really, really regret the Julian Kestrel novels by Kate Ross, who died unexpectedly and far too young.

Oh. That's why there are no more. Damn.

Sarah Caudwell's mystery series was another that ended too soon.