Amelia Peabody. 31 years from Book One to The End.

Posted July 21, 2007 2:34 PM by Linkmeister

When I first read about Gerrold's Chtorr books, I wanted to read the series. But noticing how long it had been since the last book (this was in about 2005) I decided to wait until he'd finished them before I started.

Still waiting.

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

Posted July 21, 2007 2:49 PM by Jules

#1: Except not precisely; the author reports that she has a further Amelia novel under contract (though there will be a new Vicky Bliss book first).

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....

Posted July 21, 2007 2:54 PM by John C. Bunnell

John @ #3, Thanks. When I read Tomb I got the feeling she was relieved to be done with the whole series (I thought there were loose ends tied up almost haphazardly), so I wonder what the next one could possibly be like.

Posted July 21, 2007 3:02 PM by Linkmeister

The Hobbit to The Silmarillion

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

Posted July 21, 2007 3:05 PM by Dave Bell

James Branch Cabell considered his Poictesme and Lichfield novels as part of an eicosapentalogy with the overall title "The Line of Love" (which was also the name of an early book in the sequence).

Posted July 21, 2007 3:07 PM by theophylact

Thirty-seven years ago I wrote to Panshin to find out the outcome of The Great Ian Steele Contest. He replied, but he didn't answer. Pity.

Posted July 21, 2007 3:11 PM by theophylact

I have one word: Discworld.

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

Posted July 21, 2007 3:15 PM by Charlie Stross

Charlie, I don't think I'd count Discworld as a whole, any more than I count the Brust's non-Vlad Dragaera books. There's a difference between waiting for a new book in a familiar setting, and waiting for the book that tells you how things finally turn out.

Posted July 21, 2007 3:23 PM by Avram

Jack Williamson: The Legion of Space, 1934, Queen of the Legion, 1982.

Alternatively, Bible -> Book of Mormon.

Posted July 21, 2007 3:36 PM by Jess Nevins

The Door Into Starlight
Buttercup's Baby
The Dancing Girl
The AI War and Lord November
Stan Freberg Presests the United States of America

Posted July 21, 2007 3:49 PM by Konrad

And Diane Duane's Door books -- I think Door into Fire first came out in the seventies, Door into Shadow in the eighties, Door into Sunset in the nineties, and I'm hoping for Door into Starlight sometime in the next couple years. ;>

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

Patience....

Posted July 21, 2007 3:54 PM by gramina

The Delany book is why I now only rarely will start a series until it is actually done. I didn't even start the Dark Tower books until I heard King was actively writing the end.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 3:57 PM by sburnap

Is Duane still planning to write _Starlight_?

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

Posted July 21, 2007 4:04 PM by Kate Nepveu

It's funny how we can complain about Cerebus but not, say, Superman, who's been smacking Lex Luthor around for almost 80 years now. Authors who don't exploit their characters until the sun blows out end up getting more flak.

Posted July 21, 2007 4:20 PM by Matthew Stevens

Much as I am eagerly awaiting the next Vlad book, I don't have a sense of waiting to see how it turns out.

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).

Posted July 21, 2007 4:26 PM by Terry Karney

You have to factor in the age of the target audience, though. Kid years are longer than grownup years.

Posted July 21, 2007 4:34 PM by Karen in Wichita

Aubry/Maturin, by O'Brian

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 4:39 PM by Terry Karney

Yeah, the Chtorr books pretty much cured me of open-ended series. (Not the least of it: When #3 or #4 came out (I forget which), the new publisher re-issued new, unexpurgated versions of the earlier books.)

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 4:51 PM by Bob Oldendorf

I'm still wishing someone would do something with whatever exists of Gordon Dickson's Childe. (There's one that stretched out over, what, forty years?) I don't expect a finished novel--I just want to know how it ends.

Posted July 21, 2007 5:03 PM by John A Arkansawyer

There's the 'Bolitho' series by Alexander Kent: the first one was published in 1968, and there's one out this year. He's still writing.

Posted July 21, 2007 5:18 PM by P J Evans

Yes, Diane Duane's still planning to write Starlight but all her other projects keep getting in the way. :-)

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

Posted July 21, 2007 5:25 PM by Kathy Li

Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series. "Eye of the World" published 1990. The final book of the series is currently being written.

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

Posted July 21, 2007 5:33 PM by JamesK

Matt @15, keep in mind that Cerebus is a character, written by one author in much the same way as Dickens wrote Little Nell, while Superman is a property, written by dozens of authors, none of whom have the authority to end his story for good.

And Supes has only been fighting Luthor for 67 years.

Posted July 21, 2007 5:37 PM by Avram

As others have already mentioned Gerrold's Cthorr, Duane's Door, and Moran's Continuing Time stories, I'll content myself with still waiting for the second half of Stephen Boyett's _The Architect of Sleep_.

Posted July 21, 2007 5:54 PM by Steve B

I agree with JamesK -- the Wheel of Time definately qualifies. I started reading it my first year in college, and I'm 36 now. After the fifth or sixth book the actual reading became a chore, with the exception of chapters dealing with one or two select characters, and after that I just kept reading in order to get to the ending... so it's actually felt much longer to me.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 6:01 PM by Christopher B. Wright

How about books by the Stratemeyer committee, like Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys? Should they count?

Posted July 21, 2007 6:07 PM by Linkmeister

Nowhere near a record, but I thought I'd mention Pamela Sargeant's 'Venus' trilogy:

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 6:10 PM by Michael R. Bernstein

Sorry, that should have been 'Pamela Sargent'.

Posted July 21, 2007 6:12 PM by Michael R. Bernstein

What about series that didn't sell enough to get the end published? I want to find out what happens at the end of Doris Egan's Ivory books, dammit!!!1!

Posted July 21, 2007 6:28 PM by TexAnne

R.A. Lafferty, The Flame Is Green and Half a Sky were published something like ten years apart. There were supposed to be two more, but though the first two were published many years before Lafferty's death, it was never finished (and I'm pretty sure they aren't among his unpublished novels).

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)

Posted July 21, 2007 6:39 PM by Scraps

Dune, 1965-(has that ended yet?)
Forty plus years and counting.

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

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

-jsq

Posted July 21, 2007 6:43 PM by John S. Quarterman

I'm mildly surprised to see no mention of PC Hodgell, whose fans used to write letters to publishers imploring them to publish the unfinished whatever-it-was series.

Posted July 21, 2007 6:43 PM by Scraps

Tolkien began in minuscule when Gandhi was still a lawyer, and didn't end til the wastebasket was finally cleaned out after the millennium -- a enormously long delay that caused substantial embarrassment, trumped only by that Publisher's Weekly occurrence when a wired Asimov connoisseur couldn't be accommodated in the fan hierarchy: with a deity like Asimov at the top, etiquette demanded Pharaonic treatment be enforced by someone; maybe Teresa, or perhaps it's Macdonald, no its that Nielsen-Hayden guy.

Posted July 21, 2007 6:46 PM by Kieran

Scraps#33: Hodgell's God Stalk was 1982, To Ride a Rathorn was last year, no clue how many more are coming.

Posted July 21, 2007 6:50 PM by Konrad

I'd forgotten about Architect of Sleep.

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

Posted July 21, 2007 6:51 PM by Terry Karney

Comic wise, Sambre is the thing for me. Started in 1986, five volume (roughly 250 pages) (of gorgeous, gorgeous art) published, ... still waiting for the next installement. Yslaire will drive me crazy... especially given how slow the pace of the story happens to be.

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

Posted July 21, 2007 6:56 PM by MD²

The Clan of the Cave Bear, 1980
The Valley of Horses, 1982
The Mammoth Hunters, 1985
The Plains of Passage, 1990
The Shelters of Stone, 2002

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 7:14 PM by Zeborah

#1: Except not precisely; the author reports that she has a further Amelia novel under contract (though there will be a new Vicky Bliss book first).

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 7:31 PM by Carrie S.

Jack Vance wrote the first "Demon Princes" book in 1961 and the fifth in 1981.

Posted July 21, 2007 7:40 PM by Stefan Jones

Jack Vance wrote the first "Demon Princes" book in 1964 and the fifth in 1981.

Posted July 21, 2007 7:40 PM by Stefan Jones

Is there any reason to hope that the fourth Villiers book will ever get published? (i am the compleat Villiers fan and have been panting for it for nearly thirty years (panting is tiring after the first decade or so), but the zeitgeist has changed, the author has changed, and presumably a decision to publish (even assuming the thing is actually written) would have to depend on the potential mass appeal of the first three books in reprint...not what one might describe as a sure bet.

Posted July 21, 2007 8:02 PM by Zander

Oh, and i'm also still waiting for the sixth Demon Princes book which reveals that the mastermind of the DPs was Gersen's grandfather...

Posted July 21, 2007 8:05 PM by Zander

At least HP and some of the others mentioned above are now complete.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 8:16 PM by Soon Lee

I'm not sure I'd class Dickens/Cerebus/Holmes and other serially published books in the same way as waiting for novels in a series. Monthly installments have a different "gap" wait expectation, although the longevity is as much (or more) to be admired.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 8:19 PM by Kathy Li

The years are shorter, but the waits are now long and scary, because either George or I could die before he finishes and I get to read Ice and Fire.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 8:28 PM by Avedon

I think it's important to distinguish between series of books done roman fleuve style so that they tell discrete stories and are easily identified as standalones, whereas to name one example, the Potter books are telling a big tale from start to end, broken out into plot or thematic units.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 8:30 PM by Connie H.

Clare Bell's Ratha series ... there's a new one coming out in October, and the others will be reprinted.

Posted July 21, 2007 8:58 PM by P J Evans

#39: Yes, but one of the long-standing minor mysteries in the Bliss saga is the mysterious connection between John's family and the Emersons, and there's at least a hint that MPM may address that in the upcoming book.

#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....

Posted July 21, 2007 9:04 PM by John C. Bunnell

Michael Moorcock, Between The Wars:

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 9:08 PM by Tim Walters

I'm not arguing with any of the forgoing, but I think there is a sub-text of sorts in the news article that has been missed in the thread:

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 9:10 PM by pedantic peasant

Karen at 17 makes the point I would have made. I read the first book when I was in middle school; today, I read the final book while on summer break from grad school. Those ten years held a great deal of change and growing up for me. And I'm pretty average as far as that timespan/age correspondence goes.

Posted July 21, 2007 9:23 PM by Nomie

There's the Dumarest series: 30 years between The Winds of Gath and The Return, and 12 years between the second last book in the series and the final one.

Posted July 21, 2007 9:57 PM by James Nicoll

pedantic peasant @ 51:

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 10:12 PM by Tim Walters

I'm still waiting for Greg Costikyan to finish Cups and Sorcery. Volume one was 1990...

Posted July 21, 2007 10:27 PM by Michael

Avedon: Yeah, that scares me about GRRM too. And that is a difference between that and, say, Vlad... if Brust got hit by a bus, we would cry because there wouldn't be any more Vlad. If GRRM got hit by a bus, we would cry because we'd never know how SoI&F ended.

Posted July 21, 2007 10:41 PM by Karen in Wichita

Wait, Crowley finished? Wow. I fell in love with Aegypt but when I realized how long it was going to take for all of them, I'd given up waiting and put it all out of my mind for a while. Now I can start reading at the beginning again. More than any book I can think of, Aegypt made me again feel the world as almost heart-breakingly numinous and magical.

Posted July 21, 2007 11:14 PM by Clifton Royston

Texanne @ #30:
What about series that didn't sell enough to get the end published? I want to find out what happens at the end of Doris Egan's Ivory books, dammit!!!1!

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 11:14 PM by Susan

Arrgh, and I see prices on used copies of all the earlier volumes are through the roof. I should not have been surprised, but I was.

Posted July 21, 2007 11:19 PM by Clifton Royston

Scaps @31:

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 11:23 PM by Dan Blum

John Arkansawyer (20), Dickson left copious and detailed notes and outlines, and the end of the series is known (though not to me). Dave Wixon, who was for many years Gordy's writing assistant, has been working on filling in the missing books.

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.

Posted July 21, 2007 11:41 PM by Teresa Nielsen Hayden

Steve @ 25: Me too. And my partner Joe three.

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

Posted July 21, 2007 11:46 PM by Ron Sullivan

The Last Dangerous Visions. Still waiting...

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

Posted July 22, 2007 12:36 AM by Bruce Adelsohn

I got caught by the Wheel of Time books (the first book can stand alone, but once you've started the second, you're waiting for a conclusion that may not ever show up. Especially as Jordan is apparently pretty seriously ill.

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....

Posted July 22, 2007 12:41 AM by albatross

A very minor series, but I keep hoping that Christopher Stasheff will return to his "Starship Troupers" series. (A Company of Stars, We Open on Venus, A Slight Detour.) The story is told in retrospective, so we know they made it through and character changes are expected but not happening yet. And there's at least one more book necessary to wrap it up - they've got several planets left on the tour and have to go back to Earth and deal with events there...

Posted July 22, 2007 12:46 AM by oliviacw

I generally wait for a series to finish before I read it. I don't like being stuck in the middle. There are only two series I'm stuck in the middle of: Song of Fire and Ice, and Exiles by Melanie Rawn. I got really excited when I saw a new book by Rawn almost ten years after her last one, and was disappointed it wasn't the third book in the Exiles trilogy. Then I read her author's note explaining the gap and why she wrote something new, and immediately felt like a horrible person for ever thinking "What is taking her so long?"

Posted July 22, 2007 12:57 AM by Matthew

The first volume of The Art of Computer Programming was published in 1968, and we've been waiting for volume 4 for about 35 years. Knuth now predicts that volumes 4 and 5 will be done by 2015, and he doesn't have an estimated completion date for volumes 6 and 7.

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

Posted July 22, 2007 12:59 AM by Matt Austern

PP@51 re: Duncan

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 1:06 AM by BSD

> Daniel Keys Moran reports that he
> may be getting the rights to _A.I. War_
> back [...]

> [...] 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.

Posted July 22, 2007 1:21 AM by Rebecca Borgstrom

BSD @ 68:

teratology

Subtle pun, or beautiful typo?

Posted July 22, 2007 1:41 AM by Tim Walters

Teresa @ 61

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 2:09 AM by Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers)

One "series" I'm not intending to start until it's finished is David Tod Roy's translation of the classic Chinese novel Chin P'ing Mei (English title: The Plum in the Golden Vase). The first volume (out of a projected five) in Roy's translation came out in 1993 and won immediate acclaim, then readers had to wait until 2001 for volume two. Roy stepped up the pace a little for volume 3, which came out last year.

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 2:13 AM by Rob T.

And an honorable mention to patricia Kennealy-Morrison for the Keltiad-a ton of books projected,most not written.

Posted July 22, 2007 2:18 AM by Nina Armstrong

Song of Naga Teot by Heather Gladney

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?

Posted July 22, 2007 2:21 AM by Joe Crow

I think it's the sense of there not being a definite endpoint that disqualifies many of the examples. Harry Potter, we have long-known, it seven books with a definite end. There's a strong sense of what next?

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 2:48 AM by Dave Bell

Architect of Sleep - Steven Boyett's website (http://www.steveboy.com/archetyp.html) does hold out some hope that the second and third volumes will actually be published at some point. Long story short, he submitted the second volume to Ace, Ace didn't like it, he got upset and bought back the rights, he reread it a few years ago and realized that Ace's criticisms were actually right.

Posted July 22, 2007 3:08 AM by rmb

This is what I get for being a West Coast night owl: I was all ready with The Door into Starlight and P.C. Hodgell (I re-read Seeker's Mask recently, and the introduction expresses a hope that further volumes would not suffer the long delay that one did. Ha!) and people have beat me to them.

Posted July 22, 2007 3:50 AM by David Goldfarb

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

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

Posted July 22, 2007 5:03 AM by Graham Blake

Graham Blake @#78:

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 6:16 AM by Mary Dell

Matthew, can you fill me in what the story is with Rawn and the Exiles trilogy? Because I'm waiting for the rest of that too and I hadn't heard anything.

Posted July 22, 2007 6:17 AM by Individ-ewe-al

#61: Teresa, for some reason, Kieran@34 wanted to write a paragraph which used all the words in the spelling reference.

#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.

Posted July 22, 2007 6:24 AM by JC

I can't believe nobody mentioned Auel yet.

And it's still unfinished.

Posted July 22, 2007 8:08 AM by Jasper Janssen

War against the Chtorr is back to seven books? (I seem to remember a quote by Gerrold when it had gone back from 5 to 7* which went something like "This is the longest damn trilogy I've ever written")

#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

Posted July 22, 2007 8:50 AM by Neil Willcox

#80: From Melannie Rawn's author's note at the end of Spellbinder: "To those who are disappointed this isn't another book- [snip] - what can I tell you? Life happens. So does clinical depression."

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!

Posted July 22, 2007 9:36 AM by Matthew

"Teratology" is hereby designated as the official term for a trilogy or other reasonably contained multi-book sequence that metastasizes.

Posted July 22, 2007 9:54 AM by Charlie Stross

rmb @ 76

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 10:32 AM by P J Evans

Clifton @ 57 and 59: The first three books in the AEgypt series will be republished by Overlook Press.

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 11:13 AM by Zvi

In 1933, Patrick Leigh Fermor started to walk across Europe, arriving in Constantinople in 1935. His first book about this journey, A Time of Gifts was published in 1977. The second, Between the Woods and the Water, was published in 1986. The planned third volume is still being written.

Posted July 22, 2007 11:14 AM by katie

Charnas: Holdfast Chronicles published in 1974, 1978, 1994, and 1998; perhaps not as planned as Crowley, but IIRC #3 at least was needed to deal with unresolved pieces of #2.

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 11:25 AM by CHip

Lois McMaster Bujold is still writing Vorkosigan books and I'm still waiting eagerly for them, although personally I'm also glad she took a longish break after the last one (and did other, wonderful things), because it seemed like she was getting tired of the characters.

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 1:34 PM by JoXn Costello

Teresa (#61): [confession] I wish I had your memory for prior volumes! Mine is so lousy that when I review a sequel, I usually have to go back to my review of the previous book to find out what it was like and how I felt about it -- though sometimes those dim memories refresh as I'm reading the new one.

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!

Posted July 22, 2007 2:28 PM by Faren Miller

David Goldfarb @ 77. I was going to mention those too. - although re. P.C. Hodgell, I've only got "Chronicles of the Kencyrath" (= "God Stalk" & "Dark of the Moon"); I spent years looking for a sequel then gave up - I only recently discovered the existence of "Seeker's Mask." I also read Duane's "Doors" books ages ago and join several others on this thread in waiting for "Starlight".

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 2:49 PM by dcb

dcb: you will be pleased to know that there's a fourth novel in the chronicles of the Kencryath, "To Ride a Rathorn", and a collection of interlinked shorts, "Blood and Ivory". (They're available as ebooks via Webscriptions, too.)

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 2:55 PM by Charlie Stross

JoXn 90: I believe she's said she's done with the Vorkosigan saga. A pity, because much as I like her Five Gods books, I like the Vorkosigan ones better.

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 3:25 PM by Xopher

TexAnne @ 30 -- while I'd love to have more Ivory books, the third one felt like enough of a conclusion to keep me from moonsick yearning. Unlike, say, Claudia J. Edwards' Bastard Princess series, which seems to have been chopped off after one book. Or P.C. Hodgell, who finally got her next book out -- just before her publisher closed its doors. One of the things I loved about Meisha Merlin was its ability to rescue marooned authors and their fans.

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

Posted July 22, 2007 3:27 PM by Victor S

More on incomplete series:
I want to see Kate Eliot's next Jaran novel -- things were starting to get _really_ interesting when she switched to her other series. A series I don't like nearly as well, though I think that's personal taste.

Posted July 22, 2007 3:33 PM by Victor S

Bruce Cohen (SpeakerToManagers) #71: You're not alone in that! If somebody whose ability and imagination matched Eddison's could take up that challenge I'd certainly want to see the result. Lessingham must live!

Posted July 22, 2007 3:35 PM by Fragano Ledgister

More on incomplete series:
I want to see Kate Eliot's next Jaran novel -- things were starting to get _really_ interesting when she switched to her other series. A series I don't like nearly as well, though I think that's personal taste.

Posted July 22, 2007 3:36 PM by Victor S

Oh, I loved John Crowley's Little, Big, then I read and loved Ægypt and looked forward to the next one, waited and waited and... somewhen before 1994 just forgot about the sequels and never spotted them in the bookshops to remind me. Don't know if I want to pick them up now....

Posted July 22, 2007 3:47 PM by NelC

Xopher @94: there's a contract for at least one more Vorkosigan novel, although she said at the talk at my local bookshop last month that it's a book or two back in the queue.

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...

Posted July 22, 2007 3:48 PM by Julia Jones

Oh, and Sam Delaney? Man, I sympathise, but... ooh, leaving SiMPLGoS on a cliff-hanger for 23 years? Bstrd!

Posted July 22, 2007 3:56 PM by NelC

I join in the yearning for Door into Starlight and the next Jaran novel. I'm impressed someone else remembers the Bastard Princess novel. The principal hopeless longing I haven't seen so far is Glenn Cook's next Dread Empire novel A Path to Coldness of Heart. Last time I talked to Cook he said he wouldn't write it unless someone paid him to, in advance.

Posted July 22, 2007 5:12 PM by Larry Lennhoff

Charlie Stross #85 -"Teratology" is hereby designated as the official term for a trilogy or other reasonably contained multi-book sequence that metastasizes

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

Posted July 22, 2007 5:34 PM by Neil Willcox

TexAnne @30: What about series that didn't sell enough to get the end published?

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."

Posted July 22, 2007 5:43 PM by Julie L.

dcb@92 Last I saw, Saunders is going back to the series. However, he's not restarting with book 4, he's starting with revised versions of the earlier books. Presumably he'll eventually get to book 4.

(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.)

Posted July 22, 2007 5:46 PM by Michael I

NelC 101: Oh, and Sam Delaney? Man, I sympathise, but... ooh, leaving SiMPLGoS on a cliff-hanger for 23 years? Bstrd!

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 6:19 PM by Xopher

Victor S, 95: It didn't feel at all like an ending to me. I envy you.

Posted July 22, 2007 6:42 PM by TexAnne

Charlis Stross @ 93 - THANK YOU for this information - I'd heard the sad news about Meisha Merlin, and gathered that the Hodgell books were affected (a very frustrating way to discover they existed) but hadn't realised I could get them in electronic format. Buy (done already before I started the thank you!), download (in progress as I type), copy to my Psion and I can read them when and where I want, then enjoy looking for second-hand dead-tree copies.

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

Posted July 22, 2007 6:51 PM by dcb

Gene Wolfe
Soldier of the Mist: 1986
Soldier of Arete: 1989
Soldier of Sidon: 2006

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 8:31 PM by Paul Duncanson

PS to #89: I think ML's 2nd motto should be "Mens sana in corpore sano"; every time I read it I have to go down and up the 2 flights between the computer and the library.

Posted July 22, 2007 8:53 PM by CHip

#94: Zber fb guna hfhny? V qvqa'g trg gung vzcerffvba. Naljnl, ur pbhyq or pbasvarq gb n sybng-punve sbe yvsr naq fgvyy znantr gb qb fbzrguvat vagrerfgvat, rfcrpvnyyl jvgu uvf arj, gurbergvpnyyl frqragnel wbo. Vg vfa'g uneq gb pbzcyrgr gur sbyybjvat: Areb Jbysr:Zvyrf::Nepuvr Tbbqjva:? Nal erthyne ernqre bs gur frevrf fubhyq unir gur nafjre gb gung bar (jryy, vs gurl xabj jub Jbysr naq Tbbqjva ner).

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 9:05 PM by Chris

The ultimate in painfully slow serials has to be the (utterly brilliant and beautiful) sf webcomic Dicebox: http://www.dicebox.net - the author has been working on it for about six years or so now, finishing roughly one chapter per year, and the story is supposed to be told in 36 chapters. You do the maths... (It really is a great comic, though. Of course, that only makes the wait harder.)

Posted July 22, 2007 10:28 PM by Hmpf

Paul Duncanson @ 109: That sequel would be Saint Leibowitz & the Wild Horse Woman, by Walter M Miller. Although I hadn't heard of it, having read Canticle for Leibowitz some decades back, I saw & grabbed it in in a 2nd hand book section, only to find it was published back in 2000. You could probably check if you had access to it through a library, if you were cautious of being disappointed, where you might find his other books too.

Posted July 22, 2007 11:05 PM by Epacris

Epacris @ #113:
I do know of SLatWHW and quite liked it. I was a bit pressed for time when last posting. I related that tale not as a story of ongoing disappointment but as the time when I adopted my current policy in reading series (even though Canticle and its sequel really don't fall into that category and don't suffer from missing the second part). When, after years of waiting for the sequel to one of my favourite novels, I heard that Mr Miller had killed himself with the manuscript unfinished I was more than slightly disappointed.

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.

Posted July 22, 2007 11:22 PM by Paul Duncanson

ANTAGONIST, by Dickson & Wixon, was recently published.

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

Posted July 23, 2007 12:17 AM by Bruce Arthurs

Don't know about anyone else here, but I don't think I'll be able to wait 2000 lrnef sbe Qnarry Byvinj gb or ohvyg fb gung ur pna jevgr Mrebgu Sbhaqngvba.

Posted July 23, 2007 1:43 AM by Chris Clarke

Barbara Hambly has just gotten the rights back for more in the Antryg Windrose series (Silent Tower 1986/Silicon Mage 1988/Dog Wizard 1993 plus Stranger at the Wedding 1994), but has to write and shop it around.

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.

Posted July 23, 2007 3:45 AM by A.J. Luxton

I was lucky to happen on to Dorothy Dunnett in the mid 90's so I did not have so long to wait for the end to the Lymond and Niccolo stories. Johnny Depp would be my ideal Lymond and a young Gerard Depardieu would be my ideal Niccolo.

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.

Posted July 23, 2007 4:06 AM by moe99

JoXn Costello #90 & Xopher #94:
IIRC I read somewhere that the next Vorkosigan book would be nobhg gur qrngu bs Neny but she isn't quite ready to write it.

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.

Posted July 23, 2007 4:21 AM by Soon Lee

Stephen Donaldson is still going on the Third Chronicles of Thomas Covenant.

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.

Posted July 23, 2007 5:34 AM by iain

Neil @103: the Merchant Princes books were never going to be a trilogy -- the original pitch was for a tetralogy of 200,000-250,000 word books (i.e. 600-800 page doorsteps). Then book #1 was sawn in half and became books #1 and #2. I've just handed in book #4, which puts me two thirds of the way through the second story arc of four ... your guess is as good as mine as to where it'll end up, but please don't accuse me of having planned to commit trilogy!

Posted July 23, 2007 5:50 AM by Charlie Stross

Bridge of Birds, The Story of the Stone, Eight Skilled Gentlemen and ... four more that will never be seen.

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).

Posted July 23, 2007 6:50 AM by Doug

Charlie Stross #121: Not only do you stand accused of having planned to commit trilogy, but, perhaps more seriously, you are also accused of glorifying those who commit trilogy. How do you plead?

Posted July 23, 2007 8:51 AM by ethan

Paul Duncanson @ 109: the Latro books were my first thought as well, probably because I just finished the first two a week or so ago. I have a great deal of sympathy for anyone who read them when they came out and had to sit on that cliffhanger.

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

Posted July 23, 2007 9:15 AM by Tucker

A Matter for Men — 1983
A Day for Damnation — 1985
A Rage for Revenge — 1989
A Season for Slaughter — 1993
A Method For Madness — unpublished
A Time for Treason — unpublished
A Case for Courage — unpublished

Next...
A Gazebo for Girls

Posted July 23, 2007 9:56 AM by Serge

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.

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.

Posted July 23, 2007 9:58 AM by James Nicoll

Cervantes published "La Galatea" in 1585, 20 years before the first part of "Don Quijote." Every time he put pen to paper after that, he declared his intention to write the conclusion to "La Galatea." He died in 1616, having changed the course of literature forever, but without ever finishing his first literary work.

Posted July 23, 2007 10:05 AM by JCos

Ethan @123 - It's certainly suspicious that Charlie's been strenuously denying it's a trilogy often, in public, and right from the start. Is he protesting too much?

(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.)

Posted July 23, 2007 10:32 AM by Neil Willcox

oliviacw (#65): I, too, would like to see the "Starship Troupers" books continue. It's likely due to my having done lights and tech through high school and college, I think...though most definitely without Ramou's martial arts prowess.

Posted July 23, 2007 10:53 AM by Christopher Davis

Coming soon to a Rec Deck near you - Starship Troupers!

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!

Posted July 23, 2007 11:21 AM by Dave Luckett

Oh yeah - multi-time Kirk Poland award winner Geary Gravel's Fading Worlds series. Geary talked for years about his problems with writer's block on the third book. At one point he said he had given up and just started book 4 instead, but I believe he now just thinks the series is dead. Our poor protagonists ....

Posted July 23, 2007 11:32 AM by Larry Lennhoff

I'm still hoping for a fourth "Bast" book from Rosemary Edghill. I really wanted to see the protagonist as HP of her own coven...

Posted July 23, 2007 11:37 AM by Lori Coulson

Starship Troupers? "Be a clone, be a clone, all the world loves a clone..."

Posted July 23, 2007 11:42 AM by Serge

If you're just counting books published during the author's lifetime in a multi-book series, then:

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 incl