One Hit wonders - or Vanished Authors

[K.V.C]

I asked this over on another forum and got some good books to read, so I thought I'd try it here.

What is you favorite one hit wonder book? What I mean is a book or trilogy, and then the author disappeared.

My favorite is the Paratwa Trilogy by Christopher Hinz. Other that that trilogy, he released a short story collection, then nothing.

Liege Killer, the first book is clearly the best of the three, and one of my all time favorite books. After I read it, I searched for years to find the second and third books, but they turned out to be disappointing when compared with the first novel.

[Mulch]

My immediate answer is John Steakley.
He has only 2 novels.

Armor (which was recommended a few times in the "one sci-fi book" thread)
&
Vampire$

So very sadly, that's it for him.
He started a sequel to Armor but it's unfinished.
He also wrote a script called Warewolve$. Which I believe to be the way Vampire$ should have been done instead of the John Carpenter's Vampires disaster.

Anyway, if you haven't checked them out, they are awesome.

[Christian]

I'll place a vote for Thomas Cool (yes, that's really his name).

Secret Realms
Infectress

Both excellent reads!

[PixelFish]

I was enjoying the graphic novel Snowblind/Hepcats....but Martin Wagner never finished it. Or at least, I never saw the second half go through Antartic Press. Wagner left the comics industry and hasn't produced any graphics novels since.

And she's not precisely a vanished author but I kinda wish Melanie Rawn could finish her Captal's Tower book.


On the other hand, I'm much less likely to be as harsh or judgemental as I used to be over projects and books that went AWOL. But that's because I know a lot more about the Real Lives of Authors now. (Well, that, and I'm a bit older and have had the fun of running up against a huge creative block.) I think the internet has been good in that respect...letting fans know what's up.

[Domini]

No one-hit-wonders come immediately to mind, but like PixelFish brought up, some waiting-for-the-next-ice-age-to-come authors are around. They have really good books, but take years or decades to put the next one out.

Melanie Rawn is one; she has a few unfinished series hanging out. Eons between books. Joan D. Vinge is another--no hanging series, but she's really freakin' good and I wish she would write more.

I guess Joanne Bertin, who wrote The Last Dragonlord fell off the face of the planet. But judging from the last update on her site, in 2005, she was having some major events in her personal life--an extremely hard pregnancy, her mother dying, and more. So I'm not sure if she's considered a 1 hit wonder or not, considering her series is hanging unfinished due to totally understandable circumstances.

[Zalandris]

Ariel by Steven Boyett. A fun book I read back in high school about a young man and his unicorn wandering around a post-technology USA.

Here is a good review of the book.

http://www.lostbooks.org/reviews/2002-06-28-1.html

Sadly it is out of print now.

[ScottM]

I liked The Interior Life by Katherine Blake, which on googling I see was a pen name for an author who published other things. So maybe there's more interesting stuff for me to find now that I've found out her secret.

[Lauren]

Claudia J. Edwards wrote some midlist fantasy with romance aspects that I loved as comfort food. (_Taming the Forest King_, _A Horsewoman in Godsland_, _Bright and Shining Tiger_) The last book of hers that I found was obviously the first of a series (_Eldrie The Healer_) . But, nothing more.

[Random Michelle]

Michaela Roessner's books "The Stars Dispose" and "The Stars Compel" should have had a third book. But they don't, and I haven't found anything anywhere about a third book. Which is too bad, because I really like those books.

One of my top ten favorite books is "The Hounds of the Morrigan" by Pat O'Shea. I have not been able to find anything about Pat O'Shea, and whether he/she ever wrote another book. Which is too really too bad.

As far as comics, I've been waiting for another Todd Livingston, Robert Tinnell, and Neil Vokes entry into the Black Forest series.

[CJH_esper]

There are a handful from which to choose, but my own favorite remains Emergence by David R. Palmer, which was utterly delightful on first reading and remains so almost twenty years later. Within a year, Palmer's second novel had been published: Threshold, touted as the first installment in a slightly tongue-in-cheek space opera, with the promise of a sequel* due out Really Soon Now. Then... nada, nichts, nichevo; as far as I can tell, not another book or story or word of fiction.

Damn, that still hurts.


* One can even find tantalizing references to the DRP Book That Never Was on assorted SF author bio sites.

[K.V.C]

Mulch - I loved Vampire$, disliked the movie. I think I started Armor, but never got through it. Have to see if the library has it.

Christian - I have to look for Infectress. I've got Secret Realms. Good book.

Domini - I think I read that Last Dragonlord, but I guess I didn't like it enough to buy.

Thanks to all. I now have some books to look around for.

[Matthew Kane]

The Deepest Sea - Charles Barnitz. I love this book, it's a really beautiful story and I'd assuredly have bought it if I could have when I first ran across it. Instead I read the library copy into a pulpy mass and then missed it for years before finding two copies completely at random in the second-hand bookshop I frequent. (the same one i got my copy of OMW from actually. don't tell john.)

[Randy]

Does "To Kill A Mockingbird" count?

[LawrenceSchimel]

Ariel by Steven Boyett. A fun book I read back in high school about a young man and his unicorn wandering around a post-technology USA.

Here is a good review of the book.

http://www.lostbooks.org/reviews/2002-06-28-1.html

Sadly it is out of print now.

Boyett actually published a second novel, THE ARCHITECHTS OF SLEEP, an alternate fantasy featuring racoons instead of primates as the evolutionary dominant species. Which was book 1 and with a cliffhanger ending but never had the follow-ups published.

[LawrenceSchimel]

Jane Emerson who published CITY OF DIAMOND, a really great, very tight, 600-page space opera with lot sof intrigue, politics, religion, romance, etc. and which turns out to all be almost the prequel for what was supposed to be revealed in the sequel, CITY OF OPAL, that never was published.

Emerson had published three delightful science-fantasy novels under the name Doris Egan, but has now gone off to write television, which is our loss as readers hoping for the rest of the so-promising Emerson series.

[scalzi]

I'm a big fan of Ariel by Boyett, but my favorite "One Hit Wonder" would be Barry Hughart, who wrote the wonderful Bridge of Birds. There are actually two sequels, but they are hard to find. He hasn't written anything new in at least a decade, as far as I know.

[Rarewolf]

This thread made me look up a book I read once about 15 years ago. It made a huge impression on me at the time and I still think about the story, but for the life of me I couldn't remember the name. After searching through some lists of "survival-fiction," I came up with it:

Earth Abides by George R. Stewart. Highly recommended.

-Aaron

[Hieronymus]

The ultimate One Hit Wonder would have to be Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird. Great book.

Second would probably be A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Absolutely one of the funniest novels of all time and just shows to go you that the publishing industry can be pretty whacked, as it got turned down by everyone, Toole committed suicide, his mom kept trying to get the book published, it was published finally to great acclaim and the Pulitzer Prize.

Or are those too obvious?

[oldsma]

I love [i]White Wing[i] by Gordon Kendall, but I'm not sure if that counts or not, since Kendall was really Shariann Lewitt and Susan Shwartz. Either way, it's worth finding if you can. (It looks like Amazon has 14 copies available today.)

MAO

[DPoem]

I think I'd have to pick J.D. Salinger. But, that's probably one that is way too easy, huh?

[iamza]

Mona Clee, who wrote Branch Point and Overshoot, and then, alas, stopped writing.

[Arachne Jericho]

Susanna Clarke's Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which is one of my favorite fantasy books ever. And yeah, I'm a crazy person who also likes Crowley's Little, Big.

She has a collection of short stories, The Ladies of Grace Adieu: And Other Stories, which I also like quite a bit, but she hasn't been heard from since.

[Kristy]

Caleb Carr needs to write more in his Alienist series. (If two books can be counted as a series.) The Alienist is the only book I read for a class that I loved enough to keep and go buy the sequel. It's absoluately fantastic, and I'm not usually into mystery. And since The Angel of Darkness was written from a different character's point of view, I was hoping for more, each with a different character.

Actually, Caleb Carr just need to write more fiction, period.

[ellenw]

Elizabeth Marie Pope, who wrote two wonderful young adult historical fantasies (The Perilous Gard and The Sherwood Ring), and then had the nerve to die before producing anything else.

[Jim Wright]

Emergence, David R. Palmer. Emergence is a post-apocalypse story, told by a post-human child in shorthand - and it is terrific. First published in 1985, reprinted in 1986, and a special edition in 1990. Palmer was nominated for the Hugo, the Nebula, a pair of Locus awards and the Philip K. Dick award. He won the Compton Crook award.

Palmer's second novel, Threshold, which was supposed to the be the first book in a trilogy, dropped into the ocean without a splash and was never seen again.

Palmer quit the writing gig and disappeared, which is a utter damned shame.

[ship]

"Replay" by Ken Grimwood. He wrote a few other books but they all bombed from what I've read. "Replay" is one of the best books I have ever read.

[SESchend]

My vote for One Hit Wonders/Vanished Authors is John Myers Myers. While I realized later that he has a bit of published material from the 40s through the 70s, his only major work that's still in print/remembered is SILVERLOCK (which is a marvelous read).

More at http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=J ... ers&gwp=13

In the "It's Truly Sad We Won't Get More Work From This Author" column, I'd place far too many pulp authors like Henry Kuttner or C.L. Moore.

Steven Schend

[cathy]

Within the genre, David Palmer (Emergence) and Barry Hughart (Bridge of Birds, Eight Skilled Gentleman, Story of the Stone) would be my choices.

Outside the genre, my choice would be Edgar Lee Masters (Spoon River Anthology).

[DaveRobinson]

Definitely David Palmer, I read Emergence and Threshold and have waited for the sequel for a very long time. I'm also waiting for Alexei Panshin's fourth Anthony Villiers book. I read the first three about thirty years ago and want to know what happened next.

Then, and now my pulp roots are showing, (though unfortunately we know exactly what happened to the author of this one-- he died) I also would have loved to read the sequel to Children of the Lens. It's been a very long time since I prepared my mind for contact.

[Tor]

My vote is for Monument, by Ian Graham. Although apparently, there is a prequal in the works, which is awesome news. Here's what speculative Horizons had to say: "Written by first-time author, Ian Graham, it followed the story of a man called Ballas. Most protagonists in fantasy novels are good-looking, courageous and honourable. Ballas wasn't. He was a bastard. He was big, ugly and overly fond of his drink. When a priest saved him from a beating, Ballas stole from him. In short, he was one of the most repulsive anti-heroes you'll ever meet. And this is what made the novel so great. Well, that and Graham's wonderfully visceral prose and the bleak world he created." http://speculativehorizons.blogspot.com ... turns.html

I have been waiting for another book by Graham since I read Monument. With luck, Graham will no longer be a one hit wonder...

Tor

[Major Major]

Definitely David Palmer, I read Emergence and Threshold and have waited for the sequel for a very long time.

My understanding is that the publisher received the sequel to Threshold, saw it was more of the same, and bounced it, whereupon Palmer gave up.

The first part of Emergence was all right, but as it went on the protagonist became just too much.

I'm also waiting for Alexei Panshin's fourth Anthony Villiers book. I read the first three about thirty years ago and want to know what happened next.

For various reasons I don't want to go into, I don't think that's very likely. If you could set up a decent publishing deal, that might be another matter, but the Panshin of the ohs is not the Panshin of the sixties. Continuing a series after a very long hiatus usually does not go over well.

Then, and now my pulp roots are showing, (though unfortunately we know exactly what happened to the author of this one-- he died) I also would have loved to read the sequel to Children of the Lens. It's been a very long time since I prepared my mind for contact.

Smith had an idea for a sequel, but never wrote it down.

There was a story set in the Lensman universe involving mining on the moon that was published at about the time of Smith's death. Then, there are the novels by David A. Kyle.

[ora]

An odd note, Alfred Bester, who I think of as a near deity in SF writing at his height, wrote his first two novels and a few short stories in the 40s/50s then stopped and edited a magazine for 20 years, coming back for a few not nearly so good novels later. I wonder, do we always want anothert book even if its not going to have the magic that got us interested.

I would argue that Joseph Heller is a bit the same, the wonder of catch 22 then not much else of quality. Closing Time, the sequel, didn't seem to excite so many people, certainly not like catch 22.

[oldsma]

Definitely David Palmer, I read Emergence and Threshold and have waited for the sequel for a very long time.

My understanding is that the publisher received the sequel to Threshold, saw it was more of the same, and bounced it, whereupon Palmer gave up.

The first part of Emergence was all right, but as it went on the protagonist became just too much.

I think that perhaps the torch was taken up by Joss Whedon.

[oldsma]

I would like to have seen more SFF from Wilmar Shiras. Children of the Atom really sticks with me. As a bonus, Ursula K. LeGuin's intro to the edition I have provides one of my favorite quotes: "An intellectual always lives as a spy in enemy country."

[phearlez]

Boyett actually published a second novel, THE ARCHITECHTS OF SLEEP, an alternate fantasy featuring racoons instead of primates as the evolutionary dominant species. Which was book 1 and with a cliffhanger ending but never had the follow-ups published.

He seems to have taken down the detailed account, but he portrayed the failure of its sequels to appear as the result of an argument between himself and the publisher over book organization and pacing. They wanted more immediate ooom-pah-pah, he had an entirely different organization planned. End result: novel in the closet.

A poster on P Hayden's website last year claimed he'd had a change of heart on their criticisms after buying the rights back and would eventually publish, but there's no indication of that anywhere else I can see. Boyett's website does, however, claim a sequel to Ariel is imminent.

[phearlez]

For me it's John Cramer. No mystery where he is: Teaching at Washington U. I can only assume his books were less well loved by the world than they were me. Einstein's Bridge was good, though I preferred Twistor.

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/novels.html

[Wyzeguy]

My vote for One Hit Wonders/Vanished Authors is John Myers Myers. While I realized later that he has a bit of published material from the 40s through the 70s, his only major work that's still in print/remembered is SILVERLOCK (which is a marvelous read).
Steven Schend

Ooh, I haven't read that for years (probably decades). That was a really fun book.

[CJH_esper]

Palmer quit the writing gig and disappeared, which is a utter damned shame.

I haven't revisited this in a while, but it appears that Mr. Palmer has re-surfaced with a sequel to Emergence. Tracking is scheduled to be serialized in Analog beginning with the July/August double issue, according to a number of sources.
http://www.eyrie.org/~eagle/journal/2008-07/007.html

Maybe he heard you. Us. Whatever!

[KJToo]

I'm a big fan of Ariel by Boyett, but my favorite "One Hit Wonder" would be Barry Hughart, who wrote the wonderful Bridge of Birds. There are actually two sequels, but they are hard to find. He hasn't written anything new in at least a decade, as far as I know.

Oh, man. I wonder if I've still got The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox omnibus in my library somewhere; it contains all three of Hughart's Master Li stories (Bridge of Birds, The Story of Stone and Eight Skilled Gentlemen). I may have gotten it during one of my dalliances with The SciFi Book Club back in the early 1990's. I'm almost positive it's not in any of my Ohio book boxes, which means it's probably at my parents' place in Michigan. I hope I didn't sell it.

Must...find..book.

[Phil]

I *loved* The Ultimate Rush by Joe Quirk. It had hacking, a bike courier that used roller-blades in SF (Watermelon Hill FTW!), the Mob, insider trading, a bass-playing punk girl, and a boxer (the dog) dyed electric blue. The snappy dialog and the wry first person narrative didn't hurt either.

Ooo! I just went to his home page. Turns out he's been writing some self-described "smart ass science" books. I like the title of his second non-fiction book Tools Are From Men, Talk Is From Women; Why Your Partner’s Brain is Weird. It also looks like he's (finally) got another fiction book coming out about hang gliders with some tie-in to the myth of Icarus.

Here's a link to an excerpt from his 1st non-fiction, It's Not You, It's Biology. The Chapter is titled Female Promiscuity Controls The Size Of Your Testicles (how can you go wrong with a chapter like that?) I was going to quote a paragraph, but I couldn't settle on one. Go read it. I'm gonna go order the book, myself.