Short Stories and poems

A Rant about Dead Authors and their Books Rated E

A couple of days ago I finished reading a set of books called "Dragons Wild" and "Dragons Luck" which are by Robert Asprin. They are about a young college graduate and his sister who discover that they are almost pure-blooded dragons, and that they are targeted by others who fear a prophacy of sorts about how a pureblood would change things forever. The two of them go to New Orleans, the French Quarter speciffically, and get caught up in a bunch of stuff. Of course the way that the second book ends tells me that it's begging for a third in the series, but there's a problem, Robert Asprin died after "Dragons Luck" was published. That puts a hamper on things.

Another similar situation is with the "Dragon Knight" series by Gordon R. Dickson. The series is about a guy from our world and time who is somehow transported to a midivile-like world whille searching for his future wife and ends up trapped in the body of a dragon. Thankfully he manages to get his own body back and rescues the woman of his dreams, but he remains in that world and ends up going on a whole host of adventures. I've read all but maybe two of the books, but there's a problem, the guy died right in the middle of writing the next one in the series.

Now, I understand that death is a natural part of life, and nothing can change that, but it is annoying to find out that the reason that there isn't a next one in the series is because the person is dead. After all, I wanted to know what was going to happen to the characters in the books, like what would happen to the children that they have and so forth.

Now, there are a few ways to handle that problem. For instance, Anne McCaffrey, the writer of the "Dragonriders of Pern" series has writen the series for over thirty years now. However, the most recent books have been either co-authored or fully writen by her son Todd McCaffrey. Thus even when Anne dies there could be future ones in the series, those writen by Todd. Another way to deal with that situation would be to have multiple writers write out the stories, like with the WarCraft and StarCraft books, as well as a few others. A third way would be a variation of the first, but instead of passing the pen to one's son or daughter, to pass it to a person who knows the whole series by heart, and who writes along a similar line of thought.

After all, a good series shouldn't die just because the original author does.