A work forever unfinished thanks to the creator's untimely demise- it’s the worst nightmare of any writer or artist. Not only are you gone from this mortal coil, you never get to tell the full story you wanted to. Fans have to mourn both you and your unfinished story.
Looking back on it. it’s amazing how many great works of fiction were interrupted by death. And the weird reasons stories remained unfinished and the desperate attempts to finish said stories posthumously can get pretty interesting. So without further ado, let’s a take a look at those stories unfinished by their creators!
Osamu Tezuka's 'Phoenix'
Osamu Tezuka is often called the “father of manga” as his work really laid the foundations whole medium (He was also behind the second anime ever made). And man, was he ever prolific, creating over 700 comics in his lifetime. With that level of tireless production. It was no wonder death interrupted him at some point.
In fact the story goes that the nurse had to take his pens and paper away from him when he was on his deathbed with stomach cancer, as he pleaded “I’m begging you, let me work!” These were his last words.
The work he sadly did not get to finish was Phoenix, something he considered his life’s work and magnum opus. He produced the work from 1964 up until his death in 1989.
The story was about reincarnation and each of the 12 books told a self-contained story set in a different time period, spanning from the distant past to the far-flung future. Each story involved a search for the titular phoenix, whose blood could grant immortality. But the moral often was that it was folly to seek such a thing.
Odds are that Tezuka meant for all the timelines and stories to converge at the end of the manga and wrap everything up, but because of his death, we’ll never know.
Douglas Addams' 'The Hitchhicker's Guide to the Galaxy' and 'Dirk Gently'
This is a tricky one because technically the Hitchhiker's series did end- it was just an extremely cruel ending that the author later regretted and wanted to rectify. This romp through the universe was ended with most of the main characters dying in all possible timelines and Earth being destroyed. Addams later admitted he didn’t like the ending now and how depressed at the time influenced it. He often inferred he intended to write a final book that wrapped things up in a less morbid fashion. But his sudden death of a heart attack at 49 prevented that.
He was in the middle of a novel from another series, Dirk Gently (called 'A Salmon of Doubt'), when he died, as well and was considering turning that into a Hitchiker's novel.
Addams’ widow eventually commissioned Eoin Colfer to write the sixth and final Hitchhiker's book. The strongest parts of the The Salmon of Doubt drafts were collected among other material in The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time.
Shotaro Ishinimori's 'Cyborg 009'
Shotaro Ishinomori is another prolific manga artist who never finished his huge epic, Cyborg 009. Well, sort of. The story is complicated. Cyborg 009 debuted in 1964. It focused on a multinational team of nine teenagers who were kidnapped by a terrorist organization and transformed into cyborg soldiers. The terrorists' plan was for these soldiers to start the next World War. However, the soldiers all rebelled together and chose to defend the world instead.
Originally, Ishinomori planned for the manga to end in 1967. In his intended final chapter, two of the main characters died and inspired humanity towards a brighter future.
Fans were so upset by this ending however, that Ishinomori was persuaded to restart the manga and reveal the two hadn’t died after all.
Ishinimori’s second attempt at a finale for his manga didn’t go well either. In the midst of the arc he intended to conclude the series, he features two of the main characters (the lead and the only girl on the team) having sex. This angered fans a lot too for various reasons, most of which had to do with the “purity” of the characters. The experimentation Ishinomori was doing with his style didn’t make them happy either. So Ishinomori put the series on hiatus. When he restarted the manga in the 1970s, he ignored the events of his last arc.
It wasn’t until 1997 that Ishinomori took a shot at ending the series again. He intended to launch the final storyline in the year 2000 and filled 21 journals with his plans. But Ishinomori died from a heart attack in 1998. His son, Joe Onadero, attempted to write the arc based off his notes, but they were incomplete, so he admitted to reinterpreting some parts. To this day, fans argue whether the Gods War manga that finally wrapped things up in 2012 was true to Ishinomori’s intent.
Herge's 'The Adventures of Tintin'
The 24th story of Herge’s famous Tintin comic about an adventurous boy and his dog will forever be unfinished. “Tintin and the Alph Art” was still in a very rough, incomplete form when he died, ending on a cliffhanger where Tintin was going to be turned in the statue. And he stipulated in his will that all his comic be discontinued after his death- fortunately, his final story hadn’t started publication or anything, and the 23rd story didn’t end on a cliffhanger or anything, so it was an okay end to the series published run.
Geoffrey Chaucer's 'The Canterbury Tales'
The Canterbury Tales is one of those works you likely had to read in English class- it’s considered one of the greatest works in English literature and all that. It’s also probably unfinished. The work is a series of stories told by pilgrims traveling together. The collection is 24 stories long and Chaucer intended to write four stories for each of the thirty pilgrims. And they would have actually arrived in Canterbury and at their destination, St. Thomas Becket's shrine, and left. But Chaucer died and so we only have these 24 tales.
Satoshi Kon's 'Dreaming Machine'
Acclaimed film-maker Satoshi Kon, known for animated films like Perfect Blue and Paprika, died while making the film Dreaming Machine. The film was intended to be fantasy with a cast made entirely of robots.
Kon was dealing with terminal pancreatic cancer as he worked on it and told the director of the animation studio working on the film, Masao Maruyama, he was concerned it woldn’t be completed. Maruyama promised him the film would be completed no matter what. Maruyama said the studio would finish the film after Kon’s death in 2010.
However, it still has yet to be completed. In 2015 Maruyama said the challenge was finding a director for the film comparable to Kon.
Charles Dickens 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'
The Mystery of Edwin Drood was published by Charles Dickens in serial form. It was a mystery revolving around the disappearance of the eponymous Drood. Dickens died when only six of the twelve installments had been published, leaving the audience hanging. But it’s actually known who the murderer was, since Dickens told people close to him. Dickens' friend John Forster even published a synopsis of the intended conclusion.
Despite this, there have been several people who finished the story with their own ending that does not agree with the version Forster presented. The story was adapted into a musical in 1985 and rather having an original ending or the alleged intended ending, the play would end with the cast polling the audience on who the killer was. Whatever the audience decided, that’s how the play would end.
Robert Jordan's 'The Wheel of Time
Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series is a sprawling fantasy epic where the universe is threatened by a being known as the Dark One. Jordan was diagnosed with a rare blood disorder and died from it when he was halfway through writing the 12th book. Before discovering his illness, Jordan had always joked that he wanted his notes destroyed if he died before finishing the series But when he did get sick, he was convinced to go back on that statement.
He made detailed notes about what he intended for the conclusion so someone else could finish it. His widow chose Brandon Sanderson for it. Sanderson found that Jordan had left SO much material behind, however, that the twelfth book needed to be turned into three books. All three of those were published, and the series was concluded
Virgil's 'The Aeneid'
The Roman poet’s Virgil ancient epic poem dealing with the aftermath of the Trojan War is actually a little unedited- Virgil died before he could finish polishing it. He also ordered it to be burned if he died, but a literate slave read the work, realized it was good, and saved it from that fate.
Diana Wynne Jones 'Islands of Chaldea'
Diana Wynne Jones died of lung cancer before completing her book Islands of Chaldea. It was completed by her sister Ursula Jones and generally well received.
Supposedly she also died before completing the fourth book of her Wizard’s Castle series. The Wizard’s Castle series is best known for its first installment, Howl’s Moving Castle, where a sensible young woman named Sophie falls victim to a curse and then meets a man in a moving castle, since that was adapted into a successful animated movie by Hayao Miyazaki. All the books in the Wizard's Castle series feature separate protagonists and stories, so no one was left hanging when the fourth book, but it’s still sad.