10 Science Fiction & Fantasy Books That Were Almost Never Published

Starseed Signals, by Robert Anton Wilson
Wilson, perhaps the most famous saint of Discordianism, was one of those writers whose work should be viewed as an aggressive attempt to change your mind—literally. Famed for the Illuminatus! trilogy co-written with Robert Shea (the two were editors at Playboy together), Wilson often described the 1970s as a decade he lost to drug use (working with Timothy Leary, he famously thought he was communicating with aliens for several years). He recovered in the 1980s to earn a Ph.D. in psychology (so he’s Dr. Wilson to you). During that lost period, he wrote Starseed Signals, a lengthy manuscript he later mined for material in other published works. Recently, RVP publishers announced they will finally be publishing the book in 2017, a mere 42 years after it was written—and then cannibalized by its author. No word on whether the book is readable, or just one lengthy fnord.

The Dark Tower, by C.S. Lewis
You may be aware of C.S. Lewis’ other SFF book series, the so-called Space Trilogy. You may not be aware that Lewis began a sequel to the first novel in the series, Out of the Silent Planet, in the late 1930s and early 1940s. He later abandoned the manuscript, and upon Lewis’ death, he requested his unpublished works be burned. Lewis’ secretary and literary executor Walter Hooper literally came upon a bunch of Lewis’ works being torched in a bonfire, and plucked a few from the flames—among them a portion of The Dark Tower, which he managed to publish in 1977. The authenticity of the book has been questioned, however, with scholars claiming that analysis of the text shows it was not written by Lewis at all. Give it at read, and see what you think.

For Us the Living, by Robert Heinlein
The first novel written by Heinlein, For Us the Living contains many of the themes, and even the characters, that populate his more mature work. However, Heinlein being Heinlein, the book was considered unpublishable in 1939 because of its racy themes, including free love and political ideas that would have made publishers sweat. Heinlein put the book aside and eventually destroyed the manuscript pages he had. A single copy remained hidden in a box in a garage, and was discovered and published in 2003 despite the clear intention of its author that it be forgotten by history.

Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, by Walter M. Miller
Miller’s classic A Canticle for Leibowitz was his debut novel. It won the Hugo Award and got a lot of love from mainstream critics—unusual for a SFF book in 1959 (and 2016, sigh). Miller never published another book during his lifetime; he worked on the sequel, Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman, for the rest of his life. In 1996, Miller decided he just didn’t have it in him to finish, so he hired Terry Bisson to polish it off—and then committed suicide. Despite the rather grim circumstances, Bisson managed to put the finishing touches on the manuscript, and the book was finally released in 1997, nearly forty years after the first.

A Memory of Light, by Robert Jordan & Brandon Sanderson
Robert Jordan had no trouble writing; he wrote eleven Wheel of Time books between 1984 and 2007, each more than 800 pages long. When he was diagnosed with cardiac amyloidosis in 2006, he was outlining what he intended to be the twelfth and final book in the series, but he died the next year, having left copious notes for another author to pick up. That other author, of course, turned out to be Brandon Sanderson, who took those notes and turned them into the final three books of the series (Jordan was nothing if not optimistic), to much acclaim.

Beren and Luthien, by J. R. R. Tolkien, Christopher Tolkien, and Alan Lee
Originally written in 1916, the story of the mortal Beren and his love for the immortal Lúthien that drove them to plot to steal a Silmaril from Morgoth is considered one of the fundamental myths of the Lord of the Rings universe. Tolkien re-worked the basic tale several times, retelling it in the main trilogy and attempting an epic poem version as well. A hundred years later, Christopher Tolkien published the definitive version, showing the evolution of the story as his father revised it over the years to fit into what was becoming the dominant narrative of Middle Earth.

The Book of Merlyn, by T.H. White
The Once and Future King is a classic retelling of the Arthurian legend, formed from four separate works White wrote and revised between 1938 and 1958. He wrote a fifth part, The Book of Merlyn, in 1941 and tried to get the book published with it, but wartime paper shortages made it impossible. Still working to weave anti-war themes into the story, White deleted Merlyn and used some of the material throughout the rest of the book, ending up with the modern version we’re all familiar with. White died in 1964, and when his personal papers went up for auction in 1975, the complete manuscript of this missing part was rediscovered. It was published in 1977, 36 years after World War II denied it to the world.

The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov
Bulgakov’s classic satirical fantasy was written during a period of intense oppression, censorship, and violence in the Soviet Union. Considering the book focuses on Satan, and the U.S.S.R. was at the time virulently atheist as a matter of policy, the book itself was a risk, and Bulgakov burned the original version in 1930 in despair. He rewrote it a year later, however, and revised it four times before he died in 1940, leaving some minor issues. It was published in 1966 in a heavily censored and edited form, and didn’t legitimately arrive in its complete form until 1973.

Micro, by Michael Crichton
Crichton was a prolific and fast writer, and when he passed away in 2008, two nearly-complete novels were discovered on his laptop. Mirco, completed by Richard Preston, is a classic Crichton story about a company that develops the technology to shrink people and objects. When an executive protests the possible uses of the technology, he goes missing—and when his brother arrives with others to investigate, they’re shrunk and left to die in a rain forest. It’s fitting that technology means that not even mortality could stop Michael Crichton from publishing.

The Third Policeman, by Flann O’Brien
O’Brien wrote this one in 1940 as his follow-up to At Swim-Two-Birds, but his publisher didn’t like it; O’Brien gave up trying to publish it after a few more rejections. He placed the manuscript on the sideboard of his dining room, where it remained for 26 years, collecting dust. He told people that he’d put it in the trunk of his car, which popped open, allowing the pages to flutter away as he drove. Why O’Brien lied about the fate of this book is unknown; regardless, it was published in 1967, a year after O’Brien’s death.
Do you know of any other SFF books that barely made it into the world?