Baywolfe wrote:

That doesn't necessarily destroy all the data on the disk.

Is pissing on parades your thing all of a sudden?

Hey, the dude had OldTimers Syndrome but he was original even after the end.  Creators must be creative.

Besides, that was one fine looking steamroller.

Emmeran wrote:

Besides, that was one fine looking steamroller.

You guys are starting this up again?

GooberMcNutly wrote:

So, hypothetical ethical question: If you had the skills and the tools and someone offered you money in order to recover the contents of the crushed hard drive, would you do it in the name of Literature or would you tell them to sod off and respect an old cranks wishes?

As an old crank myself, I'd obey his wishes.  Besides, every author has a drawer, bin, filing cabinet, hard drive, etc. full of crap that they never wanted to see the light of day.  The results are almost universally horrible if they do get published, especially if they've been edited/finished by "the unknown hack writer that wants to be that person or at least have their fame".

GooberMcNutly wrote:

So let's say some archaeologist uncovers Walt Whitman's privy and down near the bottom is a leather bound notebook with his name on the front. Who would resist opening it?

You changed the parameters.  In the first, you are directed to destroy the unpublished works, would you?  Now we're saying if we find an unpublished work years, decades, centuries from now would we read it?  Of course we would fucking read it.  If he left any instructions to "burn that damn leather bound notebook with my name of it" he didn't send them to me.

And, since I didn't know about Terry Pratchett's final wish for his unpublished novels, if somebody sent me a pdf or text file, I would have read them too.  Now, alas, I would feel bound to honor his wishes and delete the file.

Oh, that's different.  But my assertion still holds, anything is fair game to be read unless the author made their wishes known otherwise.  I probably wouldn't pay for it though, especially if this was the family trying to cash in.  I can't remember one "unpublished novel" that was worth a shit (no pun intended).