They become the face of the short lived grunge movement

A fandom's worst nightmare.

Sometimes editors go bankrupt, and sometimes authors die. Even more worrisome is when they do so before completing a series, leaving it orphaned. If readers are lucky, the author had enough warning or foresight to keep notes on his plans for the rest of the series or at least fill someone else in on the most relevant plot points, so that their work can be continued by someone else. This may result in the series Jumping The Shark if the replacement isn't very good, but at least you have closure. Worse would be if the series just isn't popular enough to justify a Continuation.In that case, you end up with continuation.

Well, we don't sound like Madonna Here we are now, we're Nirvana Sing distinctly? We don't wanna Buy our album, we're Nirvana A garage band from Seattle Well it sure beats raisin' cattle Yeah!