Robert Asprin

[Stan Sakai]

I just got the news that Robert Asprin, who wrote the introduction to UY Book 3, passed away Thursday at age 61. He was best known as the author of the Myth Adventures series of novels and comics.

I used to see Bob at a lot of conventions, that is how we developed a friendship. However, I had not seen him in quite awhile.

Here is a link:
http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory ... 897&cat=14

[Steve Hubbell]

Sad news.

I use to read the "Thieves World" series of short story anthologies he edited (and contributed to) along with Lynn Abbey, which ran initially for twelve volumes.

That series was a pioneer in the shared-world field of fantasy and science fiction liturature, where the contributing authors all write stories set in the same fantasy setting (the city of Sanctuary in the case of this series) and are free to use the other contributor's characters, as long as they did not kill them off. (Actually, one contributor killed off one of his own characters and another author wrote another story which brought the character back from the dead, effectively stealing the character)

Of course, this was well before all the books based on the Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms games started coming out.

Anyways, I will always remember Robert Asprin for his significant role in creating this fantastic series of stories.

[cynlee]

Robert Asprin.



HE was the reason I attended my FIRST San Diego Comic-Con-- only to find out he'd had to cancel because his father had had a heart attack.

So I ended up meeting Stan, and Joshua Quagmire, and Larry Marder, and so on....

But he came there the next year, and I got to speak with him directly with NO crowd of people around I THINK before a panel he was going to be on (and after another panel he'd been on)-- and we got to speak of the Myth Books as well as personal "dad" stuff.

I bought the first Myth book as Christmas presents for two friends. I remember finding them in paper back way back in the 70s and thinking that my one friend who had introed me to D&D would LOVE it... and my other friend who shared a love of puns ("Another Fine Myth") would also love it... and the more I read the synops and a few pages, the more I realized that I needed this book, too, and so bought three copies.

And I was right, we all loved it. I told him that my favorite to date (at that time-- and looking back, it still is) is "Myth Directions", where Tanda steals the Trophy and they have to play this weird ball game. They meet Maasha for the first time.

This is so sad.