Robert Asprin
Robert Asprin was an American author born in 1946 in St. John's, Michigan. He briefly attended the University of Michigan before serving in the U.S. Army, after which he worked in various accounting roles. Asprin began his writing career with the publication of his first novel, "The Cold Cash War," in 1977, which allowed him to transition to full-time writing. While he started with science fiction, he gained significant recognition in the fantasy genre, particularly with his humorous "Myth" series, known for its pun-laden titles and lighthearted take on fantasy tropes. Asprin also co-created the "Thieves' World" series, which blended sword-and-sorcery themes and featured contributions from multiple authors, helping to launch new careers within the genre. The success of "Thieves' World" led to various adaptations, including graphic novels and games, and influenced subsequent fantasy writing trends, such as Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Sword and Sorceress" anthologies. Asprin's work is characterized by its playful approach to fantasy and its impact on the genre as a whole.
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Robert Asprin
- Born: June 28, 1946
- Birthplace: St. John's, Michigan
- Died: May 22, 2008
- Place of death: New Orleans, Louisiana
Biography
Robert Asprin was born in St. John’s, Michigan, in 1946. He attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor for one year before interrupting his education to serve in the U.S. Army. After returning to civilian life in 1966, he held various jobs, including accounts clerk, payroll analyst, and costs accountants for University Microfilms in Ann Arbor, a company that provides copies of microfilmed dissertations and other academic documents for university libraries throughout the United States. He also married Ann Brett, with whom he had a daughter and a son.
Asprin sold his first novel, The Cold Cash War, in 1977, and by the next year he had amassed enough contracts to quit his day jobs and become a full-time writer. Although most of his early works were science fiction, he ended up attaining far more success in the related field of fantasy, particularly with his Myth series. Each of the novels in this series has a title that puns in some way on the word “myth,” thus playing upon the fondness for puns in the fan community. The novels themselves are humorous fantasy that take place in a world loosely based upon the Arabian Nights rather than more typical Tolkien-derived European fantasy, but nothing in them is taken seriously, from the djinn to the fire-breathing dragons.
After establishing his reputation so solidly, Asprin then became one of the founders of the Thieves’ World series. It drew upon the familiar motifs and themes of sword-and-sorcery in the vein of Robert Howard’s Conan stories, creating a vaguely barbarian world that could be the setting for a wide variety of stories by a number of authors. Although the first few Thieves’ World anthologies were populated primarily by well-known authors, it also became the launching pad for several new writers’ careers.
The Thieves’ World series became so popular that it spun off several independent novels, as well as graphic novels, games and other merchandise. For instance, Marion Zimmer Bradley originally created her mysterious mage Lythande for the Thieves’ World anthologies, but subsequently took her off on adventures totally unrelated to the established milleu of Sanctuary, and collected them into a volume that was published without any Thieves’ World connections. The success of Thieves’ World also may have played a part in Bradley’s decision to create the long-running Sword and Sorceress series of anthologies, in which women became more than merely “bad-conduct prizes” for male protagonists.