RIP: Robert Lynn Asprin

Robert Lynn Asprin
28 Jun 1946 – 22 May 2008

ZUI this article from TransWorld News:

Author Robert Asprin died in his New Orleans home on Thursday at the age of 61. No cause of death has been announced.

“Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He has been in good spirits and working on several projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very week,” said his family in a statement.

This post from the Quotulatiousness blog gives further details.

This article from Wikipedia has a bit more background material:

Robert Asprin was born in St. Johns, Michigan, and attended the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, Michigan from 1964 through 1965. From 1965 through 1966 he served in the United States Army. He was active in the early years of the Society for Creative Anachronism under the name "Yang the Nauseating" and co-founded the Great Dark Horde in 1971.

Asprin's first novel, The Cold Cash War, an expansion of an earlier short story of the same title, was published in 1977.

Over the next few years, he created and edited (with his then-wife, Lynn Abbey) the Thieves' World series of shared world anthologies, perhaps one of the first projects of its type.

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Also in 1979, Asprin began to chronicle the comic adventures of Skeeve and Aahz in the "MythAdventures" series. Originally illustrated by Frank Kelly Freas, and later by Phil Foglio, the highly pun-driven books follow a "demon" magician who has lost his powers and his inexperienced human apprentice as they travel through a variety of worlds in pursuit of wealth and glory. Some of the early "Myth" novels were later adapted as comic books by Foglio and others.

The Asprin bibliography at Fantastic Fiction lists over fifty books, including 12 Thieves' World books and 18 (not including omnibus editions) in the MythAdventures series.