M.Y.T.H.-Interpretations: The Worlds of Robert Asprin

Introduction: Robert Lynn Asprin’s short works

Robert Lynn Asprin mostly preferred to write novels, short ones on occasion, but novels. These let him have more fun with his unique characters and writing with Bob was fun. In his career of almost three decades he produced just enough short stories to fill this one collection. That is in one way very surprising since he and Lynn Abbey basically changed the nature of short story anthologies forever by creating and editing the first shared world anthology, Thieves World.

We have collected here all he wrote, excepting a few of his Thieves World stories. We will leave it to you to go get all of the excellent TW nthologies if you missed them. Among those here are a few unpublished stories we terally found in boxes after we lost Bob. As an added treat we have included here a few other treats that you may find fascinating.

The book begins with a copy of the proposal that Bob used to sell to Starblaze Publishing the Myth-Adventures book series. This is followed by several stories he wrote in that pun-filled universe and two Bob cowrote with his longtime friend and collaborator, Jody Lynn Nye. Next you will find an unpublished story, stories from other anthologies Bob wrote for, then the script from the fandom-notorious slide show The Capture, generously illustrated with four new cartoons from his longtime collaborator Phil Foglio, and then another fun script, The Ultimate Weapon.

“The Saga of the Dark Horde” will give you insight into Bob as one of the founders of the Society for Creative Anachronism’s most infamous groups. If you can be any type from the Middle Ages, why be a knight, when you can be a Mongol? As Yang the Nauseating, Bob was the Dark Horde’s Great Kahn for many Tullamore Dew — filled years. It is hard to forget his smile as he lead a swarm of highly armed members of the “loyal opposition” into a room full of elegantly garbed recreationists and bowed elegantly to the kings and queens of the SCA. He then loudly pronounced his infamous greeting of “With All Due Disrespect Your Majesties.”

The book almost ends with Bob’s first serious novella, written while he was being mentored by the great Gordon Dickson, Cold Cash War. This dark story featuring world corporations gone bad still rings amazingly true thirty-five years later. This is the novella as it originally appeared in the August 1977 Analog magazine. It was later expanded into a book, as was the formerly unpublished Tambu piece. The final stories are very Bob Asprin, being a romp full of space fleets and some serious double-dealing. As the amazingly eclectic table of contents shows, like Robert Lynn Asprin was himself, his stories are always fun, but never predictable.

Bill Fawcett 2009