Robert Lynn Asprin

Robert Lynn Asprin grew up in the college town of Ann Arbor, Michigan. After serving in the army, he got a job as a cost accountant and saw nothing wrong with making a career out of arranging numbers, until he and a few friends wandered into a Society for Creative Anachronism event, where he quickly realized he had a perfect trifecta of talent: disruption, organization, and storytelling. Asprin put these talents to work to found the Great Dark Horde within the SCA, and the Dorsai Irregulars within the science-fiction fandom. The life of a cost accountant had lost its allure, but he had a family to support, so he decided to tell stories for money. Asprin’s first two books, The Cold Cash War and Another Fine Myth, demonstrated that he could write tragedy or comedy, science fiction or fantasy, with equal finesse. Then he got the idea for Thieves’ World® and changed the way authors, publishers, and readers thought about anthologies. Though Asprin died in 2008, the Great Dark Horde, the Dorsai Irregulars, and Thieves’ World® continue to this day.