M.Y.T.H.ing You

I somehow missed Thieves' World for years. I knew about it, of course. In the mid-80s, I even briefly owned a volume (the fourth, I believe) in the series. Maybe it was bad timing or something, though—at the time I was very interested in multivolume epic high fantasy and Thieves' World was sword & sorcery short stories. Maybe it was nothing more complicated than the fact that I had the fourth volume of the series and the first, second and third were nowhere to be found at my local public library and used bookstores. Don't know. In any case, it didn't click with me and I only read a few stories, sold the book back to the used bookstore and didn't think much about Thieves' World anymore after that.

As it so happens, I was hanging around some used bookstores just a few weeks ago and saw the first volume, and decided to try it out. My tastes had changed since then, and I am much more interestedin sword & sorcery short story anthologies than multivolume epic high fantasy at the moment, or maybe just because it was the first of its kind, but I really enjoyed this book and plowed through it in very short order.

Seeing Robert Asprin's name on the front cover of that made me want to dig out my old M.Y.T.H. Adventures novels; very entertaining and fun novels that he wrote that I've loved for years. In fact, I did dig them out (although I haven't started reading them yet.)

Imagine my surprise, right as all this is happening, to find out that Robert Asprin passed away just a few days ago, unexpectedly, at a relatively young age (he was in his early sixties, I believe.) He was also a neighbor of mine (sorta; living in nearby Ann Arbor) although I hadn't remembered that. I've read a bit of his bio recently and been a bit surprised; I doubt that if we knew each other we'd have gotten along well, ofr instance. Oh, well. Now I'll never get the chance, remote though it always no doubt was, to find out. Although all of his main work was in series that carried on long after they should have been retired gracefully (sadly) I still have a very fond spot in my memory for the first times I read Another Fine Myth.

So, Robert Lynn Asprin: here's M.Y.T.H.ing you. :(