Robert Asprin:
 
Best-selling SF and fantasy author Robert Lynn Asprin died unexpectedly in his home in New Orleans on May 22 at the age of 61. The exact cause of death has not been announced, though it has been listed officially as due to natural causes.
 
Asprin was born and attended university in Michigan and served in the U.S. Army. His first novel was The Cold Cash War, published in 1977. He was best known for his immensely popular satirical fantasy series MythAdventures, about a demon magician and his young apprentice, some of which were also adapted for comics. The most recent book in the series was Myth-Chief, with Jody Lynn Nye and Phil Foglio, published in March 2008.
 
He was also known for the comic SF series Phule’s Company, about a legion of space soldiers, and, with his former wife Lynn Abbey, for creating and editing the ground-breaking shared universe anthology series Thieves’ World, which also produced a series of graphic novels.
 
Financial and personal problems caused Asprin to take a hiatus from fiction writing for several years in the 1990’s, but he eventually returned, often working with collaborators. His last published novel, Dragons Wild, was released in April 2008, about a poker-playing man who discovers he is actually a dragon.