Canthook

Robert Asprin died Thursday.

According to his family, "Bob passed away quietly in his home in New Orleans, LA. He had been in good spirits and working on several new projects, and was set to be the Guest of Honor at a major science fiction convention that very weekend. He is survived by his mother, his sister, his daughter and his son, and his cat, Princess, not to mention countless friends and fans and numerous legendary fictional characters. He will be greatly missed."

No word from Marcon on what they'll do without him. Not that their need is the greatest, of course. It's just that of all the holes remaining in buckets of water, this is the first one people will notice. (Marcon is a science fiction convention held every Memorial Day weekend in Columbus, Ohio.)

Robert Asprin wrote a lot of books, many with co-author with Jody Lynn Nye.

"There is something sinfully satisfying about doing something you know you aren't supposed to," is the opening line from Myth-ing Persons. One shouldn't judge a book by its cover, they say, but judging books by their opening lines has a long tradition. Call me Ishmael. And you can judge a book by its cover, if the author's name on the cover is Robert Asprin.

Normally, I prefer to read books where the author takes care to make the words get out of the way, and let the story escape, as in a Vulcan mind-meld, transmitted from the author's brain to my own. Asprin's books, though, not only are darned good story-telling, but they are works of art, with paragraphs and passages that I want to walk around and look at from various angles, work around my mouth with my tongue, savor and admire.

C'mon, I hear you saying, tell us what you really think. Well, there are many authors whose books I've bought, knowing that it might be as long as a month or two before I would get around to reading them. If I don't have time to read the book immediately, though, I dare not buy an Asprin book, because nothing else will get done until I devour it.

My late first wife, Em, once told me that she had no worries about me playing around with another woman. I know, she said, that I couldn't lie about it - and I valued my marriage too much to risk it. On the other hand, if an interesting book were to come along, I might forget that she even exists. She'd call me to supper at five, and at ten, I'd look up from the book, asking her what she was planning to fix for supper.

And it was an Asprin book in my hands when she leveled that accusation.

Guilty, I will plead. And sad.

No cause of death given. He was born in 1946. It could be a heart attack, or a stroke, I suppose. He wouldn't have agreed to appear at Marcon if he had cancer. But given that no cause of death is given, I suspect it's suicide. Many authors are bi-polar, and Asprin's books have the intensity one associates with mania.

If that's it, I suppose I should be happy for him, that he finally found relief from the pain of depression. I'd rather be selfish. Some people brighten a room by entering it, and some by exiting it. Asprin will be missed.

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