Robert Lynn Asprin (1946) is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his humorous series.
Asprin's first novel, The Cold Cash War, an expansion of an earlier short story of the same title, was published in 1977.
Over the next few years, he created and edited (with his then-wife, Lynn Abbey) the Thieves World series of shared world anthologies, perhaps one of the first projects of its type. As this series progressed, the Asprins lost control over many of the authors and the series ended in anarchy. In 2002, Lynn Abbey resurrected the series with the novel Sanctuary. A series of graphic novels was published in the mid 1980s, and several of the authors, notably Andrew J. Offutt, Janet Morris and David Drake published novels about their characters.
Also in 1979, Asprin began to chronicle the comic adventures of Skeeve and Aahz in the "Myth" Series. These follow a demon who has lost his powers and his inept human apprentice as they travel through a variety of worlds in pursuit of wealth and glory. The Myth series is highly pun-driven.
Some of the early "Myth" novels were adapted as comic books by Phil Foglio and others.
In the 1990s, the "Phule's" novels followed a ragtag space military unit in its own adventures which were reminiscent, in some ways, of Skeeve and Aahz.
Due to a series of personal and financial problems, Asprin stopped publishing in the 1990s, however he seems to have resolved the issues and in the late 1990s and early 2000s, he has published several novels in collaboration with authors Peter Heck, Jody Lynn Nye, and Linda Evans. These novels include continuations of the "Myth" series and the "Phule" series.