MythAdventures

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MythAdventures or Myth Adventures is a fantasy series created by Robert Lynn Asprin. After twelve novels by Asprin, published 1978 to 2002, he and Jody Lynn Nye continued the series with seven more books that they wrote together. After his death in May 2008, [1] Nye has continued the series on her own. [2]

Contents

The Myth Adventures are noted for and popular for their whimsical nature, myriad characters, and liberal use of puns. After the first book, every title turns on the similarity between the word "myth" and the prefix "mis-" or the word "miss". The inaugural title, Another Fine Myth, puns on the phrase "another fine mess". Chapters are usually headed by made-up quotes by famous or semi-famous persons. [3]

The first book was advertised under that title, Another Fine Mess, from Oliver Hardy's often-used catchphrase directed towards his film comedy partner Stan Laurel, supposedly "This is another fine mess you've gotten me into." (The actual catchphrase referred to "another nice mess".) After it was too late to change the catalog, Asprin decided that using "Myth" would be much better if the book would become a series. They changed the title and claimed a typo in the catalog. [4]

According to Asprin, the original inspiration for the Myth Adventures was the Road to ... comedy movie series, which stars Bing Crosby and Bob Hope as wandering con-artists/adventurers. [4]

Characters

The stories mostly revolve around the adventures of a few central characters:

The Phil Foglio comics based on the books also involve The Winslow: A small fuzzy alligator which happens to be utterly indestructible and presumably immortal, and figures prominently one way or another into fully three-fourths of the galaxy's known religions.

Known dimensions

Many of the names, like so much else in this series, are puns; see the parenthetical comments.

Dimensions that have been mentioned but not explicitly depicted:

Books

The "first" Myth Adventures series was written by Asprin alone for the now-defunct publishing house The Donning Company under their Starblaze Graphics imprint (with the last two published by Meisha Merlin, who picked up the contract from Donning). All twelve are collected in Robert Asprin's Myth Adventures Volume 1 and Volume 2 (Meisha Merlin, 2006/2007). [8]

The "new" Myth Adventures series was co-authored with Jody Lynn Nye.

Nye has continued the series after Asprin's death in 2008.

After Myth-Gotten Gains, Meisha Merlin went out of business and publication of hardcover/trade editions changed hands again, this time to Wildside Press. [2] Robert Asprin died in May 2008, but Nye intended that year to write the books which she and Asprin had planned ("We had big plans"). [2] According to the series website, the publisher of mass market editions Ace Books has commissioned two. [11]

Short stories

In 2010, Baen Books published a collection of Asprin's short myth-stories under the title Myth-Interpretations ( ISBN   1-4391-3390-5). This collection contains short stories and short novels taking place in many worlds that Robert Asprin created. It is advertised as containing all of the Myth short fiction. [12] [13]

Illustrated novels

The first novel was adapted into an eight-part WaRP Graphics comic book series in the mid-1980s. Illustrated and heavily rewritten by Phil Foglio, the series was later collected into two full-color graphic novels published by Starblaze Graphics, and in 2007 Airship Entertainment (the Foglios' publishing concern) reprinted the material in a single volume. Four more issues followed, featuring an original story by Asprin and artist Jim Valentino which attempts to bridge the action between the first and second novels in the series. (Apple Comics took over the second series halfway through.) In 2010, Airship Entertainment began re-releasing the story as a web comic. [14] Though this has been offline since sometime in February 2016, along with webcomic republications of Buck Godot and What's New with Phil & Dixie , when Airship Entertainment's old website broke down. [15]

The second novel was later adapted into another eight-part comic series by Ken and Beth Mitchroney and published by Apple from 1987 through 1989. Neither of these two later series enjoyed a graphic novel collection.

Foglio has also done the cover art and accompanying illustrations for the first editions of most of the novels. Before he started the cover illustrations, Kelly Freas did the covers of the first editions of the earliest books of the series.

Film and theater

Short-lived rumors circulated in the 1980s that Wendy and Richard Pini, owners of WaRP Graphics, were considering turning their adaptation of Another Fine Myth into a feature-length movie after doing so with their own property, Elfquest , though the latter has yet to even make it past concept to this day.

The board game

A board game called Myth Fortunes was developed by Mayfair Games and sold in 1990. [16]

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References

  1. ↑ Robert Asprin at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
  2. 1 2 3 Jody Lynn Nye (2008). "Frequently Asked Questions". Archived from the original on 2010-07-12. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
  3. ↑ Asprin, Robert (1978). Another Fine Myth.
  4. 1 2 Author's Introduction from "M.Y.T.H. INC. LINK" by Robert Asprin. (unconfirmed)
  5. ↑ Robert Asprin (1995). Sweet Myth-tery of Life. Ace. p. 100. ISBN   0-441-00194-7.
  6. ↑ Robert Asprin (1995). Sweet Myth-tery of Life. Ace. p. 158. ISBN   0-441-00194-7.
  7. ↑ Robert Asprin (1983). Hit or Myth. The Donning Company. p. 107. ISBN   0-89865-331-2.
  8. ↑ Myth Adventures series listing at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
  9. ↑ Nye, Jody Lynn (2012). Robert Asprin's Myth-quoted. New York: Ace Books. ISBN   978-0-425-25701-2.
  10. ↑ Nye, Jody Lynn (2016-06-07). Robert Asprin's Myth-Fits. Penguin. ISBN   978-0-425-25702-9.
  11. ↑ "News". Myth Adventures.net. Archived from the original on 2010-09-18. Retrieved 2011-07-29.
  12. ↑ Asprin, Robert (2010-10-05). MYTH-Interpretations: The Worlds of Robert Asprin. Riverdale, NY: Baen. ISBN   978-1-4391-3390-3.
  13. ↑ "MYTH-Interpretations by Robert Asprin". Baen Books. Retrieved 23 July 2024. Includes a free sample.
  14. ↑ "MythAdventures Comics Online". Archived from the original on 2010-08-19. Retrieved 2010-01-24.
  15. ↑ Archived 2016-06-01(Calendar) at the Wayback Machine
  16. ↑ "The Myth Fortunes Game". Archived from the original on 2006-05-07. Retrieved 2006-06-24.
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