Robert Asprin, RIP

Via Instapundit, I see that Robert Asprin, the noted science fiction author, has passed away.

I never read much of his stuff, but he did write one book that really deserves a wider audience: Mirror Friend, Mirror Foe.

Note the co-author, George Takei. Yes, the soon-to-be-married Sulu from the original Star Trek. This book’s cover art (from the Playboy Press edition) is so obviously an attempt to cash in on Sulu’s shirtless-swordsman turn in that one Star Trek episode that the novel has to have been originally intended as a script launching George Takei’s movie career. Too bad that didn’t pan out, because this would have made one hell of a movie. Combine plausible future ninja assassins, realistic robots, technical discussions of fencing, made-for-the-big-screen tech gadgets like a ninja invisibility suit, homicidal machines gone amok, and a climax revolving around Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics and you’ve got one of my favorite storylines, admirably told by Mr. Asprin. It could easily have been a screenplay — a very smart thriller — but doesn’t read at all like an adaptation.

It’s just a great standalone novel from the late ’70s, before science fiction authors (including Mr. Asprin) figured out they could make a bunch of money stretching their novels into bloated multivolume series paperbacks.
Really, this is a gem. Go buy it at Amazon’s ridiculously low prices, and savor it. Repeatedly.