Jody Lynn Nye

Jody Lynn Nye (born July 1957 in Chicago, Illinois) is an American science fiction writer. She has frequently collaborated as a co-author or the author of a sequel.

Three of Nye's book series were "adrift" after Meisha Merlin Publishing went out of business in 2007. She planned to continue one, the long-running MythAdventures, after the 2008 death of its creator and her co-author Robert Asprin. The mass-market publisher Ace Books has commissioned two more volumes.

In 2008 she donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University Libraries.

Career

Nye says that she "always told stories" to her younger brothers, cousins, and friends, and as a junior camp counselor. Her first published writings were technical articles on broadcasting in the magazine "Video Action" during the 1980s. She first wrote fiction for the "Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine game" and the Role-Aids line of game supplements published by Mayfair Games.

Late in the eighties Nye wrote six companion books for the Dragonriders of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey and the Magic of Xanth series by Piers Anthony. The first four were "branching-path" gamebooks in the Crossroads Adventure series, two set on Pern and two in Xanth. Then simultaneously November 1989, Ballantine Books published The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern by Nye with McCaffrey and Avon Books published Piers Anthony's Visual Guide to Xanth by Nye and Anthony. Todd Cameron Hamilton and James Clouse were the illustrators for both Guides, as Hamilton had been for Roger Zelazny's Visual Guide to Amber published by Avon one year earlier.

For the Pern guide, Nye explained in its introduction, her team (without Clouse) had visited McCaffrey two years earlier, for ten days (October 1987). In the living room Nye, editor Bill Fawcett (Nye's husband)^{[citation needed]}, illustrator Hamilton, and McCaffrey's son Todd Johnson discussed Pern with its creator and Hamilton sketched under her direction. They produced "a companion volume to her work, intended to help you visualize the setting and background for her chronicles."

Before the Dragonlover's Guide was finished, McCaffrey and Nye were working together on a novel, presumably The Death of Sleep (1990) in the Planet Pirates trilogy. In the early 1990s they collaborated in three series based on McCaffrey stories from the 1960s and 1970s. Meanwhile McCaffrey completed five more Pern books, after which they revised the guide.

Late in the 1990s Nye began work with Robert Asprin to extend the Myth Adventures series he had started in 1978. After his 2008 death she continued to write books they had planned.

Bibliography

Series

• Mythology

1. Mythology 101 (1990)
2. Mythology Abroad (1991)
3. Higher Mythology (1993)
4. Advanced Mythology (2001)

• Applied Mythology (2000) ; (An omnibus of books 1-3)

• MythAdventures

1. Myth-told Tales (2003) with Robert Asprin
2. Myth Alliances (2003) with Robert Asprin
3. Myth-taken Identity (2004) with Robert Asprin
4. Class Dis-Mythed (2005) with Robert Asprin
5. Myth-Gotten Gains (2006) with Robert Asprin
6. Myth-Chief (2008) with Robert Asprin
7. Myth-Fortunes (2008) with Robert Asprin

• Dreamland

1. Waking in Dreamland (1998)
2. School of Light (1999)
3. The Grand Tour (2000)

• Ireta (aka Dinosaur Planet, aka Planet Pirates)
  • The Death of Sleep (1990) with Anne McCaffrey
    • The Planet Pirates (1993) with Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Moon ; (omnibus edition includes The Death of Sleep)

• Doona
  • Treaty at Doona (1994) with Anne McCaffrey
  • Crisis on Doona (1992) with Anne McCaffrey

• Taylor's Ark

1. Taylor's Ark (1993)
2. Medicine Show (1994)
3. The Lady and the Tiger (2003)

• The Ship Who Sang (aka Brain and Brawn Ship)
  • The Ship Who Won (1994) with Anne McCaffrey
  • The Ship Errant (1996)
    • The Ship Who Saved the Worlds (2003) with Anne McCaffrey ; (includes The Ship who Won and The Ship Errant)

• Riverworld
  • If the King Like Not the Comedy (1993)

• Crossroads Game Books
  • Dragonharper (1987) ; set in the world of Pern
  • The Encyclopedia of Xanth (1987) ; set in the world of Xanth
  • Dragonfire (1988) ; set in the world of Pern
  • Ghost of a Chance (1988) ; set in the world of Xanth

Novels

• The Magic Touch (1996)
• License Invoked (2001) with Robert Asprin
• Strong-Arm Tactics (2005)
• An Unexpected Apprentice (2007)
• A Forthcoming Wizard (2009)
• View from the Imperium (2011)

Anthologies (As Editor)

• Don't Forget Your Spacesuit, Dear (1996) ; (includes the short story What's the Magic Word?)

Others

• The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern (Ballantine, 1989), with Anne McCaffrey. Illustrated by Todd Cameron Hamilton and James Clouse. ISBN 0-345-35424-9. Second edition 1997, ISBN 0-345-41274-5. — Pern geography, society, flora, fauna, etc., including information not in the previously published fiction.
• Piers Anthony's Visual Guide to Xanth (Harper, 1989), with Piers Anthony. Illustrated by Todd Cameron Hamilton and James Clouse. ISBN 0-380-75749-4

External links

• Jody Lynn Nye Home Page
• Jody Lynn Nye at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Myth Adventures.net, the official site for Myth-Information