Jody Lynn Nye (born 1957)[1] is an American science fiction writer. She is the author or co-author of approximately forty published novels and more than 100 short stories. She has specialized in science fiction or fantasy action novels and humor.[clarification needed] Her humorous series range from contemporary fantasy (The Magic Touch and Mythology 101) to military science fiction (Strong Arm Tactics and a new series beginning with View from the Imperium). About one-third of her novels are collaborations, either as a co-author or as the author of a sequel. She has been an instructor of the Fantasy Writing Workshop at Columbia College Chicago (2007) and she teaches the annual Science Fiction Writing Workshop at DragonCon.
Nye began collaborating with Robert Lynn Asprin on the MythAdventures series in 2003 with the publication of the collection Myth-told Tales and the novel Myth Alliances. Since Asprin's death in 2008 she has continued that humorous fantasy series and she is now also writing sequels to his Dragons, or Griffen McCandles, contemporary fantasy series.
In 2008 she donated her archive to the department of Rare Books and Special Collections at Northern Illinois University Libraries.[2]
Career
Born 1957 in Chicago, Illinois,[1] 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.[3]
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.[4] 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.[1] 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.[5][6]
For the Pern guide, Nye explained in its introduction, her team (without Clouse) had visited McCaffrey two years earlier, for ten days during October 1987. In the living room Nye, editor Bill Fawcett (Nye's husband),[7] 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."[8]
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 Dragonlover's Guide.[1][9]
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. Meanwhile, three of Nye's book series were "adrift" since Meisha Merlin Publishing went out of business in 2007.[3]
Among other projects, Nye is continuing to write the Myth Adventures series and her military SF/humor series begun with View from the Imperium (2011).
Works
Series
Mythology
Mythology 101 (1990)
Mythology Abroad (1991)
Higher Mythology (1993)
Advanced Mythology (2001)
Applied Mythology (2000) – omnibus edition of books 1–3
The Planet Pirates (1993), McCaffrey, Elizabeth Moon and Nye – omnibus edition of the 3-volume subseries
McCaffrey alone wrote two Dinosaur Planet novels that were published in 1978 and 1984. She and Elizabeth Moon inaugurated the Planet Pirates subseries in a novel that was published a few months before McCaffrey and Nye's.[14]
Doona
Crisis on Doona (1992), McCaffrey and Nye
Treaty at Doona (1994), McCaffrey and Nye; also titled Treaty Planet
McCaffrey alone wrote one Doona novel that was published in 1969.[15]
The Ship Who Saved the Worlds (2003), McCaffrey and Nye – omnibus comprising The Ship who Won and The Ship Errant
McCaffrey alone wrote The Ship Who Sang, a collection published in 1969. She wrote three Ship novels in collaboration with three different women that were published in 1992 and 1993.[16]
Dragons, or Griffen McCandles
Dragons Deal (2010), by Robert Lynn Asprin and Nye
Dragons Run (2013)
Asprin alone wrote two novels in the Griffen McCandles series, published 2008 and 2009.[17]
Crossroads Adventure game books (copyright Bill Fawcett and Associates)
Encyclopedia of Xanth (1987) – set in the world of Xanth
Dragonfire (Tor, Jul 1988), illus. Todd Cameron Hamilton – set in the world of Pern
Ghost of a Chance (1988) – set in the world of Xanth
Anne McCaffrey inaugurated the long-running Pern series in 1967; Piers Anthony the long-running Xanth series in 1977. ISFDB catalogs the four Crossroads Adventures as novels, the two Guides as reference books, and all six as contributions to the Pern and Xanth series.[18][19]
Novels
The Magic Touch (1996)
License Invoked (2001), by Robert Lynn Asprin and Nye
An Exchange of Favours (short story) in the online magazine 1632 & Beyond, Issue #001, September 2023[21]
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. ISBN0-345-35424-9. xi + 178 pages. — Pern geography, society, flora, fauna, etc., including information not in the previously published fiction
The Dragonlover's Guide to Pern, second edition (Ballantine, 1997). ISBN0-345-41274-5. xi + 260 pages.
Piers Anthony's Visual Guide to Xanth (Harper, 1989), with Piers Anthony. Illustrated by Todd Cameron Hamilton and James Clouse. ISBN0-380-75749-4
