Thieves' World
Fantasy fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Fiction, science fiction, general, Sanctuary (imaginary place), fiction
Robert Asprin, John Brunner, Lynn Abbey, Poul Anderson, Andrew Offutt, Joe Haldeman, Christine DeWees, Marion Zimmer Bradley, Philip José Farmer
Robert Lynn Asprin (June 28, 1946 – May 22, 2008)[1] was an American science fiction and fantasy author and active fan, best known for his humorous MythAdventures and Phule's Company series.  (From Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Asprin) || British author of science fiction novels and stories. || Poul William Anderson was an American science fiction author who began his career during one of the Golden Ages of the genre and continued to write and remain popular into the 21st century. Anderson also authored several works of fantasy, historical novels, and a prodigious number of short stories. He received numerous awards for his writing, including seven Hugo Awards and three Nebula Awards.

Anderson received a degree in physics from the University of Minnesota in 1948. He married Karen Kruse in 1953. They had one daughter, Astrid, who is married to science fiction author Greg Bear. Anderson was the sixth President of Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, taking office in 1972. He was a member of the Swordsmen and Sorcerers' Guild of America, a loose-knit group of Heroic Fantasy authors founded in the 1960s, some of whose works were anthologized in Lin Carter's Flashing Swords! anthologies. He was a founding member of the Society for Creative Anachronism. Robert A. Heinlein dedicated his 1985 novel The Cat Who Walks Through Walls to Anderson and eight of the other members of the Citizens' Advisory Council on National Space Policy.

Poul Anderson died of cancer on July 31, 2001, after a month in the hospital. Several of his novels were published posthumously.

Source: Goodreads || Joe William Haldeman (born June 9, 1943) is an American science fiction author. He is best known for his novel The Forever War (1974). That novel and other works, including The Hemingway Hoax (1991) and Forever Peace (1997), have won science fiction awards, including the Hugo Award and Nebula Award. He was awarded the SFWA Grand Master for career achievements. In 2012 he was inducted as a member of the Science Fiction Hall of Fame. Many of Haldeman's works, including his debut novel War Year and his second novel The Forever War, were inspired by his experiences in the Vietnam War. Wounded in combat, he struggled to adjust to civilian life after returning home. From 1983–2014, he was a professor teaching writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). || Marion Zimmer was born on a farm in Albany, New York, during the Great Depression.  As a child, she enjoyed reading adventure fantasy stories.  She began writing them herself in 1949 and sold her first story to Vortex in 1952.  She also married Robert Alden Bradley in 1949.  Early in her career, she used pseudonyms for stories she wrote outside the speculative fiction genre, including some gay and lesbian pulp fiction novels such as I Am a Lesbian (1962).  In 1964 she divorced her first husband and married numismatist Walter H. Breen.  In 1965 she received her B.A. degree from Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene, Texas.  She then moved to Berkeley, California, to pursue graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley.  In 1966, she co-founded the Society for Creative Anachronism.  In 1967 she moved to Staten Island, New York.  She separated from her second husband in 1979 but remained married and continued a business relationship, until 1990 when he was arrested on child molestation charges and they divorced.  After suffering declining health for years, she died in Berkeley in 1999.  In 2000, she was awarded the World Fantasy Award for lifetime achievement. || Philip José Farmer was an American author, principally known for his award-winning science fiction and fantasy novels and short stories.

Farmer is best known for his sequences of novel — especially the World of Tiers (1965–93) and Riverworld (1971–83) series. He is noted for the pioneering use of sexual and religious themes in his work, his fascination for — and reworking of — the lore of celebrated pulp heroes, and occasional tongue-in-cheek pseudonymous works written as if by fictional characters.

Philip José Farmer is also well known for remixing classic fictional characters, worlds, and both real and fake authors. This is epitomized with his Wold Newton family group of books that tie all classic fictional characters together as real people and blood relatives resulting from an alien conspiracy; his works such as The Other Log of Phileas Fogg and Doc Savage: His Apocalyptic Life make Farmer the ultimate grandfather of the modern literary mashup. - Wikipedia