Around the Watercooler...

[marbleboats]

There seems no better place to put this, so I'll do it here.

I just wanted to say hello, introduce myself, etc. etc. It's been a long time since I've read any of the books, and I'll confess that I'm more attached to the Wizard in Rhyme series than any other, simply because that was what I discovered first. I'll also confess that I haven't read the other series in their entirety, something I have honestly wanted to do since high school and have not gotten around to doing. Though now that I have time to read for fun again instead of just reading for school, I'm hoping to start anew with what I already have in my shelf.

So hello!

Hopefully the forum grows a bit more and some conversations can get going.

-Anna

[Koheleth]

*sigh* I so hate introductions but starting in the middle muddles conversations.

I remember my first experience with your books. I was in elementary school in the 70's and raided one of my sister's library during one of our long Wisconsin winters. She had "The Warlock in Spite of Himself" and "King Kobold" (she still does--she has a huge library of 1st editions). From that point forward, I bought every book I could find of yours in the Warlock/Rogue Wizard/Wizard/Starship series.

I consider it a great loss to young readers that your meaty novels are missing from the shelves of the mega-emporiums that prefer to stock dreck about the undead. Has our fear of what comes after death grown so profound that we obsess about it?

But I digress.

Mr. Stasheff, I appreciate your humor, wit, and desire to teach. I have four favorite authors and you are the only one who is alive so I hope you have plans for future books. To me, you rank up there with C.S. Lewis, Randall Garrett, and George MacDonald.

[Batchman]

I'm not sure, but I probably received my first book, Warlock in Spite of Himself in a big bag of sci-fi and fantasy novels I was given by my high school math teacher. If he didn't provide me with my first one, it was still around that time that I read the first one.

Have been hooked on the stories, ever since.

I've read almost everything you've ever written (missed out on the third Troupers book), and while some interested me more than others, they've all been worth a read, and most worth many rereads.

So, since the publishers have gotten too silly to continue publishing, I look forward to seeing some new materials here!

[snowybeagle]

Hi everyone.

Been looking around for an online forum or fansite of CS (Christopher Stasheff) for a while now.

I first read Her Majesty's Wizard in 1986 as a secondary school student (15 year olds for those from a different system).

It was incredible and I loved it. It also gave me a lot to think - I was exploring Christianity at that time.

Well, the book belonged to a classmate and unfortunately, I never learned of the sequels until ... just a few years ago.

By then, not many copies of the Wizard in Rhyme books by CS were not stocked by the local library nor bookshops anymore, and none of the first book at all. Nonetheless, I managed to get hold the rest and finished them off.

Personally, I think the high point of the series was My Son, the Wizard, and then the series began to "wobble" and the last rather unreadable.

Still, I loved most of the series and I created wikipedia entries for the series and book 1 to book 5.

It was painstaking, but I also tracked down and recorded all the annotations I could find.

Unfortunately, wikipedia just decided that the books are not notable enough and want to delete them

I'm gonna save all the work before they do so.

[Ortho the Frank]

Oh, YOU'RE the guy who did all those Wikipedia pages! Good work, man, they were quite impressive! Especially the annotations, which appear to be exhaustively researched.

Actually, I'm saving the Wikipedia entries on my laptop, too. I'm hoping to relocate them to the wiki on this site, when and if I can get it working. I'm currently locked in mortal combat with it, and only one of us will be strong enough to walk away (I'm hoping it's me).

Sorry that Chris hasn't been on much recently, but his daughter just had a baby (yesterday), and he's kind of distracted. Hopefully I can get him back online over the weekend.

And we do have some Wizard in Rhyme fan fiction in the pipeline that will be posted in a few weeks, but we have some other new fiction that needs to be posted first.

Thanks so much for all your contributions and hard work, and I hope you enjoy this site!

[snowybeagle]

Well, I confess I haven't quite completed the annotations for the first 2 books - hope to get around to it in the near future.

I sure would love Chris or someone else revealing what else I missed.

[Sir Gilbert]

So, another of these introduction posts. I've been a fan of Stasheff's work for many years, my first exposure being Her Majesty's Wizard and the Wizard in Rhyme series and those remain my favorites if for no other reason than nostalgia. I reread them annually, sometimes more often.

I'll be interested to peruse both the fanfiction and the annotations as I haven't previously come across much of either. Looking forward to some good conversation and some new insights - and, of course, to hearing directly from Mr. Stasheff himself.

Hello to everyone, delighted I found this.

[catsend]

Hello, I just found this website a few hours ago, thanks to fiddling around with my new cell phone to see if there were any eBooks by CS since I last found one. None, unfortunately, but at least I found this website.

My first Stasheff book was actually a pile of them from my local used bookstore either in the mid-80s somewhere. All Warlock series. I was already a Xanth fan by then, anyway, so I like funny fantasy and sci-fi. I just still wish there was more of it.

[kf6eml]

Until I was 16, I was not much of a reader. Then I got a job babysitting four kids for a man with an extensive Sci-Fi library... and the rest is history. Among the books on his shelves were a couple of the warlock books. It wasn't long before the entire collection was on my own shelf, along with the Wizard in Rhyme, and the Troupers, as soon as they came out.

Here's hoping that this site takes off... and the Good Professor graces us with some more of his scribblings.

[Batchman]

I was wrong. Just remembered how I was introduced to Stasheff's books. Was discussing Anthony's Incarnations series with a friend known as the 'Lord Emperor' (he was one of the most interesting people I ever met) and he told me about Her Majesty's Wizard. I got it, read it, enjoyed it, and -then- found a couple of the Warlock books in the bags my math teacher gave me.