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Revision as of 04:08, 28 February 2013

Michael A. Stackpole
Michael A. Stackpole at Dragon Con 2007
Michael A. Stackpole at Dragon Con 2007
Born (1957-11-27) November 27, 1957 (age 67)
Wausau, Wisconsin, United States
OccupationWriter, game designer
NationalityUnited States
Period1977-
GenreRole-playing games, video games fantasy and science fiction novels

Michael A. Stackpole (born November 27, 1957[1]) is an American science fiction and fantasy author best known for his Star Wars and BattleTech books. He was born in Wausau, Wisconsin, but raised in Vermont. He has a BA in history from the University of Vermont.

Game design career

From 1977 on, he worked as a designer of role-playing games for various gaming companies, and wrote dozens of magazine articles with limited distribution within the industry. During this time, in response to the accusations of Patricia Pulling (among others) who felt that the "occult" elements of Dungeons & Dragons were driving people to Satanism, murder and suicide, perhaps even as part of a vast Satanic ritual abuse conspiracy, Stackpole did a research study on all American legal cases where injury or death had been attributed to gaming. He found that not only were the links to gaming very weak, but that even if all of the reports had been valid, they showed that gamers were violent or suicidal far less often than the general public (see External links below).

In the 1980s, Stackpole began designing computer games for Coleco and then Interplay Productions. His work at Interplay included Bard's Tale III, Wasteland, Star Trek: 25th Anniversary and Star Trek: Judgment Rites. He also created the role-playing game Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, which provided the game mechanics for Wasteland, and wrote several solo adventures for the Tunnels & Trolls role-playing system, including "Dargon's Dungeon", "Overkill", "City of Terrors" and "Sewers of Oblivion".

Stackpole loaned his image to Decipher for the image of Corran Horn used in their Star Wars Customizable Card Game expansion "Reflections 2". Timothy Zahn did likewise for the character Talon Karrde.

Stackpole teamed up with Decipher again, helping them write the background story to their WARS TCG, including e-books and other writing tie-ins for the expanded universe.

Writing career

In 1986 Stackpole wrote his first novel, the fantasy story Talion: Revenant. However, the manuscript would not be published until 1997 by Bantam Books. His editors believed that a 175,000 word book was too long for an unknown author and that the story wasn't particularly engaging. The story remained unpublished for the next 11 years until reworked by Stackpole's editor, Anne Lesley Groell. Stackpole clarifies these issues himself in the afterword of the published version of Talion.

Stackpole has found his greatest success in serialed works that continue the characters and plot lines developed by other authors. In 1987 he began writing novels set in the BattleTech universe for FASA Corporation, and became one of the most popular authors in that genre[citation needed]. Some of his Battletech books were used as the source for a television animated series. He was then selected to write several novels in the Star Wars universe for Bantam Books. He also wrote several comics based in the Star Wars universe for Dark Horse Comics. Initially these covered the period just before his X-Wing novels. Later he also covered the marriage of Luke Skywalker and Mara Jade in Union and collaborated with Timothy Zahn on Mara Jade's early career. In the foreword to his book Outbound Flight, Timothy Zahn thanks Stackpole and issues a challenge at Star Wars Trivial Pursuit.

In addition, he has written several novels and short stories with original settings. One of his recent series is the DragonCrown War Cycle. These books attempt to break fantasy conventions, including the introduction of firearms in a fantasy setting which is not universally considered a positive advancement.

Stackpole contributed one of the four stories in Roger Zelazny's shared world anthology Forever After, published by Baen Books in 1995. He was also a contributor in the 1998 anthology Lord of the Fantastic commemorating Zelazny.

The Age of Discovery trilogy is his latest complete series, with A New World released mid-2007. The trilogy is set in a fantasy world, with an attempt at an unconventional approach to magic and mastery.

The Crown Colonies is a new original trilogy that re-imagines the events of the American Revolutionary War. The first book, At The Queen's Command, was released in November 2010, with the other two books due to be released in 2011[needs update] and 2012.

At New York Comic Con 2012, it was revealed that Blizzard Entertainment had approached Stackpole to write the next novel in their series based on the popular MMORPG, World of Warcraft. The novel, titled Vol’jin: Shadows of the Horde, centres around the chieftain of the Darkspear Trolls as his loyalty to the Horde is put to the ultimate test after an assassination attempt on his life. The novel is scheduled for release in April 2013.

The Secrets

Newsletter

Michael Stackpole also writes and publishes an online newsletter titled The Secrets, which offers tips, tricks, and tidbits about fiction writing (focusing on, but not limited to, science fiction and fantasy). It is aimed towards the serious fan fiction writer and some casual writers, and includes information about getting books published..

Topics discussed in the newsletter range from how to beat writer's block to how to build a world, and even how to manage writing as a career.

The Secrets newsletter requires a subscription, and issues are released every two weeks.

Podcast

The Secrets Newsletter has an "audio companion" in The Secrets Podcast. The first ten podcasts were based on material from the first ten issues of The Secrets newsletter. After the first series ended, the content of the podcast diverged from the newsletter. The podcasts average twenty-five minutes long and are voiced and produced by Stackpole.

The podcasts are free and require no subscription, but older episodes have been retired and are no longer available on the main archive.

Stackpole is also one of the main hosts on The Dragon Page Cover to Cover, a book review and interview show dealing mainly with fantasy and sci fi publications, together with Michael R. Mennenga.

Skepticism

Stackpole has been the executive director of the Phoenix Skeptics since 1988 and is listed as the contact for the group in the magazine Skeptical Inquirer.

Asteroid

An outer main-belt asteroid discovered March 23, 2001 by David B. Healy was named 165612 Stackpole.[2]

Novels

DragonCrown War

Published by Bantam Books.

  • 2000 The Dark Glory War
  • 2001 Fortress Draconis
  • 2002 When Dragons Rage
  • 2003 The Grand Crusade

Age of Discovery

Published by Bantam Books.

The Crown Colonies

Published by Night Shade Books.

  • 2010 At The Queen's Command.
  • 2011 Of Limited Loyalty. [3]
  • 2012 Ungrateful Rabble. (Due to be published October 2012)[4]

Homeland Security Services

  • 2011 Perfectly Invisible (Stormwolf.com)

World of Warcraft

  • 2013 Vol'jin: Shadows of the Horde

BattleTech

The BattleTech novels were originally published by FASA Corporation up until 1991. In that year, Penguin Group/Roc Books took over the line and also reprinted the earlier novels. The last print novel of the classic BattleTech setting was published in 2002; in the same year, the first novel for the Dark Age setting (set some 100 years after the classic setting) was published, written by Stackpole. His novels were typically "spine novels" that moved the setting ahead, narrating large-scale or otherwise important events with far-reaching consequences in the fictional timeline.

Warrior Trilogy
Blood of Kerensky Trilogy
Other BattleTech Spine Novels
Mechwarrior - Dark Age setting

Star Wars

Dark Conspiracy

Published by GDW.

  • 1991 A Gathering Evil
  • 1991 Evil Ascendin
  • 1992 Evil Triumphant

Others

  • 1994 Once a Hero (Bantam Books)
  • 1994 Dementia (Roc/Target)
  • 1997 Talion: Revenant (Bantam Books)
  • 1997 A Hero Born (HarperPrism)
  • 1998 An Enemy Reborn (HarperPrism)
  • 1998 Wolf and Raven (Roc/FASA)
  • 1998 Eyes of Silver (Bantam Books)
  • 2010 In Hero Years I'm Dead (Stormwolf.com)
  • 2011 Conan the Barbarian (Berkley Books)

Other publications

References

  1. ^ Stackpole, Michael. "Michael Stackpole's Myspace Page". Myspace. Retrieved 5 December 2008. {{cite web}}: Cite has empty unknown parameter: |coauthors= (help)
  2. ^ 165612 Stackpole (2001 FP86). JPL Small-Body Database Browser. California Institute of Technology. Retrieved October 7, 2012.
  3. ^ "Stackpole, Michael A. - Crown Colonies Book 2: Of Limited Loyalty". Night Shade Books. 2006-08-28. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
  4. ^ "Stackpole, Michael A. - Crown Colonies Book 3: Ungrateful Rabble". Night Shade Books. 2006-08-28. Retrieved 2012-07-31.
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