Bill Fawcett (writer)

Not to be confused with William Fawcett (author) or Billy Fawcett.

William B. Fawcett (born May 13, 1947)^[1] is an American editor, anthologist, game designer, book packager, fiction writer, and historian.

Life

Fawcett and fellow science fiction writer Jody Lynn Nye were married in 1987. They first met at a science fiction convention in 1985. At that time, Fawcett owned a gaming company in Niles, Illinois, and Nye began to work as a freelance writer for the company.^[2]

Career

Bill Fawcett was one of the players in early Dungeons & Dragons games being played in the Chicago and Milwaukee areas, using photocopied prototypes of the rules handed out by Gary Gygax.^[3]: 166 Darwin Bromley brought Fawcett on as a partner in Mayfair Games soon after the company was formed in 1980, and they worked together to design the game Empire Builder (1980).^[3]: 166 As a veteran role-playing gamer, Fawcett got Mayfair involved in the RPG field, and the company kicked off its Role Aids line with Beastmaker Mountain (1982).^[3]: 166 Fawcett was friends with Robert Asprin and Lynn Abbey, and FASA was able to leverage their connection with Mayfair to obtain a license to publish Thieves' World role-playing game adventures from 1982–1984.^{[3]: 120, 167} Fawcett and Jordan Weisman designed the robot arena fighting game Combots (1983) for FASA.^[3]: 121

Fawcett produced the Crossroads books (1987–1988), a series of licensed gamebooks published by Tor.^[3]: 168 He also authored the short-lived SwordQuest gamebooks series.^[4] He edited the book The War Years 1: The Far Stars War (1990).^[5] With David Drake, he co-edited The Fleet series (1988-1991), as well as its sequels, Battlestation, Book One (1992), and Battlestation, Book Two: Vanguard (1993).^[6] As a book packager, Fawcett was able to arrange a publishing deal between Wizards of the Coast and HarperCollins for novels set in the Magic: The Gathering multiverse of Dominia; the first novel in this series was Arena (1994).^[3]: 278

His 2008 book, Oval Office Oddities, was described as "Chock-full of information—trivia, anecdotes, charts, illustrations, etc." focusing on the lives of American presidents and their wives.^[7]

Works

Fawcett and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro write mystery novels together under the pen name Quinn Fawcett.^[8] Fawcett was also a field historian for the Navy SEAL museum in Fort Pierce, Florida, and has co-authored work on the US Navy Seals in Vietnam.^[8]

As writer

• Cold Cash Warrior: Combat Command in the World of Robert Asprin's Cold Cash War (with Robert Asprin) (1989)^[9]

Mistakes in History series

• Trust Me, I Know What I'm Doing
• 100 Mistakes That Changed History
• Men At War
• It Seemed Like A Good Idea
• How To Lose A War At Sea
• Doomed To Repeat
• How To Lose WWII
• How To Lose The Civil War
• Hunters And Shooters
• How To Lose A War
• It Looked Good On Paper
• Oval Office Oddities: An Irreverent Collection of Presidential Facts, Follies and Foibles^[7]
• You Said What?^[10]
• How To Lose A Battle
• You Did What? Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters (with Brian Thomsen) (2004)^[11]

SwordQuest series

• SwordQuest: Quest for the Unicorn's Horn (1985)
• SwordQuest: Quest for the Dragon's Eye (1985)
• SwordQuest: Quest for the Demon Gate (1986)
• SwordQuest: Quest for the Elf King (1987)

Short-stories

• "Lincoln's Charge" (1992) (collected in Mike Resnick's anthology Alternate Presidents)
• "Zealot" (1993) (collected in Resnick's anthology Alternate Warriors)
• "Through the Dragon's Eye" (1994) (collected in Christopher Stasheff's anthology Dragon's Eye)
• "The Last Crusader" (1998) (collected in Harry Turtledove's anthology Alternate Generals)

As editor

• Crafter I (with Christopher Stasheff) (1991)^[12]
• Gods of War (1992)^[12]
• The Fleet anthology series (with David Drake)^[6][13]
  • The Fleet: The Fleet (1987) aka The Fleet, Book 1^[13]
  • The Fleet: Counter Attack (1988) aka The Fleet, Book 2^[13]
  • The Fleet: Breakthrough (1989) aka The Fleet, Book 3^[13]
  • The Fleet: Sworn Allies (1990) aka The Fleet, Book 4^[13]
  • The Fleet: Total war (1990) aka The Fleet, Book 5^[13]
  • The Fleet: Crisis (1991) aka The Fleet, Book 6^[13]
• Battlestations anthology series — sequel to The Fleet anthology series^[6]
  • Battlestation (with David Drake) (1992); aka Battlestation I^[14]
  • Battlestation II (with Christopher Stasheff) (1993); aka Battlestation: Vanguard^[12]
  • Battlestations (2011); omnibus edition of Battlestation I and Battlestation II
• The Teams: An Oral History of the U.S. Navy SEALs with Kevin Dockery (1998)^[15]
• Making Contact: A Serious Handbook for Locating and Communicating With Extraterrestrials (1998)^[16][17]
• The Warmasters (2002)^[18]
• Masters of Fantasy (with Brian Thomsen) (2004)^[11]
• We Three Dragons: A Trio of Dragon Tales for the Holiday Season (2005)^[19]
• The Battle for Azeroth: Adventure, Alliance and Addiction in the 'World of Warcraft' (2006)^[20]
• Liftport: Opening Space to Everyone (2006)^[21]
• Nebula Awards Showcase 2010 (2010)^{[citation needed]}
• Mooney, J. E. & Bill Fawcett (eds.). Shadows of the New Sun : stories in honor of Gene Wolfe. Tor.

References

1. "Fawcett, Bill". Library of Congress Authorities (lccn.loc.gov). Retrieved October 19, 2018.
2. Scalf, Abby (July 24, 1998). "Wauconda native creates fantasy worlds for readers". Daily Herald. Archived from the original on December 14, 2019. Retrieved January 7, 2019.
3. Shannon Appelcline (2011). Designers & Dragons. Mongoose Publishing. ISBN 978-1-907702-58-7.
4. Katz, Demian (2006-08-24). "Series - SwordQuest". Demian's Gamebook Web Page. Retrieved 2023-02-23.
5. Ings, Simon (Summer 1991). "'The Far Stars War' edited by Bill Fawcett (Book Review)". Foundation: 105.
6. Westfahl, Gary (Summer 1994). "'Battlestation' edited by David Drake and Bill Fawcett (Book Review)". Foundation: 118.
7. Budasi, Teresa (March 2, 2008). "In praise of bathroom reading". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
8. Teri Smith and Jean Marie Ward (1998). "Author interview: "Bill Fawcett: Admitting to Influence". Crescent Blues. Retrieved January 8, 2013.
9. "Asprin, Robert L(ynn) 1946-". Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. January 1, 2005. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 21, 2015.
10. Gillespie, Nick (December 14, 2007). "You Said What?". Reason.
11. "Thomsen, Brian M." Contemporary Authors. January 1, 2007. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2015.
12. "Kurtz, Katherine 1944- (Katherine Irene Kurtz)". Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. January 1, 2008. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2015.
13. "The Fleet Series". Good Reads.
14. Green, Roland J. (July 5, 1992). "John Varley's Wacky Future Lunar Society". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 22, 2015.
15. Douchette, John-Henry (May 3, 1998). "Inside the Nacy SEALs War Stories by Sea, Air and Land". The Virginian-Pilot. Norfolk, VA. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
16. Flaherty, Dolores; Flaherty, Roger (July 26, 1998). "Lonely explorers of isolated lives". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
17. Shenfeld, Hilary (September 22, 1997). "Making Contact: Most Scientists Agree That Humans Will Discover Life on Other Planets Someday, but What If That Life Finds You First? A Wauconda Man's Book Tells You What to Do". Daily Herald. Arlington Heights, IL.^{[dead link‍]}
18. "Flint, Eric 1947–". Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series. January 1, 2006. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
19. "Ward, James M. 1951- (James Michael Ward, Jim Ward)". Contemporary Authors. January 1, 2008. Archived from the original on March 29, 2015. Retrieved February 5, 2015.
20. Kelly, Marguerite (November 30, 2007). "Time to Pull the Plug on Son's Gaming Habit". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved December 7, 2014.
21. Esser, Doug (July 9, 2006). "Take a hike, go on a date, explore space—Northwest style". The Columbian. Vancouver, WA. Archived from the original on September 24, 2015. Retrieved December 7, 2014.

External links

• Bill Fawcett at The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction
• Bill Fawcett at FantasticFiction – with cover images
• Bill Fawcett at the Internet Speculative Fiction Database
• Bill Fawcett at Library of Congress, with 47 library catalog records – with linked pseudonyms under which the library catalogs about 20 other books
• Quinn Fawcett (Chelsea Quinn Yarbro and Fawcett jointly) at LC Authorities, with 12 records, and at WorldCat