Robert Asprin was active in fandom and filking from the early 1970’s until the early 1980s. At Discon II, the Worldcon in Washington DC in 1974, Robert started a filksing in a public room that lasted all night. This was a milestone in the history of filk, in that it marked a transition of filk from something a few people did in private to a major part of convention programming.
From that time till the early 1980s, when Robert moved away from active filking to pursue his career as a professional author, he was a prolific writer of filk both serious and humorous, notably songs about the Dorsai, about Leiber’s Fafhrd and the Mouser, and about the Dark Horde of the Society for Creative Anachronism; and many of these songs are still heard at filks today.
He built a solid reputation for himself as a consummate showman and a dynamic performer, and was equally adept at holding an audience all by himself or at “orchestrating” a group of performers to follow a theme or build a mood. In addition, his performances did much to spread the music of Leslie Fish and Juanita Coulson and the lyrics of Martha Keller and Rudyard Kipling into the midwest.
Robert is also credited with actively encouraging several new filkers who themselves went on to make notable contributions to the filk community.
For these contributions to filk music and the filk community, Robert Asprin is inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame, this First Day of April, Nineteen Hundred and Ninety-five.
RIP 2008