Bestselling Author. Know most for his Star Wars and Battletech series work. Some of his Star Wars works include I, Jedi, and the X-wing series. He also contributed two books to the most recent Star Wars series, "The New Jedi Order".

He recently announced that he was done working on both of the above series, to focus on his standalone works, which include "Once a Hero", "Talion:Revenant", and "The Dark Glory War".

Though his novels can all be considered pulp sci-fi or fantasy, they're darn good pulp.

Also an accomplished comic author and computer game designer.

Michael A. Stackpole (1957 - )

Michael Stackpole is a fairly prolific sci-fi author and game designer in the RPG and computer game industry. Born in Wausau, Wisconsin, he graduated from Rice Memorial High School in 1975 and the University of Vermont in 1979 with a BA in History.

While still in college, he wrote several magazine articles and adventures, mostly for Flying Buffalo's Tunnels & Trolls game. In the following years, in addition to more articles, short stories and adventures for various gaming mags, he also wrote the storyline in several computer games for Electronic Arts and Interplay, most notably Wasteland, Bard's Tale III: Thief of Fate, Neuromancer, Star Trek 25th Anniversary and Judgement Rites. wonko tells me he also worked on the original X-Wing game for LucasArts.

His RPG creations include Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes for Flying Buffalo, Justice Inc. for Hero Games/Iron Crown Enterprises, and the Renegade Legion Roleplaying Game for FASA. He did the Berserker board game and the Nuclear Escalation card game for Flying Buffalo, as well as the Crimson Skies board game for FASA.

He seems to consider the starting point of his career as a writer to be the 1988 Warrior trilogy of novels for FASA's BattleTech universe, which defined the Fourth Succession War. These, as well as the later BattleTech novels (the latest are part of the Twilight of the Clans series) have defined the storyline of the BattleTech universe for over a decade. These include:

The demise of FASA meant that the next novel, Tide of Tyrants, might never be written, but he has expressed interest in re-involving himself in the BattleTech universe for WizKids, LLC.

He is more famous in mainstream society for his Star Wars novels, most notably the late 90's X-Wing series, published under Bantam Books. These include:

His other novels, mostly independent, include:

Not included in these lists (mainly because I couldn't find a complete listing) are the comics and graphic novels he's scripted for Dark Horse, including the Star Wars novels and X-Wing: Rogue Squadron.

He maintains a homepage at http://www.stormwolf.com/.

Info gathered from his homepage, both old and new, as well as books of his that I own. I may have misplaced a few Star Wars books, as I am not that big a fan of Star Wars. If so, /msg me...

As an aside to Langdon's write up above, "Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes"
  1. used exactly the same ruleset as "Tunnels & Trolls"
  2. is backronymed to "Mike Stackpole's Personal Effort".

MSPE was, apparently, just as good as T&T (in that the GM was entirely responsible for what happened, so long as the players agreed - which is how a RPG system should work). I never saw the rules, though - I've always wondered how he handled spells.

Mike Stackpole, in person, is a wonderful, friendly, and cheerful person. He's a witty speaker as well. I had the privledge of meeting him this past summer at con-sortium, a scifi/fantasy/gaming con in Houston, Tx. The first time i "met" him at this con, i just went to an open forum in which he spoke about his books and fielded quetions. But later, i actaully got to see him as a human being instead of just an author.

I was sitting curled up in a chair, waiting for mcc to get off a payphone. I felt a pat on my head, and a friendly "you look tired." I looked up to see Michael Stackpole standing there smiling. I blushed just a little bit, because one of the reasons i'd *gone* to the con was to meet him--he's written some of my favorite star wars books of all time. Then i just started chatting with him (and later mcc started talking too). It was slightly odd, talking to someone i'd slightly idolized just like i'd talk to anyone else. The nicest part is i think Mike could tell i kinda idolized him, and was totally cool about it.

And he told stories. Oh, did he tell stories. Two of them i recall well.

The first was a recent one... Claudia Christian from Babylon 5 was also a guest at this con. And the con staff took all their guests (about 7 invited) out for dinner and such one evening. And in the van on the way back, they passed a tatoo parlor. Someone made some joke about stopping there, and then Claudia decided she LIKED that idea. A lot. Because there was a tatoo on her foot that had faded that she wanted redone. "stop, turn the van around!" she asked the driver. And they did. The entire staff of guests for consortium sat in a shady tattoo parlor while "Ivanova" got her foot tattooed.

His second story took place some time ago. He was at Skywalker Ranch talking with lucasfilms about a new book he was working on at the time. Through a long, long chain of events he ended up staying with Mark Hamill. And Mike said his most vivid memory of that trip was sitting there in Mark's kitchen. Watching Mark bake chocolate chip cookies for his kids. Watching Luke Skywalker baking cookies. For his kids. That's probably the cutest thing i've ever heard.

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