Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦

@michaelastackpole

Award-winning writer and game designer. Author of the New York Times bestselling Rogue Squadron and I, Jedi (among 60+ others). and

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Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· 17d

Describe your Bluesky account with a single image

the imagine is of a clean toilet with a toilet paper rose on it, and another rose on the toilet paper itself.

Beautiful, and a metaphor for something. And I really like the reflection.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· 18d

Thanks to Bryan Young for putting together this nifty schedule of where I'll be at Gencon next week!

The image is of my schedule at Gencon. Most of the time I will be at the Catalyst Game Labs booth, or in panels with the Writers Symposium. The schedule is:

Thursday, 5 pm, Character creation panel, Marriott Ballroom 3
Friday, 2pm, Book signing at the Catalyst Booth
Friday, 3pm, Writing BattleTech and Shadowrun, Marriott BRM 2
Saturday, 11am, Story 101 Marriott Ballroom 2
Saturday, 2pm, Book signing at the Catalyst Booth
Saturday, 5pm, Story 201: Breaking the rules, Marriott BRM 2
Saturday, 7pm, Masters and Minions, Hall A, CGL HQ
Sunday, Noon, Read and Critique Marriott BRM 1 ($14)
Sunday, 2pm, Book signing w/ Bryan Young, Catalyst Booth

I hope to see you there!

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· 19d

You wake up in the last TV Show you watched. This is your life now. Where are you? (In an undisclosed location, doing important work for an Uncle.)

The image shows a promo picture for the TV show The Man From U.N.C.L.E., with Napoleon Solo on the left and Ilya Kuriakin on the right, played by Robert Vaughn and David McCallum respectively. I've been rewatching the old episodes, since, when I was a kid, I only ever got to watch a couple dozen. They're great fun. so I would be living anywhere and everywhere UNCLE is called upon to stop petty dictators and THRUSH from world domination. And I have a very cool theme song.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· 23d

My proposed Minister for AI

This is the cover of an issue of the old Gold Key comic Magnus Robot Fighter. It came out in the early 1960s. I recall being fascinated by the story of a man raised by a robot to destroy robots. It was kind of an SF Tarzan story, with Magnus fighting the scourge of robots that were not the best thing humanity had brought upon itself.

The image itself shows Magnus, in red, smacking the crap out of a robot, while a beautiful woman cowers in fear. What can I say. It was the early 60s. I was but a wee child.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· 25d

Let's Settle This Now #283: No. No, they could not have met. They are both MAKE BELIEVE! Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

The image is of a tile which shows a depiction of Odysseus on the left and Moses on the right, with the caption "Could Moses have met Odysseus?"

While a provocative premise, which invokes the need for detective skills and language knowledge, and literary acumen to determine if both characters overlapped in the timeline, and then whether or not their journeys could possibly intersected within their lifespans. One of those fun speculative conversations you could have between intellectually nerdy friends some lazy afternoon in a cheap bar drinking warm beer and eating soggy french fries so you can convince yourself that you've not wasted four years of your life getting a liberal arts degree when you should have just gone for voc-ed training so you could fix cars.

The answer to the intriguing question is simple: NO.

No, they could not have met.

They are make believe, in the same way that Kermit the Frog and the Martian Manhunter are make believe. Sure, they're both green and not big fans of fire, but they DO. NOT. EXIST. Therefore, they never could have met.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Jul 11

Me: Here's a pic or me at the zoo this morning, cosplaying (badly) a penguin. Her: Were you robbing the place? Me: Not gonna say one way or another. But in an unrelated inquiry, what do you feed otters?

A picture of me at the Phoenix Zoo on the morning o f July 11th, standing on a pile of shaved ice/snow (kind of the Velveeta of snow) for a summer snow party for zoo visitors. (Roughly 6am in Phoenix, where it is already beastly hot.)

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Jun 21

Its Juneteenth. Post your favorite Black fictional character. Imaro, from Charles R. Saunders.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Jun 19

Dubious distinction to be listed, but solidly circumstantial evidence of widespread theft of my work:

The graphic comes from "In the Weights" which is a site which searched AI databases for mentions of the person named. This indicates that I am in the 2% of names mentioned. I personally find this disturbing because, at the same time, another Michael A. Stackpole who is, apparently in state government in Illinois, placed only in the top 5%. This would indicate that LLMs are largely weighted toward works of fiction (which they've stolen) and yet are being consulted on matters that have nothing to do with fiction. Plus, and I say this as someone who regularly indulges their personal sense of fancy to create magickal and far future worlds, that science fiction and fantasy fiction, because it is based on magick and technology which does not exist (like hyperdrives and man-portable energy weapons) has very little application to real world problems.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· May 23

Most authors I know had a book they read that made them say to themselves, "I can write a novel better than this." Quote post with the novel that did that to you. Mine was:

This is the cover of the novel Sword and the Sorcerer. It was written by Norman Winski based on the movie's screenplay. Writing a novel based on a screenplay has a lot of complications, as I know from writing the novelization of Jason Momoa's Conan movie. Being a big fan of Robert E. Howard, I felt insulted on his behalf when I read this book. When I put it down, I told myself I could do better.

The illustration on the cover looks like a Boris cover, with a wizard in the background, a serpent in the foreground, the half-naked barbarian hero to the left and a half-naked woman to the right. I'm pretty sure the illustration was why I read it because I have never seen the movie.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· May 5

My two wolves:

Lucifer Morningstar, as played by Tom Ellis

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· May 1

Can you imagine what this would be if we were NOT winning the war with Iran?

This is a snapshot of the price of a gallon of gas in Scottsdale, AZ (Granite Reef and McDonald). The price is $5.19 (and 9/10) per gallon.

Imagine what it would be if we were NOT winning the war with Iran.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Apr 30

I've gotten a lot of new followers of late, so I wanted to post an image indicative of what I do. These are 26 of the 70+ novels I've written. (One volume here is a 2 in 1).

The image shows a selections of my novels all arranged on stair steps in no particular order:

Top Row (8 titles) Conan, Isard's Revenge, Eyes of Silver, I, Jedi; A Gathering Evil, Evil Ascending, Evil Triumphant, Talion: Revenant

Next Row (6 titles) Warrior: En Garde, Warrior: Riposte, Warrior: Coupe, A Secret Atlas, Cartomancy, The New World

Next Row (4 Titles) Mysterious Ways, Fortress Draconis, When Dragons Rage, The Grand Crusade

Bottom Row (7 Titles) Wolf & Raven, Voljin (World of Warcraft), Dark Tide Onslaught & Ruin, In Hero Years... I'm Dead, Tricknomancy, Dark Souls: Masque of Vindication, Perfectly Dead.

These books are 26 of the over 70 I've had published since 1988, when my first two came out (Warrior: Engarde and Warrior: Riposte). This is about an even mix of tie-ins and original books. I also write tons of shorter work.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Apr 14

I love living in the future. Traveled 2500 miles in 5 hours. Took a robot car home from the airport. Arrived to a meal I ordered in the car and had delivered to my house at the same time I got there.

This is a wonderful pizza from Niteowl in Phoenix. It is huge (I'll be eating off it for the rest of the week). It is a meat lovers, with sausage, pepperoni, ham, bacon and more sausage. thin crust, but not terribly crispy, and tastes great cold, too. Plus instead of the little plastic thing to keep the box lid off the cheese, they use a garlic dinner roll! Brilliance.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Mar 25

And finally three other results because, why not: Sure

Screen shot of an AI Detector letting me know I am, alas, human. Or, at least, I write like it.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Mar 25

Nice to see I'm going to be able to blend in with our machine overlords... Second result:

Screen shot showing AI detection results on my fiction, in this case my being 38% human and 62 percent AI...

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Mar 25

I deliberately chose a weird sample: the opening of my BattleTech Gothic story, which I styled after Wuthering Heights because, well, Gothic. Here's the first result:

Screen shot of an AI detector rating a passage of my fiction (artisinal fiction) in which it is rated 7% human, 93% AI.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Mar 4

Please take a look and invest in your writing career. (And Share, please, so we can get the word out.)

The image is a graphic showing pictures of Bryan Young, Michael A. Stackpole and Chantelle Osman, advertising "World of Wordcraft," which is a weekend of writing seminars conducts online for anyone who wants to learn to write, or to level up their writing. Workshops will be conducted via Zoom. It's going to be really great. Bryan, Chantelle and I have taught writing all around the world, literally, and have students who have gone on to publish short stories and novels. It is an opportunity you don't want to miss.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Feb 25

Cruise Director HVAC Tech Talk Show Host Televangelist

Woodcut of a skeleton with a femur and shield going toe to toe with a renaissance warrior with a great sword in a battle field with lots of dead bodies; also mountains in the background. The text above says "What are the four core character classes?" Below it says "Wrong Answers Only." The really wild thing in the illustration, though, is the warrior's codpiece, which is shaped/styled to look very much like female genitalia. Not sure if this was a joke--and we all know artists who would do that on a whim--or is representative of what some guys went into combat to protect their dangly bits.

Michael A. Stackpole 🇺🇦@michaelastackpole· Feb 18

While musing on Irony, I scroll down to this juxtaposition of quotes and posts. Enjoy. (Note: not a comment on the post quote, just Homan's image.) (Note: I did vent in the Alt Text, if you want a giggle.)