# Bill Fawcett (writer)

William B. Fawcett (born May 13, 1947) 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.

## 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.$^{:166}$ 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).$^{:166}$ 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).$^{:166}$ 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.$^{:120,167}$ Fawcett and Jordan Weisman designed the robot arena fighting game Combots (1983) for FASA.$^{:121}$
Fawcett produced the Crossroads books (1987–1988), a series of licensed gamebooks published by Tor.$^{:168}$ He also authored the short-lived SwordQuest gamebooks series. He edited the book The War Years 1: The Far Stars War (1990). 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). 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).$^{:278}$
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.

## Works

Fawcett and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro write mystery novels together under the pen name Quinn Fawcett. 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.

### As writer

* Cold Cash Warrior: Combat Command in the World of Robert Asprin's Cold Cash War (with Robert Asprin) (1989)

#### 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
* You Said What?
* How To Lose A Battle
* You Did What? Mad Plans and Great Historical Disasters (with Brian Thomsen) (2004)

#### 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)
* Gods of War (1992)
* The Fleet anthology series (with David Drake)
** The Fleet: The Fleet (1987) aka The Fleet, Book 1
** The Fleet: Counter Attack (1988) aka The Fleet, Book 2
** The Fleet: Breakthrough (1989) aka The Fleet, Book 3
** The Fleet: Sworn Allies (1990) aka The Fleet, Book 4
** The Fleet: Total war (1990) aka The Fleet, Book 5
** The Fleet: Crisis (1991) aka The Fleet, Book 6
* Battlestations anthology series — sequel to The Fleet anthology series
** Battlestation (with David Drake) (1992); aka Battlestation I
** Battlestation II (with Christopher Stasheff) (1993); aka Battlestation: Vanguard
** 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)
* Making Contact: A Serious Handbook for Locating and Communicating With Extraterrestrials (1998)
* The Warmasters (2002)
* Masters of Fantasy (with Brian Thomsen) (2004)
* We Three Dragons: A Trio of Dragon Tales for the Holiday Season (2005)
* The Battle for Azeroth: Adventure, Alliance and Addiction in the 'World of Warcraft' (2006)
* Liftport: Opening Space to Everyone (2006)
* Nebula Awards Showcase 2010 (2010)
* Mooney, J. E. & Bill Fawcett (eds.). Shadows of the New Sun : stories in honor of Gene Wolfe. Tor.