#bob walters

[pulpsandcomics2]

The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi by Bob Walters

[oldschoolfrp]

Tristrum the ranger fights to free himself from a roper's grasping tentacles (Bob Walters, Gen Con AD&D tournament module R3: The Egg of the Phoenix, TSR/RPGA, 1982)

[k-i-l-l-e-r-b-e-e-6-9]

Bob Walters

[theoldbone]

Achelousaurus

Referenced from Bob Walters skull drawings

[sandmandaddy69]

Bob Walters

[antiqueanimals]

The Great Hunters. Meat-Eating Dinosaurs and their World. James Orville Farlow. Illustrated by Bob Walters. 1995.

[weirdlandtv]

The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi.

 Bob Walters cover art to Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction magazine (1998).

[man-creates-dinosaurs]

“The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” by Sharon N. Farber, is a short work of paleofiction originally published in the November 1988 issue of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine.

Like Crichton’s Dragon Teeth (Harper Collins, 2017) it is a fictionalized account of the Bone Wars (1977-1992). However unlike Crichton’s novel, which is historical-fiction, Farber’s story takes the paleontological feud of O.C. Marsh and Edward Drinker Cope into a decidedly sci-fi direction with the two scientists receiving notice that a family of backwoods hicks have discovered a real-life sauropod “West of the Mississippi” and are willing to sell it off to the highest bidder. Cope knows he can never outbid Marsh, who has substantially deeper pockets, and so plans to simply get to the dinosaur first, make a through examination of it, and then publish his findings before Marsh can. This actually mirrors Cope’s real-life strategy during the Bone Wars. Marsh had more money and resources for fossil finding but Cope could write faster - though doing so meant that he did often make numerous mistakes in his reports. Ultimately however the two men’s battle over the dinosaur - a fictitious species named Josaurus - leads to its destruction. W.J.T. Mitchell - who thought so highly of this story that he used the above painting by Bob Walters which originally appeared on the cover of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine as the cover of his The Last Dinosaur Book (University of Chicago Press, 1998) - wrote that “there is nothing particularly obscure about the moral of this story. Greed and ruthless competition lead to the destruction of an endangered species. The pristine wilderness is corrupted and then destroyed by the invasion of white men, modern science, and capitalism” (p. 29). These themes are the same as those commonly found in the most enduring and popular of paleofiction genres, the Lost World story, and brings to light of the exploits of real paleontologists like Marsh and Cope parallel and inspire such imaginative narratives.

Following its debut in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Sharon N. Farber’s “The Last Thunder Horse West of the Mississippi” has appeared in print two additional times, in the anthologies Dinosaurs! (Ace Books, 1990) edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois, and in Dinosaurs (Donald I. Fine, 1996) edited by Martin H. Greenberg.