Austin Grossman

Last updated
Austin Grossman
Austin grossman.png
Grossman in 2019
Born (1969-06-26) June 26, 1969 (age 55)
Education Harvard University (BA)
Relatives

Austin Seth Grossman (born June 26, 1969) [1] is an American author and video game designer. He has contributed to The New York Times [2] and has written for a number of video games, most notably Deus Ex and Dishonored .

Contents

Life

Grossman was born in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1991 [3] and pursued a graduate degree in English literature at the University of California, Berkeley. [4] He is the twin brother of writer Lev Grossman and brother of sculptor Bathsheba Grossman, and the son of the poet Allen Grossman and the novelist Judith Grossman.[ citation needed ]

Grossman's father was born Jewish [5] and his mother was raised Anglican. [6]

Grossman started his career in the game industry by replying to a classified ad in The Boston Globe in May 1992 that led him to Looking Glass Studios, where in System Shock he pioneered the audio log technique for storytelling in narrative games. Grossman has worked with DreamWorks Interactive, Ion Storm, and Crystal Dynamics, and served as Director of Game Design and Interactive Story at Magic Leap until April 2020. He currently teaches writing and narrative design at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. [7]

Novels

Grossman is the author of the novel Soon I Will Be Invincible , which was published by Pantheon Books in 2007. [4] His second book, entitled YOU , debuted in April 2013. [8] His third novel, Crooked , came out in July 2015. [9] In 2021, he co-wrote an original audiobook for Audible called New Found Land: The Long Haul with Neal Stephenson and Sean Stewart, which the trio had developed as a story for AR company Magic Leap. [10] In June 2024, Grossman published his fourth novel, Fight Me . [11]

Works

Books

Audio Original

Short stories

Games

YearTitleDeveloper
1993 Ultima Underworld II: Labyrinth of Worlds LookingGlass Technologies
1994 System Shock
1995 Flight Unlimited
1996 Terra Nova: Strike Force Centauri
1998 Trespasser DreamWorks Interactive
2000 Deus Ex Ion Storm
2001 Clive Barker's Undying EA Los Angeles
Battle Realms Liquid Entertainment
2004 Thief: Deadly Shadows Ion Storm
2006 Tomb Raider: Legend Crystal Dynamics
2008 Frontlines: Fuel of War Kaos Studios
N-Fusion Interactive
2012 Dishonored Arkane Studios
2016 Dishonored 2

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neal Stephenson</span> American speculative fiction writer (born 1959)

Neal Town Stephenson is an American writer known for his works of speculative fiction. His novels have been categorized as science fiction, historical fiction, cyberpunk and baroque.

<i>Snow Crash</i> 1992 novel by Neal Stephenson

Snow Crash is a science fiction novel by the American writer Neal Stephenson, published in 1992. Like many of Stephenson's novels, its themes include history, linguistics, anthropology, archaeology, religion, computer science, politics, cryptography, memetics, and philosophy.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kim Deitch</span> American cartoonist

Kim Deitch is an American cartoonist who was an important figure in the underground comix movement of the 1960s, remaining active in the decades that followed with a variety of books and comics, sometimes using the pseudonym Fowlton Means.

<i>The Baroque Cycle</i> Novel series by Neal Stephenson

The Baroque Cycle is a series of novels by American writer Neal Stephenson. It was published in three volumes containing eight books in 2003 and 2004. The story follows the adventures of a sizable cast of characters living amidst some of the central events of the late 17th and early 18th centuries in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Central America. Despite featuring a literary treatment consistent with historical fiction, Stephenson has characterized the work as science fiction, because of the presence of some anomalous occurrences and the work's particular emphasis on themes relating to science and technology. The sciences of cryptology and numismatics feature heavily in the series, as they do in some of Stephenson's other works.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob Thomas (writer)</span> Young adult novel author, television program writer

Robert James Thomas is an American author, producer, director and screenwriter. He created the television series Veronica Mars, co-developed 90210 (2008–2013), and co-created Party Down and iZombie (2015–2019).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lev Grossman</span> American novelist and journalist

Lev Grossman is an American novelist and journalist who wrote The Magicians Trilogy: The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), and The Magician's Land (2014). He was the book critic and lead technology writer at Time magazine from 2002 to 2016. His recent work includes the children's book The Silver Arrow and the screenplay for the film The Map of Tiny Perfect Things, based on his short story.

<i>Dog Soldiers</i> (novel) 1974 novel by Robert Stone

Dog Soldiers is a novel by Robert Stone, published by Houghton Mifflin in 1974. The story features American journalist John Converse, a Vietnam correspondent during the war, Merchant Marine sailor Ray Hicks, Converse's wife Marge, and their involvement in a heroin deal gone bad. It shared the 1975 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction with The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams. Dog Soldiers was named by Time magazine one of the 100 best English-language novels, 1923 to 2005.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Scott Lynch</span> American fantasy writer (born 1978)

Scott Lynch is an American fantasy author, best known for the Gentleman Bastard Sequence series of novels. His first novel, The Lies of Locke Lamora, was purchased by Orion Books in August 2004 and published in June 2006 under the Gollancz imprint in the United Kingdom and under the Bantam imprint in the United States. The next two novels in the series, Red Seas Under Red Skies and The Republic of Thieves, were published in 2007 and 2013, respectively. The planned fourth of seven books in the series will be The Thorn of Emberlain.

<i>Absurdistan</i> (novel) 2006 novel by Gary Shteyngart

Absurdistan is a 2006 novel by Gary Shteyngart. It chronicles the adventures of Misha Vainberg, the 325-pound son of the 1,238th-richest man in Russia, as he struggles to return to his true love in the South Bronx.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Yu</span> American writer (born 1976)

Charles Chowkai Yu is an American writer. He is the author of the novels How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe and Interior Chinatown, as well as the short-story collections Third Class Superhero and Sorry Please Thank You. In 2007 he was named a "5 under 35" honoree by the National Book Foundation. In 2020, Interior Chinatown won the National Book Award for fiction.

<i>Then We Came to the End</i> 2007 novel by Joshua Ferris

Then We Came to the End is the first novel by Joshua Ferris. It was released by Little, Brown and Company on March 1, 2007. A satire of the American workplace, it is similar in tone to Don DeLillo's Americana, even borrowing DeLillo's first line for its title.

<i>Soon I Will Be Invincible</i> A novel by Austin Grossman, published by Pantheon Books and released on June 5, 2007

Soon I Will Be Invincible is a novel by Austin Grossman, published by Pantheon Books and released on June 5, 2007. The novel uses two alternating first person narratives—the first told from the point of view of Fatale, a female cyborg recruited by the superhero group The New Champions as they investigate the disappearance of a superhero named CoreFire. The other narrative is told from the point of view of Dr. Impossible, a supervillain possessing super-human strength and intellect who suffers from Malign Hypercognition Disorder. The plot follows Impossible's thirteenth attempt to take over the world after escaping from prison.

<i>The Magicians</i> (Grossman novel) 2009 fantasy novel by Lev Grossman

The Magicians is a new adult fantasy novel by the American author Lev Grossman, published in 2009 by Viking Press. It tells the story of Quentin Coldwater, a young man who discovers and attends a secret college of magic in New York. The novel received critical acclaim and was followed by a sequel, The Magician King, in 2011 and a third novel, The Magician's Land, in 2014.

<i>The Mongoliad</i> Fictional narrative by Neal Stephenson and Greg Bear

The Mongoliad is a collaborative work of transmedia historical adventure fiction by a group known as the Subutai Corporation which was founded by Neal Stephenson and others. Set in the Foreworld Saga, the story was originally released in a serialized format online, and via a series of iOS and Android apps from 2010 until 2012. It was restructured and re-edited for a definitive edition published by 47North in multiple volumes in 2012 as The Mongoliad. Fan-submitted Foreworld stories were published via Amazon's Kindle Worlds imprint starting in 2013.

<i>Codex</i> (novel) 2004 novel by Lev Grossman

Codex is a thriller novel by Lev Grossman, first published in 2004 by Harcourt Books.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Magic Leap</span> American augmented reality hardware manufacturer

Magic Leap, Inc. is an American technology company that released a head-mounted augmented reality display, called Magic Leap One, which superimposes 3D computer-generated imagery over real world objects. It is attempting to construct a light-field chip using silicon photonics.

The Magicians trilogy is the common name for a series of fantasy novels written by Lev Grossman, including The Magicians (2009), The Magician King (2011), and The Magician's Land (2014). The novels are contemporary fantasy and follow a group of young magicians as they are admitted to a college for magic and then navigate their young adulthood. The trilogy was adapted for television and ran for 5 seasons on Syfy; it was also adapted as a comic book.

LitRPG, short for literary role-playing game, is a literary genre combining the conventions of computer RPGs with science-fiction and fantasy novels. The term was introduced in 2013. In LitRPG, game-like elements form an essential part of the story, and visible RPG statistics are a significant part of the reading experience. This distinguishes the genre from novels that tie in with a game, like those set in the world of Dungeons & Dragons; books that are actual games, such as the choose-your-own-adventure Fighting Fantasy type of publication; or games that are literarily described, like MUDs and interactive fiction. Typically, the main character in a LitRPG novel is consciously interacting with the game or game-like world and attempting to progress within it.

<i>The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O.</i> 2017 novel by Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland

The Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O. is a science fiction novel by American writers Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland, published in 2017. A secret U.S. government agency known as the Department of Diachronic Operations (D.O.D.O.) attempts to change history through the use of magic. Stephenson and Galland had previously written together on The Mongoliad.

<i>Crooked</i> (novel) 2015 novel by Austin Grossman

Crooked is a novel by author Austin Grossman, published in 2015 by Mulholland Books. It is a cosmic horror fantasy and secret history of the Cold War and the Watergate scandal, narrated by a fictionalized Richard Nixon.

References

  1. "Grossman, Austin, 1969–" [ permanent dead link ]. Library of Congress Authorities. Retrieved 2014-07-27.
  2. Grossman, Austin (2007-03-17). "Star-Spangled Schlemiel". The New York Times.
  3. Grossman, Austin. "Soon I Will be Invincible". www.penguin.co.uk. Archived from the original on 2019-12-09. Retrieved 2018-12-04.
  4. 1 2 "Soon I Will Be Invincible". Catalog. Pantheon Books . Retrieved 2009-04-29.
  5. Allison Gaudet Yarrow (September 6, 2011). "Lev Grossman Writes Fantasy Novels Even a Grown-Up Can Love". Forward.
  6. Bethanne Patrick (August 16, 2011). "The Writer's Life: Portrait of the Artist: Lev Grossman". Shelf Awareness.
  7. https://www.linkedin.com/in/austingrossman/details/experience/ [ self-published source ]
  8. "YOU". Catalog. Mulholland Books . Retrieved 2013-05-24.
  9. "Crooked - Hachette Book Group". www.hachettebookgroup.com. Archived from the original on 2016-04-19. Retrieved 2016-04-06.
  10. "Neal Stephenson & Co. turn failed Magic Leap AR project into an Audible drama". Venture Beat. 10 June 2021. Retrieved 15 June 2024.
  11. Fight Me. Penguin Books. 23 May 2024. Retrieved 2024-06-15.{{cite book}}: |work= ignored (help)