Edward Packard (writer)

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Edward Packard
Born (1931-02-16) February 16, 1931 (age 93)
Huntington, New York, US
OccupationAuthor, writer, lawyer
Genre Adventure, interactive fiction, children's literature, poetry, essays

Edward Packard (born February 16, 1931) is an American author, creator of the Choose Your Own Adventure book concept and author of over 50 books in the series. [1] [2] [3] The genre that Packard invented, in which the reader chooses what happens, has come to be called "interactive fiction". [4] Packard wrote many other children's books as well, and is also a lawyer, essayist, and poet. He continues to write books, and blogs regularly on his website, edwardpackard.com. Born in Huntington, New York, he is a graduate of Princeton University and Columbia Law School. [5]

Contents

Packard conceived the original idea of writing interactive second-person fiction — in which the reader is the protagonist ("you are the hero") and makes choices that affect how the story unfolds — while he was thinking up bedtime stories for his children. (While telling them a story, making it up as he went along, he would enlist their help by pausing to ask them, "What do you think happened next?", and they would each have different ideas about how they wanted the story to proceed.) After he published the first three books in this format, originally called "The Adventures of You", Bantam Books offered him and his first publisher a contract for a series, rebranded and made famous as the Choose Your Own Adventure series of children's books. [6] [7]

Packard is the grandfather of actor David Corenswet.

Biography

Early career

Packard wrote the first known book of this type, Sugarcane Island, in 1969, and arranged for it to be published in 1976 by Vermont Crossroads Press, owned by Constance Cappel and Raymond A. Montgomery, Jr. Packard explains in the foreword to the book that he developed what he originally called "the adventures of you" fiction format while trying to think up interesting bedtime stories for his three children (Caroline, Andrea, and Wells). In Sugarcane Island, the shipwrecked reader travels around the titular island, making a choice about how to proceed on almost every page (for example, if a reader chooses to walk along the sandy beach, they are told to turn to page 3; if they choose to climb up the rocky hill, they must turn instead to page 5). The possible stories to choose from branch out like a tree within the book; the story that the reader follows unfolds differently depending on the choices they make. Readers confront different dangers or treasures at every turn, depending on their choices. Many of the possible endings feature an unfortunate demise, although escape from the island is possible if the correct choices are made. [8]

Choose Your Own Adventure

The Adventures of You on Sugarcane Island, and Packard's next two books in the genre, Deadwood City and The Third Planet From Altair (published in 1977 and 1978 by Lippincott), were the exact prototypes for the books in Bantam's classic Choose Your Own Adventure series, in which Packard participated as one of the main authors.

In 1969 and 1970, the William Morris Agency had submitted the book on Packard's behalf to several major publishers, all of whom had rejected it. But in 1976, Packard was able to get the book published by Vermont Crossroads Press. In its review of the book, Publishers Weekly called it "an original idea, well carried out."

When Lippincott published Packard's next two books in the same genre, Deadwood City and The Third Planet from Altair, their covers alerted readers to their unusual nature with the rubrics "Choose Your Own Adventure in the Wild West" and "Choose Your Own Adventure in Outer Space". Because at the time the format was so unusual, readers were warned at the outset not to read the book straight through, but to follow the pages corresponding to their choices.

Seeing potential in Packard's idea of an "interactive book", Bantam Books launched a series called Choose Your Own Adventure in 1979. This contact with Bantam Books was made by Constance Cappel on a flight to the Atlanta ABA Conference with Bantam’s then head of marketing, Jack Romano. (Vermont Crossroads Press, having earlier sold the rights to the series to Pocket Books, now had them transferred to Bantam.) Packard wrote the first book in the Bantam series, The Cave of Time, a time-traveling story in which the reader explores a cavern that is a portal to different eras. Both R. A. Montgomery, Packard’s original publisher at Vermont Crossroads Press, and Packard wrote many more books in the series, with Packard contributing well over 60 titles by 1998, when the series ended. [9]

Packard kept the Choose Your Own Adventure series fresh by changing genres with each title. After the time-travel story, he wrote a spy story, a space opera, a western, a mystery, a science fiction story, and a fantasy. In one of his books, Hyperspace, Packard himself appears as a character (a case of "self-insertion"). [10]

Packard was the only CYOA author who included a recurring character in many of his books: a scientist, Dr. Nera Vivaldi, frequently appeared in the role of a friend to the reader. Seemingly ageless, she appears in stories set in many different time periods, including those that take the reader into outer space. In Hyperspace, Dr. Vivaldi breaches the fourth wall by acknowledging that she is a fictional character whom the reader may recognize from having read other CYOA books. [11]

Beginning in 2012, Simon & Schuster released revised and expanded print versions of selected Packard CYOA stories: Through the Black Hole, Return to the Cave of Time and The Forbidden Castle, under the trademark "U-Ventures".

The six books in the Space Hawks series, which focuses on Earth's defense against space aliens, were published in mainland China in 2004 in anticipation of China's first crewed space mission. [12]

Book applications

In 2010, Packard started a new company called U-Ventures, which began releasing Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style applications for iPhone and iPad based on some of Packard's books. The first title, "Return to the Cave of Time", was released in August with more titles planned shortly after. [13]

Related Research Articles

Interactive fiction (IF) is software simulating environments in which players use text commands to control characters and influence the environment. Works in this form can be understood as literary narratives, either in the form of Interactive narratives or Interactive narrations. These works can also be understood as a form of video game, either in the form of an adventure game or role-playing game. In common usage, the term refers to text adventures, a type of adventure game where the entire interface can be "text-only", however, graphical text adventure games, where the text is accompanied by graphics still fall under the text adventure category if the main way to interact with the game is by typing text. Some users of the term distinguish between interactive fiction, known as "Puzzle-free", that focuses on narrative, and "text adventures" that focus on puzzles.

<i>Choose Your Own Adventure</i> Book series

Choose Your Own Adventure is a series of children's gamebooks where each story is written from a second-person point of view, with the reader assuming the role of the protagonist and making choices that determine the main character's actions and the plot's outcome. The series was based upon a concept created by Edward Packard and originally published by Constance Cappel's and R. A. Montgomery's Vermont Crossroads Press as the "Adventures of You" series, starting with Packard's Sugarcane Island in 1976.

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories, presenting the story in its entirety. It is optional in most other storytelling formats, such as films, plays, television shows and video games, in which the story can be conveyed through other means, like dialogue between characters or visual action.

A gamebook is a work of printed fiction that allows the reader to participate in the story by making choices. The narrative branches along various paths, typically through the use of numbered paragraphs or pages. Each narrative typically does not follow paragraphs in a linear or ordered fashion. Gamebooks are sometimes called choose your own adventure books or CYOA after the influential Choose Your Own Adventure series originally published by US company Bantam Books. Gamebooks influenced hypertext fiction.

Time Machine is a series of children's novels published in the United States by Bantam Books from 1984 to 1989, similar to their more successful Choose Your Own Adventure line of "interactive" novels. Each book was written in the second person, with the reader choosing how the story should progress. They were designed by Byron Preiss Visual Publications.

Shannon Gilligan is an author of interactive fiction and computer games.

<i>Give Yourself Goosebumps</i> Childrens horror gamebook series

Give Yourself Goosebumps is a children's horror fiction gamebook series by R. L. Stine. After the success of the original Goosebumps books, Scholastic Press decided to create this spin-off series in 1995. In fact, Stine had written gamebooks in previous years.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Hyperspace</span> Faster-than-light travel in science fiction

In science fiction, hyperspace is a concept relating to higher dimensions as well as parallel universes and a faster-than-light (FTL) method of interstellar travel. In its original meaning, the term hyperspace was simply a synonym for higher-dimensional space. This usage was most common in 19th-century textbooks and is still occasionally found in academic and popular science texts, for example, Hyperspace (1994). Its science fiction usage originated in the magazine Amazing Stories Quarterly in 1931 and within several decades it became one of the most popular tropes of science fiction, popularized by its use in the works of authors such as Isaac Asimov and E. C. Tubb, and media franchises such as Star Wars.

Raymond Almiran Montgomery Jr. was an American author and key figure in the Choose Your Own Adventure interactive children's book series.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Bantam Books</span> Publisher from the USA

Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by parent company Random House, a subsidiary of Penguin Random House; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine, with funding from Grosset & Dunlap and Curtis Publishing Company. It has since been purchased several times by companies including National General, Carl Lindner's American Financial and, most recently, Bertelsmann, which in 1986 purchased what had grown to become the Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing group. Bertelsmann purchased Random House in 1998, and in 1999 merged the Bantam and Dell imprints to become the Bantam Dell publishing imprint. In 2010, the Bantam Dell division was consolidated with Ballantine Books to form the Ballantine Bantam Dell group within Random House. By no later than February 2015, Bantam Books had re-emerged as a stand-alone imprint within Random House; as of 2023, it continues to publish as the Bantam imprint, again grouped in a renamed Ballantine division within Random House.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nonlinear gameplay</span> Gameplay involving unordered sequences

A video game with nonlinear gameplay presents players with challenges that can be completed in a number of different sequences. Each player may take on only some of the challenges possible, and the same challenges may be played in a different order. Conversely, a video game with linear gameplay will confront a player with a fixed sequence of challenges: every player faces every challenge and has to overcome them in the same order.

Fiction writing is the composition of non-factual prose texts. Fictional writing often is produced as a story meant to entertain or convey an author's point of view. The result of this may be a short story, novel, novella, screenplay, or drama, which are all types of fictional writing styles. Different types of authors practice fictional writing, including novelists, playwrights, short story writers, radio dramatists and screenwriters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Chooseco</span> American publishing company

Chooseco LLC is an American publishing company based in Waitsfield, Vermont. Founded in 2003 by author R. A. Montgomery and publisher Shannon Gilligan, the company primarily releases reissues of Montgomery's Choose Your Own Adventure series of gamebooks.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Be an Interplanetary Spy</span> Book series

Be An Interplanetary Spy is a series of twelve interactive children's science fiction books designed by Byron Preiss Visual Publications and first published by Bantam Books from 1983 to 1985.

Fantasy Forest is a series of ten gamebooks published by TSR, Inc. from 1983 to 1984. The books are works of children's literature; eight of them are set in the fantasy world of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game created by TSR, Inc., and two are set in TSR's science fiction world of Star Frontiers. They have been compared to other gamebook series, such as Choose Your Own Adventure or Endless Quest.

<i>Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman</i> 2006 American film

Choose Your Own Adventure: The Abominable Snowman is a 2006 animated interactive DVD movie based on the Choose Your Own Adventure gamebook of the same name by R. A. Montgomery. Viewers make choices every 3–6 minutes using their DVD player remote control to determine what happens. It was released on DVD on July 25, 2006.

An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based media, such as literature and film, encompassing a wide variety of genres. Most adventure games are designed for a single player, since the emphasis on story and character makes multiplayer design difficult. Colossal Cave Adventure is identified by Rick Adams as the first such adventure game, first released in 1976, while other notable adventure game series include Zork, King's Quest, Monkey Island, Syberia, and Myst.

<i>Consider the Consequences!</i> 1930 American interactive romantic novel

Consider the Consequences! is a romantic novel in the form of an interactive novel or gamebook by the American writing partnership of Doris Webster (1885–1967) and Mary Alden Hopkins (1876–1960). It is the earliest known gamebook, and has 43 different endings.

References

  1. ↑ Andres, Tommy, & Tobin, Ariana, "How Choose Your Own Adventure Was Born." Marketplace (Minnesota Public Radio). April 11 2014.
  2. ↑ Rosen, Jake, "A Brief History of Choose Your Own Adventure." Mental Floss. April 10, 2014.
  3. ↑ Abramovitch, Seth, "Meet the 91-Year-Old Mastermind Behind 'Choose Your Own Adventure.'" Hollywoodreporter.com, November 15, 2022.
  4. ↑ Abramovitch, Seth "Meet the 91-Year-Old Mastermind Behind 'Choose Your Own Adventure.'" Hollywoodreporter.com, November 15, 2022.
  5. ↑ Simon and Schuster: About the Author. Retrieved May 22, 2020.
  6. ↑ Tommy Andres, Ariana Tobin (April 11, 2014). "How Choose Your Own Adventure Was Born".
  7. ↑ Rosen, Jake, "A Brief History of Choose Your Own Adventure." "Mental Floss." April 10, 2014.
  8. ↑ "From law books to kids' books". The Palm Beach Post. Associated Press. October 15, 1981. Archived from the original on April 5, 2020. Retrieved March 31, 2016.
  9. ↑ "Meet the author of 'Choose your own adventure' stories". Lakeland Ledger. March 27, 1984.
  10. ↑ Hendrix, Grady "Choose Your Own Adventure Books: How the Cave of Time Taught Us to Love Interactive Entertainment." Slate. February 2011.
  11. ↑ Hendrix, Grady "Choose Your Own Adventure Books: How the Cave of Time Taught Us to Love Interactive Entertainment." Slate. February 2011.
  12. ↑ Edward Packard (August 21, 2012). Through the Black Hole . Simon and Schuster. pp.  147–. ISBN   978-1-4424-3426-4.
  13. ↑ "'Choose Your Own Adventure' Gets An iMakeover". August 16, 2010.
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