[Kurtz79]

Since he might not be known to most (especially a younger audience), the author is a writer best known for many of the Choose Your Own Adventure books that were hugely successful in the 80s.

Jimmy Maher wrote about them recently https://www.filfre.net/2025/09/choose-your-own-adventure/

[isolli]

Thanks for sharing. This part resonated :)

"Today, it’s all too easy to see all of the limitations and infelicities of The Cave of Time and its successors: a book of 115 pages that had, as it proudly trumpeted on the cover, 40 possible endings meant that the sum total of any given adventure wasn’t likely to span more than about three choices if you were lucky. But to a lonely, hyper-imaginative eight-year-old, none of that mattered. I was well and truly smitten, not so much by what the book was as by what I wished it to be, by what I was able to turn it into in my mind by the sheer intensity of that wish."

[nervousvarun]

These books were incredibly important to me as an 80s kid. Was a voracious reader in general but absolutely loved these because they had replay value! I remember scouring through these on long family trips in the car to find every possible ending.

The parallels with modern video games are obvious.

[colordrops]

He's also the grandfather of David Cornswet, the actor playing Superman in the latest movie.

[mi_lk]

nice trivia

[dang]

Discussed yesterday, for anyone curious:

Choose Your Own Adventure - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45337450 - Sept 2025 (80 comments)

[jtr1]

Thank for noting this! I had no idea while I was reading the piece, but I loved those books as a kid. What a delightful connection.

[pridkett]

I was pleased that at my local toy store (yes, we still have one, The Time Machine in Manchester, CT) they carry Choose Your Own Adventure books. What’s more, last week we picked up a copy of “The Cave of Time”. So many memories of that book growing up.

[bigstrat2003]

The original headline actually said that, before it got edited out. :/