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DEP just informed me about this on IS, figured I'd post it here too. The guy that wrote a ton of the original Choose Your Own Adventure books died recently.

http://www.cyoa.com/pages/r-a-montgomery-1936-2014

Always preferred the older books since they sometimes had freakier illustrations and more graphic death descriptions. Unfortunately when they re-issued some of the old books they toned them down a bit.

I just posted about this too. Sorry, didn't see your post first. But it's a sad day for sure.

Nate

I respect Raymond.  Thanks to him, look where we all are today!  It's a shame it's his time to go, but his legacy will live on!

-Boringfirelion Address

I remember, clear as day getting shot to death in one of them...

Damn. This is pretty tragic. 

I got eaten by the loch ness monster in one...

And hung.

And getting shot... So many times did I get shot...

And I got thrown through an infinite loop.

And get eaten by a black hole...

And get vaporized...

And get made into money (Because I just couldn't help but try to find why my peanut butter went missing)...

This list could go on, and on, and on. But I want to spare you of that long list.

Haven't read them in over 20 years, but up until then I had acquired almost the entire collection (now they just gather dust in storage).  I spent most of my youth with my nose in those magical pages.

Farewell, you will be missed.

Damn. It's a sad day for the CYOA community. I vaguely remember reading Journey Under The Sea and Island of Time, (I f***ing hated Island of Time) and I recently read Space and Beyond. Space and Beyond is one of my favorites, and overall made me laugh my ass off when you had a choice to follow some guys, or not follow them, and if you choose the latter, rather than giving you a death page, it just says (Not sure if this is 100% accurate) "If you do not follow them, you are vaporized. It is The End"

Though he's not as good as Edward Packard. Edward Packard is the God of CYOA books.

One book that had a lot weirder endings was House of Danger. Death could range from getting turned into alien food to getting whipped to death by the ghost of a confederate soldier.

The most amusing ending though is when your character accidently turns himself into Ghengis Khan. It says something like:

"Oh no you made a mistake! You take it back! You don't really want to be Ghengis Khan!"

But he was badass...

I know right? I was like why the hell wouldn't I want to be Genghis Khan?

There was actually a CYOA adventure book (Probably not well known) called "Indiana Jones and The Gold of Genghis Khan". In it, you and Indy were trying to find Genghis Khan's gold. (Why the fuck would he have gold?) I never even knew of it's existence until I Googled Genghis Khan. I guess you really do learn something every day...

One death from his book was that you killed your martial arts partner and then got your head split by the master in revenge.

That, or that if you withheld, your partner would mercilessly run you through the heart.

That was pretty fun.

Funny. He my cat also died today... 

He died on Sunday, though...

WHA? Oh, yeah. That woulda been a really spiky coincidence, though.... 

Sad to hear. Don't think I read any of his particular CYOAs, but I loved the Interplanetary Spy books and, well, I like the 'genre' in general, so its unfortunate one of the modern founders has passed on.

Ah yes, the lesser known Interplanetary Spy books. Now those had some gruesome endings. Got all 12 of them.