demise, although escape from the island is possible if the correct choices are made. 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. 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”). Packard was the only CYOA author who included a recurring