Rob Swigart (born January 7, 1941) is an American novelist, poet, short story writer, futurist, and archaeology scholar best known for his satirical work, archaeology writing, science fiction, and interactive novel computer game, Portal (Activision, 1986).
His research, teaching, and archaeological writing focus on ancient societies and the 6,000–8,000 years during which humans adopted agriculture, as well as the consequences of this switch from a nomadic hunter-gatherer lifestyle to farming.
[12] During his time at ELO, Swigart participated in the Preservation, Archiving, Dissemination Project, an initiative that considered how to move electronic literature from defunct platforms to current technologies.
[13][14] He also published interactive multimedia novella About Time[15] and other hypertext fiction and poetry, including short story “Seeking.
[18] Rob Swigart published three satire novels in the late 1970s: Little America (1977), A.K.A./A Cosmic Fable (1978), and The Time Trip (1979).
Swigart's satirical work has been called avant-garde[19] and postmodern,[20] as well as absurd and iconoclastic[21] for its unconventional style and content.
A.K.A./A Cosmic Fable was nominated for the BSFA Best Novel Award in 1979, alongside J. G. Ballard’s The Unlimited Dream Company, Tom Reamy’s Blind Voices, Thomas M. Disch’s On Wings of Song, and Arthur C. Clarke’s The Fountains of Paradise.
The user plays as an unnamed astronaut who returns from a failed 100-year voyage, only to find that humans have disappeared from Earth.