Johan Robson

Who is Johan Robson?

Johan Karel Michaelsen Robson (alias: Arbeit von Spacekraft) was one of Cryo's most prolific scenario-writers.Since Cryo's untimely demise in the late nineties, many of Robson's games have been taken on by other game-producers, such as Virgin and many independent American/ Japanese international games' corporations. Although his games have been further developed and modernized, they all maintain that fascinating Robson-esque magic that no other scenario-writers have, as yet, been able to imitate.KGB is an excellent example of such a creation - a game about an organization that is long since defunct, in a country that no longer exists, but a game, nonetheless, that still holds every gamester in its death-grip, on every level, right up to its climactic conclusion. Robson was born in Holland in January 1953. In his youth he spent many years in Kitwe, Lusaka, Zambia. He now lives in Paris with his wife and two children and has become more involved in teaching the next generation of game-scenario-writers than working in the industry itself. It is a great pity that he has not been encouraged to return to produce more fantastic Robson-style games. Hopefully one day we might see a new exciting game out with those three magic words on the back its box: Arbeit von Spacekraft.Robson's work also includes a wide range of underworld literature such as 'Daingean' (1984) a fable concerning a mystical sea-monster who comes to the west-coast of Ireland to trouble the lives of fishermen and their families. The characters in the story live within the belly of the monster itself, unbeknown to them, and are the victims of their own ignorance which eventually savages their community. It is written with the usual Robsonesque irony, historical and political allusions but at the same time remains a gripping and good-hummoured romp through rural Ireland. His second endeavour was more of a series of novellas which concern the dealings of a shadowy figure by the name of 'Drake'. Drake, an investigator along the lines of a 1930-1940's Marlow is reminiscent of 'film noir' writing. Many events are only revealed in half-light or merely suggested, tantalizing peep-shows into the intriguing mysteries being resolved by the mysterious ghostly presence of Drake himself. Robson's latest works revolve around the non-realities of metafictional non-transparent and non-referential literature of late 20th century prose. 'Caps off' (1991) and 'Alone' (1995) are considered to be amongst his best work to date. However these writings are not for the faint-hearted. They are difficult reading as Robson has dispensed with plot and classical narrative styles. Robson's later work seems not to reference reality as we know it but to provide a reconstructed reality of its own with no links to logic or traditional writer-reader communication.The problem with most of Robson's work is the great difficulty of acquiring copies of it. He has a small devoted readership but he refuses to publish with mainstream publishing houses. From what I'm aware, many offers have been made and further approaches are on-going, however to date, Robson categorically refuses to make any compromises in this respect. It is as if he does not really care whether his books are read or not. Robson refuses to give interviews and tries as far as possible to remain out of view or, at least, to avoid any public scrutiny which he apparently finds 'abhorrent'.