The Burrow - Gordon Houghton's biography page

Welcome to my personal pages. Click on one of the links on the left to find out more about me, or read on for my background and interests.

I was born in 1965 in Blackburn, Lancashire. My dad was the sixth of eight children, my mum the first of seven, and I have one (older) brother, who is much funnier than me. If you'd like to see some pictures of my family, click here.

I went to primary and grammar school in Blackburn, then took a three-year course in English at Magdalen College, Oxford, where I met my partner, Kati. After many years of infertility, we now have three children, Sam, Sophie, and Benjamin, all conceived through IVF.

After college, I joined Zzap!64, a games magazine dedicated to the Commodore 64. I eventually became editor, and blah blah blah. It was fun. Since then I have been involved in The Word Factory. This began as a freelance writing company, but now includes onscreen editing, help text generation, product testing, translation, project management, and DTP.

I have had two novels published. The Dinner Party was written in 1992, and published in 1998 (Le Dîner, a French translation, appeared in 2003). Three other novels were completed in the intervening years: one of these, The Apprentice, was published by Anchor in July 1999, and (as Damned if You Do) by Picador USA in July 2000; it has since been translated into Russian and Italian. I've also written articles on self-injury for The Guardian and The Richmond Review, as well as book reviews for The New Statesman, and (between 1985 and 1995) computer game reviews for just about everyone, which is an exaggeration.

These are a few of my favourite things:

Films: Monsieur Hulot's Holiday, The Party, Alien, Burnt By The Sun, Festen, Amelie, Mon Oncle, Annie Hall, The Seventh Seal, Jaws, The Empire Strikes Back, Secrets and Lies, Crimes and Misdemeanours, To Live, Casablanca, Duck Soup, Singin' In The Rain, Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Rollerball, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Sound of Music, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, J-Horror, The Lives of Others, REC, Memento, Dekalog, Come and See, Rope, Rear Window, Vertigo...
Anime: Death Note, Monster, Mushi-Shi, Cowboy Bebop, Ghost in the Shell, and most of Studio Ghibli's output.
Computer games: The Sentinel, Dropzone, Spindizzy, Thrust (Commodore 64); Dungeon Master, Speedball, Kick Off 2 (Amiga); Oids, Super Sprint (Atari ST); Chuckie Egg (MSX); Scramble, Robotron, Defender (arcades); Warcraft I-III, RollerCoaster Tycoon, Planescape: Torment (PC); Zelda, Ice Climber (NES); Dragon Spirit, Gunhed, Galaga 90 (PC Engine); Thunderforce 2, Hellfire, Dr Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine (Megadrive); Tetris, Qix, Soko-Ban (Gameboy); Radiant Silvergun, Soukyugurentai, Battle Garegga, Parodius Da!, Bomberman (Saturn); Super Marioworld, Super MarioKart, A Link to the Past (SNES); Zelda: Ocarina of Time, Banjo-Kazooie, Paper Mario (N64); Rez, Border Down, Under Defeat (Dreamcast); Metroid Prime, Zelda: Wind-Waker, Ikaruga, Resident Evil 4 (Gamecube); OutRun 2 (X-Box); Dodonpachi Dai-ou-jou, Espgaluda, Gradius V, Katamari Damacy, Okami, ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, Dragon Quest VIII (PS2), Super Mario Galaxy, New Super Mario Bros Wii, Mario Kart, House of the Dead: Overkill, (Wii); Everybody's Golf on the PSP and loads of DS games.
Television: Bilko, ER, Frasier, Star Trek: TNG, Columbo, Curb Your Enthusiasm, Six Feet Under, Deadwood, Battlestar Galactica, The Wire, live footy, not-live footy.
Music: How Soon Is Now? (The Smiths); Lounge Act, Where Did You Sleep Last Night?, Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana); No Surprises, Street Spirit, How To Disappear Completely, The Pyramid Song and the whole of In Rainbows :-) (Radiohead); Hold Tight (Fats Waller), A Day in The Life (The Beatles), Small Blue Thing (Suzanne Vega), The End (The Doors), Xanadu, Afterimage, Closer to the Heart (Rush), Breathe Me (Sia), and about a thousand others.
Art: Red Painting (1961), by Franz Kline.
Books: Breakfast of Champions (Kurt Vonnegut); The Burrow, Metamorphosis (Kafka); Momo (Michael Ende); Passage, Doomsday Book (Connie Willis); Neil Gaiman's Sandman library; Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (Edward Albee); T. S. Eliot; and all the miserable Anglo-Saxon poets I read at college.