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WORK TITLE: Building Heaven
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE: http://www.baitshop.org/
CITY: Somerville
STATE: MA
COUNTRY: United States
NATIONALITY:
http://newenglandscreenwriters.com/
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Married.
EDUCATION:University of Massachusetts, M.A.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Author.
AWARDS:Daytime Emmy, 2008, for Cash Cab.
WRITINGS
Writer of Apocalypse Bop (film), 1994; On_Line (film), 2002; No Love (stage play), produced by Eclectic Company Theatre, 2012; Behind Enemy Lines, produced by HBO; Soldier Boyz (uncredited), produced by HBO; Cash Cab, produced by Discovery Channel. Also writer of Blue Estate (comic) and Blue Heat (game).
SIDELIGHTS
Andrew Osborne has made a name for himself predominantly through his contributions to the television and film industries. Prior to starting his career, he attended Harvard University, where he studied English. Osborne specializes in script writing, and his work has appeared across numerous media platforms, including Conde Nast, Warner Bros., Platinum Studios, and MTV. He is also aligned with Cash Cab, having served on the show’s writing team. His work on Cash Cab earned him a Daytime Emmy in the year 2008. In addition to his work for television and related media, Osborne has also written for PC games, theatre, and comic books, among other forms of media. His most noteworthy stage production is No Love, which was produced by Eclectic Company Theatre in the year 2012. Some of his other most notable works include the films Apocalypse Bop and On_Line.
Building Heaven serves as Osborne’s literary debut. The novel focuses on a man by the name of Pete Herlinger, who has spent half a decade in stasis. Prior to the events of the novel, Pete was involved in an auto accident that injured him so severely that he slipped into a coma. His family lost their lives in the crash. One day, Pete awakens, and the first thing on his mind is the status and whereabouts of his loved ones. The medical team caring for him is forced to reveal that his family is no longer alive, and in the wake of this news and his grief, Pete finds himself facing a radical change of philosophy. Before the accident, Pete was not a believer in any religion; in fact, he faced contention with his parents over his and his wife’s decision to teach Atheism to their son. Now that he is without his family, Pete longs to find proof of Heaven or something similar, so he can believe that in some world where his family is okay. Pete soon finds himself dissociating and journeying through an afterlife that is much different from anything he could have ever anticipated. He is able to meet his father, who takes Pete on a tour of this new world. One Kirkus Reviews contributor stated: “Religious and atheist readers alike should find their certainties wonderfully upset.” They also expressed that the book is “a terrifically energetic, modern update of Dante.” On the San Francisco Book Review website, David Lloyd Sutton called Building Heaven “an astonishing exploration of human imagination, longings, and illusion.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, September 1, 2017, review of Building Heaven.
ONLINE
Andrew Osborne website, http://www.baitshop.org (June 13, 2018), author profile.
San Francisco Book Review, https://sanfranciscobookreview.com/ (February 1, 2017), David Lloyd Sutton, review of Building Heaven.
ANDREW OSBORNE is an Emmy Award winning writer with credits including the Sundance premiere ON_LINE, his own feature debut APOCALYPSE BOP, the Image Comics series BLUE ESTATE, the play NO LOVE, and the Discovery Channel game show CASH CAB. Andrew has also written film, comic, and interactive scripts for Warner Bros., MTV, HBO, Orion, MPCA, Platinum Studios, and Conde Nast, among others. This is his first novel.
ANDREW OSBORNE was an English major at Harvard University, where he wrote for the Lampoon and the Crimson and studied acting with Brian Cox, Ken Howard and the American Repertory Theater’s David Wheeler.
During time away from college, he co-wrote his first produced screenplay for Troma, Inc. in New York, the ultra low-budget superhero spoof Sgt. Kabukiman, NYPD.
After graduation, he moved to Los Angeles, where he worked as a freelance script reader and studied improvisational acting with Lisa Kudrow (Friends) and Patrick Bristow (Curb Your Enthusiasm) at the Groundlings Theater.
He also also became an in-house script doctor for MPAA/Orion, writing and repairing screenplays of all genres, including the HBO Original Movies Soldier Boyz (uncredited) and Behind Enemy Lines (but not the one with Owen Wilson). He additionally wrote and designed several movie-based games for the company’s interactive division, including the murder mystery title Blue Heat, starring Elliot Gould and Paul Sorvino.
In 1994, he wrote, produced and directed the 16mm indie feature Apocalypse Bop, which played theatrically in Boston, Austin, New York, and Los Angeles before going to video. (Remember video?)
In 1999, he sold a pitch to Warner Bros. and spent a year at the studio in development hell, doing endless revisions on Dramarama, which almost (but not quite) became a Lindsay Lohan vehicle (back before Ms. Lohan started having so much trouble with her vehicles).
In 2000, he co-wrote On_Line, an independent feature starring Josh Hamilton and Harold Perrineau, Jr. that premiered at the 2002 Sundance Film Festival.
More recently, Andrew's written web series for Condé Nast (Wired, Vanity Fair) and scripted the Eisner-nominated Image Comics title Blue Estate (plus a tie-in video game). His other credits include the 2012 play No Love (at the Eclectic Company Theatre) and other theatrical productions, as well as work on numerous studio and indie scripts, comic books, computer games, and a 2008 Daytime Emmy as part of the writing staff for the Discovery Channel show, Cash Cab.
Andrew received a Master's Degree in writing from the University of Massachusetts and recently completed his first novel, Building Heaven. He currently lives in Somerville, MA with his wife and cat.
Osborne, Andrew: BUILDING HEAVEN
Kirkus Reviews. (Sept. 1, 2017):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Full Text:
Osborne, Andrew BUILDING HEAVEN Lost Pilgrim Press (Indie Fiction) $14.95 5, 3 ISBN: 978-0-9968613-2-8
A law professor sets out on a philosophical quest, examining the nature of the afterlife. This novel opens in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where professor Pete Herlinger has been in a coma for five years, since the car accident that wiped out his entire family in an instant. To the amazement of the hospital staff, he one day begins waking up, asking about his family--his parents, wife, and child were all in the car with him. His first heartbreaking realization is that they are all gone. He has no religious consolation: in fact, the conversation in the vehicle immediately prior to the crash heatedly revolved around the fact that, much to the outrage of his parents, Pete and his wife were raising their son to think God is basically a myth. After he wakes up, Pete finds himself in the unexpected position of yearning for any kind of afterlife in which his loved ones still survive. "Heaven is my family in the car before the crash," he muses. "Heaven is my wife beside me, my son and parents in the back seat...enjoying their company, forever." Ironically, given his previous state of nonbelief, Pete now embarks on "a good psychic freak-out," visiting an afterlife like no religion has ever dared to imagine, a surreal, godless world where individual fantasies play out with endless abandon. His guide is his father, a transsexual now free to be--and appear as--a beautiful woman. The more Pete learns about this realm, the stranger it seems to him, especially with a mysterious figure known as the Commissar playing devil's advocate. ("There is energy, there is dissipation," he asserts. "There is nothing else.") Author and Emmy Award-winning screenwriter Osborne (Blue Estate, 2014, etc.) conveys all of this with a thoroughly practiced hand. The characters stand out, the brisk pacing--particularly the comic beats--is spotlessly achieved, and the dialogue is crisp and compulsively readable. At one point, Pete and his father discuss the concept of reality. Dad: "For what it's worth, a handy definition of Reality is precisely that which does not cease to exist when you stop believing in it." Pete: "Philip K. Dick?" Dad: "Ah...so you've heard that one before." Religious and atheist readers alike should find their certainties wonderfully upset. A terrifically energetic, modern update of Dante.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Osborne, Andrew: BUILDING HEAVEN." Kirkus Reviews, 1 Sept. 2017. General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A502192125/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=e4942767. Accessed 16 May 2018.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A502192125
Building Heaven
We rated this book:
$14.95
An astonishing exploration of human imagination, longings, and illusion. Mr. Osborne delves into worldviews, self-images, cultural biases, and personal baggage. Then he reveals the ultimate malleability of eternity, and he does all of that so smoothly that one is vertiginous before realizing what a roller coaster of a ride they have been strapped into.
What happens after death? Do we simply wink out as our physical brain ceases to offer a matrix for our mind? Is there such a thing as a soul, and if there is, can it be lost after death? How much does our religious/cultural conditioning shape our afterlife? What does an atheist do when they arrive in “Heaven”? Is there reincarnation? A Hell? Are we the only sentients who share the afterlife? Can you lose yourself, your identity, forever? All of these questions and more are laid out with superlative showing. Each is answered, then revealed as illusion, then reinvented with any number of twists.
The first thing I noted on opening this thought trap was that the lines of text were spaced as if it were a manuscript rather than, as is typically done, cramming them together. It was refreshing and made for speedy, effortless reading. Overall use of formatting was smoothly professional. But there were some places where expanded, over-bolded text was employed for literal pages to convey the intensity of one fugue state or another; in those places sometimes words ran into each other without spacing. That experimental formatting was jarring, breaking the continuity and ease of immersion. Forgiveness inevitably followed as the story again seized and wrenched.
The old Egyptian concept of seven souls with differing characters and destinations is employed for major changes of direction; a lesser author would have used mere chapters.
Pete Herlinger is waking from years of coma, just discovering the losses of his parents, wife, and daughter. He is physically wasted, mentally devastated, and must cope with being alive while longing for death. His longing is fulfilled, and in his first exposure to the afterlife, the natures of his beloved family are revealed. He discovers the true sexuality of some, the innocent fragility of others, and the necessity to pierce through reality. Does he? Even he does not know, after all of that, and neither does the reader.
One final question: can Heaven itself die if mankind solves death? Is it a Ponzi scheme of souls?
Remember that roller coaster? This is one superbly hellacious ride!!
Reviewed By: David Lloyd Sutton