Roger Christman - The Mad Planarian

Email: christma@cse.psu.edu


Roger was born in 1966, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He lived in neighboring Bethlehem for his entire childhood, before relocating to State College in 1984, where he's been ever since, tied up with Penn State University.

Roger first majored in electrical engineering, during which he long enjoyed the use of PSUVM. Many happy years were spent on that Bitnet hub, and the computer access (under the cryptic name of DVL) has been sorely missed. After more years than the University Scholars Program likes to remember, as well as a couple stints of coop with IBM in Kingston, NY and Rochester, MN, Roger finally earned a BS degree in Fall 1990, along with an MS in Computer Engineering.

An abortive summer job drove Roger away from Real Life back into academia. He enrolled in a doctorate program in Computer Science Fall 1991, passed his candidacy exams in very short order, and stagnated ever since, slowly drifting away from status as a student into that of part-time instructor.

Roger's extracurricular interests include the Nittany Valley Symphony, the local community orchestra, and occasional stints of drama, bridge, and role-playing games. Yet the majority of his time has usually been consumed by the addiction du an. In the early 90's it was LPmuds; then it was roguelike games; and most recently Superguy. History might have been very different if the Mad Planarian had encountered Superguy first.

Speaking of the Mad Planarian, Roger first discovered his worm-like nature way back in the summer of 1988. It arose out of the initial untested notion that he could regenerate, and since he was in competition with pond scum at the time, it seemed appropriate. (Or at least, many people called this one associate pond scum.)

Roger is the author of the series Jackson Six.


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