George Cockcroft (born November 15, 1932) is an author who writes under the pen name Luke Rhinehart.
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George Cockcroft was born in the United States, son of an engineer and a civil servant. He got his BA at Cornell University, and his MA at Columbia University. Subsequently he got a PhD in psychology, also at Columbia. He married his wife, Ann on June 30, 1956. He currently has three children.
After obtaining his PhD he went into teaching. During his years as a university teacher he taught, amongst other things, courses in Zen and Western literature. He first floated the idea of living by the dice in a lecture: the reaction was equal parts intrigue and disgust, and it was at this point he realised it could become a novel. Cockcroft started experimenting with dice a long time before writing The Dice Man, but this made progress on the novel rather slow.
He met a publisher and thereby published the novel The Dice Man. In 1970 he became a full-time writer and "leader of the dice cult". In 1971 he was engaged in creating a dice centre in New York. In 1975 he was involved in a round-the-world voyage in a large trimaran ketch.
Later on he spent some time in a sailboat in the Mediterranean where he taught English, and from there moved to a former Sufi retreat on the edge of a lake. His last known mailing address was Luke Hill in Canaan, New York.
Much of Cockcroft's writing follows the styles of his first book, The Dice Man. He switches rapidly between a first and third person view, and intersperses that narrative flow with (fictional) excerpts from journals, minutes of meetings, and other sources. This gives the impression of a larger story, of which just a glimpse is being seen. In one case, he even quotes from a future book that he did not actually write until more than two decades later. The moods of the book change rapidly too; a single book might have sections of erotica, thriller, comedy, psychology, romance, philosophy, and detective in it — not mixed together, but standing side by side with only a chapter number, if that, between them. Sections of carefully timed comic relief include a sex scene in the middle of a river, various dice parties, and a hallucinogenic tomato plant.
On the other hand, Long Voyage Back, and Matari show that he is entirely comfortable writing somewhat more traditional fiction, and The Book of est shows that he is capable of writing wholly factual accounts too. In all his books, Cockcroft focuses attention on only a few characters — typically fewer than five. Other characters are introduced, but solely as caricatures or plot devices.
The Book of the Die is a collection of thoughts and ideas about dicing - its purpose, the meaning of life, and so forth - much in the style that might be expected from George Cockcroft's previous work. Interspersed with this are frequent parables, poems, stories. Some are from his earlier books, some from the new ones, some stolen and rewritten from various well-known sayings and writings, some from his followers (both real and imaginary), and some which purport to be from his own life. Roughly at the end of each chapter are six dice options, with the standard instructions: "Read the options, throw out one or two (or all six) and replace them, then roll a dice and do as suggested." The dice options, and the book in general, aim to be intriguing and thought-provoking. It contains lots of amusing or absurd sections, as if to counter-point the occasional more serious sections.
There are also continuing plans to release the story of either Luke, Larry or Wim as a movie. Cockcroft has written a number of screenplays himself, including one on The Dice Man, and WHIM, in an effort to accelerate the process, and both projects are being pushed forward on several fronts.
Companies have often attempted to profit from the ideas of The Dice Man, and a few such ventures are noted below. The ideas in the book have also influenced a wide range of musicians, writers, artists, some of whom are listed below.
Dice have always been colloquially referred to as rocks and the makers of Rolling Rock pale lager, sensing a good tie-in, launched a series of adverts based around the diceman theme, and even a Diceliving website (now defunct), and have since been associated with Luke's books. Indeed, the rise from the dead of Rolling Rock in the late 1990s has partially been attributed to the rise of dicing at around the same time, possibly fueled by Internet chat rooms where role-playing is common.
In the 1980s, the UK comic 2000 AD published several Choose Your Own Adventure magazines under the name Dice Man.
The Dice Man has turned up in several songs:
Other music connections:
Art that exploits the principle of randomness is called aleatoricism. Several pieces of aleatory art have been partially inspired by the writings of George Cockcroft.
The Discovery Channel recently hired a pair of part-time dicers to do a Diceman Travel programme based on the dice. Where they go, what they see, and what they do, all are based on the roll of a die. Apparently it has been popular, though the tendency of the dice to steer the couple off in strange directions has caused problems for the producers and editors.
On film, there have been at least three documentaries on diceliving and the philosophy of the dice, including one 50-minute short film called "Dice World" by Paul Wilmshurst, produced by Channel 4.
In the theatre, The Dice House was staged in London's West End theatre "The Arts". Written by Paul Lucas, the play was inspired by Luke Rhinehart's novel The Dice Man.
Ben Marshall, of Loaded magazine, spent two years from 1998 to 2000 experimenting with being a diceman and writing up his experiences in the magazine. This seems to have been a big hit with the readers, and Loaded subsequently named Luke Rhinehart as novelist of the century.
Larnie Reid Fox popularised the idea of the DiceWalk, which was featured in the May 28, 2003 edition of sfweekly, students of psychogeography having already pioneered the art or science of random or whimsical excursions.
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