Jeff Rovin is an author, magazine editor

Editor in chief

An editor-in-chief is a publication's primary editor, having final responsibility for the operations and policies. Additionally, the editor-in-chief is held accountable for delegating tasks to staff members as well as keeping up with the time it takes them to complete their task...

, freelance writer and columnist. Former editor-in-chief of Weekly World News

Weekly World News

The Weekly World News was a supermarket tabloid published in the United States from 1979 to 2007, renowned for its outlandish cover stories often based on supernatural or paranormal themes and an approach to news that verged on the satirical. Its characteristic black-and-white covers have become...

, he has also been assistant editor

Editing

Editing is the process of selecting and preparing written, visual, audible, and film media used to convey information through the processes of correction, condensation, organization, and other modifications performed with an intention of producing a correct, consistent, accurate, and complete...

 and writer for DC Comics

DC Comics

DC Comics, Inc. is one of the largest and most successful companies operating in the market for American comic books and related media. It is the publishing unit of DC Entertainment a company of Warner Bros. Entertainment, which itself is owned by Time Warner...

, editor for Warren Publishing

Warren Publishing

Warren Publishing was an American magazine company founded by James Warren, who published his first magazines in 1957 and continued in the business for decades...

 and Seaboard Periodicals publications, as well as science and media columnist in such magazines as Analog

Analog Science Fiction and Fact

Analog Science Fiction and Fact is an American science fiction magazine. As of 2011, it is the longest running continuously published magazine of that genre...

, Omni

Omni (magazine)

OMNI was a science and science fiction magazine published in the US and the UK. It contained articles on science fact and short works of science fiction...

, Famous Monsters

Famous Monsters

-Chart positions:- Credits :* Michale Graves - vocals* Jerry Only - bass* Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein - guitar* Dr. Chud - drums...

. He was born on November 5, 1951, in Brooklyn, New York and has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for his Tom Clancy's Op-Center

Tom Clancy's Op-Center

Tom Clancy's Op-Center is a novel series, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik, though the series is actually written by Jeff Rovin.-Main characters:These characters are in most or all books:...

 books.

His How to Play video game books were popular in the 1980s and 1990s, reaching a total of over 4 million copies, detail strategies for dozens of games for the Nintendo Entertainment System

Nintendo Entertainment System

The Nintendo Entertainment System is an 8-bit video game console that was released by Nintendo in North America during 1985, in Europe during 1986 and Australia in 1987...

, Sega Genesis, and Game Boy

Game Boy

The , is an 8-bit handheld video game device developed and manufactured by Nintendo. It was released in Japan on , in North America in , and in Europe on...

. This series was preceded by his The Complete Guide to Conquering Video Games in 1982, and followed by his Gamemaster series that lasted until the late 1990s, which began containing a violence rating for the games included in these books. With the beginning of this new series he mentions that he is 'opposed' to the forceful laws and censorship that would make game ratings required, and asks readers to write letters of disapproval to their Congressional representatives. A later series would be released by St. Martin's also called "How To Win At", covering Nintendo 64

Nintendo 64

The , often referred to as N64, was Nintendo′s third home video game console for the international market. Named for its 64-bit CPU, it was released in June 1996 in Japan, September 1996 in North America, March 1997 in Europe and Australia, September 1997 in France and December 1997 in Brazil...

 and PlayStation

PlayStation

The is a 32-bit fifth-generation video game console first released by Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan on December 3, .The PlayStation was the first of the PlayStation series of consoles and handheld game devices. The PlayStation 2 was the console's successor in 2000...

 games, but this time written by Hank Schlesinger.

Rovin has written encyclopedias within various genres such as: The Encyclopedia of Superheroes (Facts On File, 1985), The Encyclopedia of Super Villains (Facts On File, 1987) The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals (Prentice Hall, 1991), and The Encyclopedia of Monsters (Checkmark Books, 1990), he has worked on various biographical and film books on such celebrities as Kelsey Grammer

Kelsey Grammer

Allen Kelsey Grammer is an American actor and comedian. He is most widely known for his two-decade portrayal of psychiatrist Dr. Frasier Crane on the sitcoms Cheers and Frasier...

, Lana Turner

Lana Turner

Lana Turner was an American actress.Discovered and signed to a film contract by MGM at the age of sixteen, Turner first attracted attention in They Won't Forget . She played featured roles, often as the ingenue, in such films as Love Finds Andy Hardy...

, Adam West

Adam West

William West Anderson , better known by the stage name Adam West, is an American actor best known for his lead role in the Batman TV series and the film of the same name...

, Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen DeGeneres

Ellen Lee DeGeneres is an American stand-up comedienne, television host and actress. She hosts the syndicated talk show The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and was also a judge on American Idol for one year, having joined the show in its ninth season....

, Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan

Jackie Chan, SBS, MBE is a Hong Kong actor, action choreographer, comedian, director, producer, martial artist, screenwriter, entrepreneur, singer and stunt performer. In his movies, he is known for his acrobatic fighting style, comic timing, use of improvised weapons, and innovative stunts...

, Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston

Charlton Heston was an American actor of film, theatre and television. Heston is known for heroic roles in films such as The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, El Cid, and Planet of the Apes...

, Elvis Presley

Elvis Presley

Elvis Aaron Presley was one of the most popular American singers of the 20th century. A cultural icon, he is widely known by the single name Elvis. He is often referred to as the "King of Rock and Roll" or simply "the King"....

, Sylvester Stallone

Sylvester Stallone

Michael Sylvester Gardenzio Stallone , commonly known as Sylvester Stallone, and nicknamed Sly Stallone, is an American actor, filmmaker, screenwriter, film director and occasional painter. Stallone is known for his machismo and Hollywood action roles. Two of the notable characters he has portrayed...

, Richard Pryor

Richard Pryor

Richard Franklin Lennox Thomas Pryor was an American stand-up comedian, actor, social critic, writer and MC. Pryor was known for uncompromising examinations of racism and topical contemporary issues, which employed colorful vulgarities, and profanity, as well as racial epithets...

, Julio Iglesias

Julio Iglesias

Julio José Iglesias de la Cueva , better known simply as Julio Iglesias, is a Spanish singer who has sold over 300 million records worldwide in 14 languages and released 77 albums. According to Sony Music Entertainment, he is one of the top 15 best selling music artists in history,...

, The Simpsons

The Simpsons

The Simpsons is an American animated sitcom created by Matt Groening for the Fox Broadcasting Company. The series is a satirical parody of a middle class American lifestyle epitomized by its family of the same name, which consists of Homer, Marge, Bart, Lisa and Maggie...

, and the two stars from Beverly Hills, 90210

Beverly Hills, 90210

Beverly Hills, 90210 is an American drama series that originally aired from October 4, 1990 to May 17, 2000 on Fox and was produced by Spelling Television in the United States, and subsequently on various networks around the world. It is the first series in the Beverly Hills, 90210 franchise...

; Luke Perry

Luke Perry

Luke Perry is an American actor. Perry starred as Dylan McKay on the TV series Beverly Hills, 90210, a role he played from 1990–95, and then from 1998–2000. Much publicity was garnered over the fact that even though he was playing a sixteen-year-old when 90210 began, Perry was actually in his...

 and Jason Priestley

Jason Priestley

Jason Bradford Priestley is a Canadian-American actor and director. He is best known as the virtuous Brandon Walsh on the television series Beverly Hills, 90210, a role which catapulted him to recognition in the early 1990s....

, both biographies separately in one book. As well as a number of quiz and joke books.

His novels are in the fields of thriller, horror, adventure, mystery, and largely in the military field during the Force Five

Force Five

Force Five was a syndicated anime cartoon anthology during the late 1970s/early 1980s. In the US, this series was primarily shown only in New England and Virginia, though it did make brief appearances in other markets, such as Dallas, Texas and San Jose, California on KICU-TV 36. It was also shown...

, and later Tom Clancy's Op-Center series, which he has now finished and his later "Unit Omega" books which he wrote under the name pen name

Pen name

A pen name, nom de plume, or literary double, is a pseudonym adopted by an author. A pen name may be used to make the author's name more distinctive, to disguise his or her gender, to distance an author from some or all of his or her works, to protect the author from retribution for his or her...

 of "Jim Grand". He then began writing further military suspense books under his own name, such as Tempest Down, Dead Rising, and Rogue Angel novels, of which Stephen Coonts

Stephen Coonts

Stephen Coonts is an American thriller and suspense novelist.Coonts grew up in Buckhannon, West Virginia, a small coal-mining town and earned an B.A. degree in political science at West Virginia University in 1968...

 calls Rovin "The best of the new generation of military adventure writers.".

Fiction and novels

• April Fool's Day (Novelization of the April Fool's Day 1986 movie)
• Broken Arrow (Novelization of the 1996 movie Broken Arrow
  Broken Arrow (1996 film)
  Broken Arrow is a 1996 American action film directed by John Woo, written by Graham Yost, and starring John Travolta and Christian Slater. The original music score was composed by Hans Zimmer, and features guitarist Duane Eddy. It deals with the theft of an American nuclear weapon.The film received...
  
  )
• Cat Angles
• Cliffhanger (Novelization of Cliffhanger
  Cliffhanger (film)
  Cliffhanger is a 1993 American action film directed by Renny Harlin and starring Sylvester Stallone and John Lithgow. Stallone plays a mountain climber, who becomes embroiled in a failed heist set in a U.S. Treasury plane flying through the Rocky Mountains...
  
   movie)
• Conversations with the Devil
• Dagger
• Dead Rising
• The Devil's Rangers (writing as Jim Grand)
• Fatalis
• The Game (Novelization of The Game
  The Game (film)
  The Game is a 1997 neo-noir psychological thriller film directed by David Fincher, starring Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, and produced by Polygram. It tells the story of an investment banker who is given a mysterious gift: participation in a game that integrates in strange ways with his life...
  
  ), movie and is based on its screenplay
  Screenplay
  A screenplay or script is a written work that is made especially for a film or television program. Screenplays can be original works or adaptations from existing pieces of writing. In them, the movement, actions, expression, and dialogues of the characters are also narrated...
  
  )
• The Hindenburg Disaster
• Hollywood Detective: Garrison
• Hollywood Detective: The Wolf
• The Madjan
• Mortal Kombat (based on Mortal Kombat videogame)
• Re-Animator (Novelization of Re-Animator
  Re-Animator
  Re-Animator is a 1985 American science fiction horror film based on the H. P. Lovecraft story "Herbert West–Reanimator." Directed by Stuart Gordon, it was the first film in the Re-Animator series. The film has since become a cult film, driven by fans of Jeffrey Combs and H. P...
  
   movie)
• The Red Arrow (With Sander Diamond)
• Return of the Wolf Man
• Starik (With Sander Diamond)
• Stealth War
• Tempest Down
• The Transgalactic Guide To Solar System M-17
• Vespers
• Unit Omega: Loch Ness (writing as Jim Grand)
• Unit Omega: Medusa (writing as Jim Grand)
• Force Five
  Force Five
  Force Five was a syndicated anime cartoon anthology during the late 1970s/early 1980s. In the US, this series was primarily shown only in New England and Virginia, though it did make brief appearances in other markets, such as Dallas, Texas and San Jose, California on KICU-TV 36. It was also shown...
  
   series
• Destination: Algiers
• Destination: Norway
• Destination: Stalingrad
• Tom Clancy's Op-Center
  Tom Clancy's Op-Center
  Tom Clancy's Op-Center is a novel series, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik, though the series is actually written by Jeff Rovin.-Main characters:These characters are in most or all books:...
  
   series (with Tom Clancy, Steve Pieczenik)

1. Op-Center
2. Mirror Image
3. Games of State
4. Acts of War
5. Balance of Power
6. State of Siege
7. Divide and Conquer
8. Line of Control
9. Mission of Honor
10. Sea of Fire
11. Call to Treason
12. War of Eagles

Nonfiction books

• Adventure Heroes: Legendary Characters from Odysseus to James Bond
• Aliens, Robots, and Spaceships
• The Book of Dinosaurs
• The Book of Dumb Movie Blurbs
• The Book of Movie Lists
• The Book of TV Lists
• Country Music Babylon
• Did You Ever Wonder; Why Do Cowboys Wear High Heels?; Who Put Boys in Blue and Girls in Pink?; Are Bats Really Blind?
• The Fabulous Fantasy Films
• The Fantasy Almanac
• Fascinating Facts from the Bible
• From Jules Verne to Star Trek
• From the Land Beyond Beyond
• The Great Television Series
• The Laserdisc Film Guide: Complete Ratings for the Best and Worst Movies Available on Disc
• Laws of Order: A Book of Hierarchies, Rankings, Infrastructures, Measurements, and Sizes
• Mars!
• Movie Special Effects
• Of Mice and Mickey
• A Pictorial History of Science Fiction Films
• The Second Book of Movie Lists
• The Science Fiction Collector's Catalog
• Simpson Fever!
• The Spirits of America
• Sports Babylon, (With Steve Burkow)
• TV Babylon
• TV Babylon 2
• The Unbelievable Truth
• What's the Difference?; A Compendium of Commonly Confused and Misused Words
• The Encyclopedia of Monsters
• The Encyclopedia of Superheroes
• The Encyclopedia of Super Villains
• The Illustrated Encyclopedia of Cartoon Animals

Biographies

• Always. Lana (With Taylor Pero)
• Back to the Batcave (With Adam West)
• Ellen DeGeneres Up CLose. The Unauthorized Biography of the Hot New Star of ABC's ELLen, (With Kathy Tracy)
• The Essential Jackie Chan, (With Tracy Perrell)
• The Films of Charlton Heston
• Joan Collins: The Unauthorized Biography
• Julio!
• Luke Mania/Jason Fever
• Richard Pryor, Black and Blue
• Stallone!: A Hero's Story An Unauthorized Biography
• The World According to Elvis

Humor and trivia

• 500 Great Doctor Jokes
• 500 Great Lawyer Jokes
• 500 Hilarious Jokes for Kids
• 500 More Hilarious Jokes for Kids
• 1,001 Great Jokes
• 1,001 Great Pet Jokes
• 1,001 Great Sports Jokes
• 1,001 Great One-Liners
• Dinomite Dinousaur Jokes
• Don't Even Think About Telling this Joke at Work (writing as Harry Bergen)
• Don't Even Think About Telling this Joke to a Lawyer (writing as Harry Bergen)
• The First Good News/Bad News Joke Book
• Goldie's Lox and the Three Bagels (writing as Jeffrey and Lila Dubinsky)
• Mother Gooseberg's Book of Jewish Nursery Rhymes (writing as Jeffrey and Lila Dubinsky)
• The Second Good News/Bad News Joke Book
• In Search of Trivia
• Winning at Trivial Pursuit
• Count Dracula's Vampire Quiz Book
• The Supernatural Movie Quizbook
• The Superhero Movie and TV Quiz Book
• The UFO Movie Quizbook
• The Unauthorized Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Quiz Book

Video game books

• The Complete Guide to Conquering Video Games: How to Win Every Game in the Galaxy
• The Best of How to Win at Nintendo Games
• How to Win at Nintendo Games
• How to Win at Nintendo Games #2
• How to Win at Nintendo Games #3
• How to Win at Nintendo Games #4
• How to Win at Nintendo Sports Games
• How to Win at Super Mario Bros. Games
• How to Win at Game Boy Games
• How to Win at Super Nintendo Games
• How to Win at Sega & Genesis Games
• Gamemaster: Conquering Super Nintendo Games
• Gamemaster: Conquering Sega Genesis Games
• Gamemaster: The Complete Video Game Guide 1995

External links