This story is a bit of an outlier, as it was first published as a booklet to accompany a computer game release. It was probably the first ‘grown-up’ short story I ever read.
Elite is a space exploration game that came out in 1984, initially for the BBC Micro and Acorn Electron. I was 14 back then and my twin brother and I became totally hooked on the game. God knows how many hours we spent together playing it. Robert Holdstock became a bit of an obsession of mine too: his stunning novel Mythago Wood, published that same year, remains one of my all-time favourites.
My brother passed away in 2022. At the funeral, I spoke about our shared love of the game as teenagers. Afterwards, one of his friends wrote to say that they still played Elite (it has been adapted for modern consoles) and that players could give names to space stations in the game’s universe. They had named one after my brother. So somewhere out there in cyberspace is a fictional space station carrying my brother’s name. One day I will play Elite again and go in search of it and imagine that he and I are 14 again, wasting too much time but not really wasting it.
Published by Acornsoft Ltd, 1984
A Personal Anthology 