Monthly Archives: February 2013

‘Elite’ Game Remakes and Fan Fiction vs. The Official Version: Visions of a New Tomorrow

By | | ,
3 Comments

Rejoicing they flew: white lines, block-filled triangles, and shaded panes of colour; the sounds of the void beeping and burping in one ear before separating and enveloping them in textured audible reality. But they were cast into the outer darkness – for years nothing but a blanket of false hope to shield them from the coldness of uncertainty. It could have ended there, their humanity leached into the uncaring nothingness around them. Broken, cold. ‘We cannot die,’ a voice inside them said, ‘for if we die then The Dream will die with us as our Messiah sleeps, dreaming of rails and screaming children throwing up Slushies on the crowds 50m below. So, while He dreams of ticket sales and ice cream, we will attempt our own resurrection.’ And Alpha was born. Alpha was silent, ugly, temperamental. Alpha was no fun to play. So they emailed, forummed, read, and coded, and Beta was born. Beta was … Continue reading →

There’s Thargoids on the Starboard Bow, Starboard Bow, Starboard Bow, There’s Thargoids on the Starboard Bow, Starboard Bow, Commander!

By | |
7 Comments

Here we are, nearly halfway through February as I type this, amazed at how well several of the other writers working on their Elite: Dangerous novels are getting along. There’s talk of outlining, approval from Frontier, plan-draft critique and all kinds of progress. You are lucky, lucky people because there’s a dedicated crew of word-monkeys typing madly to bring you a wall of Elite fictional goodness as you read this (between peeling the odd banana and picking insects from their armpit hair, but everyone is entitled to some time off). While their creativity flows in a torrential outpouring of brilliance, what have I been able to eke out of the unforgiving bedrock of my imagination? Nuggets. Thargoid shaped nuggets. The thing about aliens is that they are, well, alien, which means they need defining/refining if they aren’t to come off the page as humans in rubber suits. (I love the original 60s Star Trek series, … Continue reading →

First Encounters: Working with Frontier’s Indigenous Life Forms

By | |
12 Comments

  Over the last couple of weeks there has been a flurry of emails winging their way through the ether (sorry, that’s steampunk, wrong genre) discussing Out of the Darkness and how it fits into the Elite: Dangerous universe. One unforeseen, and very positive, outcome was that the lovely Frontier indigenous life forms (FILFs) have asked me to contribute some ideas for the game universe by compiling one of the E: D writer’s guides. Developers and writers will use the guides when creating content for the game and the fiction that goes with it. Of course, I jumped at the chance! Being given the opportunity to work with these talented FILFs is a privilege, but I imagine you are sitting there thinking, Why should I care? Well, it was the ideas for the backstory and setting for the book that they liked which means I seem to be on the right … Continue reading →