Batteries not included

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These three stories have never appeared in print before unless in the 1980s you paid £60 to buy them in their original form of three very slim novellas
published by Rainbird Software. They had asked me to collaborate with Jez San of Argonaut Software to write the novellas to accompany Jez’s games. In those
days the computer gaming world was dominated by Commodores, Amegas, and Spectrums. My brief was to write novellas that were entertaining. They were also
planned for a new entrant in the home computer market: the then IBM PC. With Jez’s collaboration I went one better and wrote game strategies that were
built into the stories. In other words, the player would have to read the novellas to find out how to advance through the levels of each game.
News that your fighter could be refuelled by flying low between the Teslar towers spread quickly on those forerunners of social networks –– bulletin boards.

In the 1980s the slow refreshs problem programmers had of showing solid objects moving at speed was solved by showing such objects in wire-frame format.
I considered dumping my original explanation in the text as to why such objects looked like flying bird cages and updating the text to 21st Century conventions.
I decided against it. The stories were written in the 1980s so why not preserve the conventions of that period? There was a convention of storytelling
that hasn’t changed; right from the beginning I had decided that the stories should stand alone as entertaining yarns regardless of whether or not the
games were involved. So here they are in their original form. You now have a chance to decide whether or not I succeeded.