Over the Christmas period, amongst the upheaval of my dad and stepmum's deaths, something wonderful happened.

I was approached by a university lecturer on universe building to provide some information about Elite (you know, that game that I kinda like) to an initiative he was working on. It turned out that the initiative he was working on was the official writer's bible for the upcoming Elite: Dangerous game and associated fiction that I was wittering on about a few weeks back.

To cut a long story short, I was asked if it would be OK to use the timeline that I host on my Elite site as the basis for the Elite-era related history of the game. This expanded into using the majority of the timeline in the background information and ultimately I was asked if I would mind writing the GalCop sourcebook detailing the history of GalCop.

Would I mind??? It's only been my most enduring goal in life - to contribute something real to the ACTUAL OFFICIAL Elite universe. So no, I don't mind. I would have chewed off an arm to be offered the chance.

Well, I submitted my sourcebook for review on Saturday and yesterday was informed that it was largely approved with some revisions to be made. So the majority is going to be IN! 

It feels like I've achieved something stupendous, and in my own mind I have. Elite has been my all-time favourite game since 1985, through short bouts with Carrier Command, Wing Commander, Everquest, Millenium 2.2 and the like. Every time, though, I've come back to Elite. It's also the only game I've ever written actual real fiction for and created a website to talk about it on. I designed a roleplaying game around it too.

Now, publicly, I would like to thank Allen, Michael and the rest of the group at Frontier Development for giving me the chance to be a part of this. I also want to pass out thanks to the guys on the Oolite forum - if they hadn't given me so much positive feedback on the timeline and the project to tie frontier and Elite together then it may never have seen the light of a website and still be hidden away on a memory stick in my pocket.

(I'd like to thank the producer, the crew, my mum and dad...)

Yeah, enough of that, it's not an Oscar speech, Dave.

Anne has told me that I'm like a kid who just got all his Christmas presents in April. Apparently I seem rather excited.

Yes. I am. I don't need a hyperdrive to get into space right now.