The Ambivalence Chronicles – a Sci-Fi Comedy in 8 Bits – takes its inspiration from a multitude of sources, from the ZX81’s killer app to classic 80s movies by way of popular music; retrogaming aficionados and pop culture gurus alike will, I hope, have fun hunting for the various Easter eggs scattered through the story – some are more obscure than others!
To add to the challenge we’ve made a monthly competition of it, so get your Lateral Thinking Cap on, grab your ereader and start hunting!
Some Rules:
1. A prizewinner will be selected on the first day of each month from May 2018, from entries recieved during the previous month.
2. One prize will be offered for each of The Chip Whisperer, The Kempston Interface, and The Road Worrier (available wherever ebooks are sold – click each title for options).
3. References will be checked against the author’s master list. References not on the list are accidental, or purely in the reader’s imagination.
4. The master list for each Bit contains 40-50 references; in the likely event of no-one correctly identifying them all, the entrant finding the highest number will be declared the winner.
5. In the event no-one identifying more than half, there will be no winner for that month.
6. Non-winning entrants may resubmit for the following month(s) until they get lucky.
7. If there is more than one winning entry for any month, a random selection will be made, and the draw posted online for fairness.
8. Physical prizes may vary if the winner is outside the UK.
9. Email your list of references, along with the chapter/paperback page/ebook location, and what you think it refers to, to gunter@stevetrower.co.uk. To help, a handy spreadsheet can be found on google drive.
10. Entrants will be added to a mailing list; but I use it so infrequently you probably won’t even notice.
About the Easter Eggs:
1. The Easter Eggs are references to films, TV, music and computer games hidden within The Chip Whisperer, The Kempston Interface, and The Road Worrier.
2. Specific references to games, films etc as themselves (e.g. Phil’s pristine copy of Yie-Ar Kung Fu) do not count as Easter Eggs.
3. References may be a name, a single word quote, a scene-long homage, or anything in between.
4. Basically, if you think I’m making a nod towards some other form of media, I probably am.
To give an example (not from the book, I’m not giving you any clues!):
Chapter One/Location 83; email address gunter@stevetrower.co.uk; refers to the gunters in Ernest Cline’s Ready Player One.
The Prizes
In reverse order of awesomeness, the prizes will be:
- Bragging rights.
- Something cocoa-based and ovoid in nature.
- The chance to be immortalised in a later Bit of The Ambivalence Chronicles.