pouët.net

There are shittons of non-fiction books on old computers, videogames, even the demo and the warez scene, but not much fiction exists that involves these as a plot element. There are a few novels I know, for example, Murder at St Cuthbert's: A Commodore 64 Mystery or System Restored. I wonder if any of you nerds write such fiction, novels or short stories?

Hey Tomcat ! I'm the one of the few, unofficial "scifi guys" of the Demoscene. :) Well, long story short (!), I wrote this a long time ago... https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=32511
It was well received at the time, and as you can see, the random reader that finds this in 2025 and actually bothers to read it can still enjoy it...
I also have another scifi story coming up soon (not a Scene prod, and in French, sorry), that pretty much mentions the Demoscene as a background thing in the very last scene ! :)

A musicdisk/diskmag/ebook/whatever? Interesting packaging for fiction! I will give it a go later, thanks.

I too write stuff, but in Hungarian, and it also has little to do with anything along demoscene/retro computers/etc. The only almost-exception is a novel published in 2017, a techno-thriller. The backstory of the main character, a mid-aged hacker involves retro computers and gaming, with a little nod to the demoscene. The book did pretty well and made it onto the Christmas bestseller list of the biggest bookstore chain. An English translation exists, maybe I should put it up somewhere.

Bah, boring vanilla shit.

WOW ! I didn't know you were a "bestseller" in techno-thriller. Congrats ! I'm impressed ! What's the title of the book ?

The English title would be "Human Element". And that "bestseller" title isn't actually that much: I got it after 30 copies sold. That's how little people read these days. The story is about an aging hacker, who failed at life, but comes up with a retirement plan: he will rob a bank with a robot.

Virtuaverse features a demoscene explanation and subplot.

Virtuaverse is my favorite purchased and never played game on Steam.

PUTAIN S'TAIT EN 2007…

Out of my eight published novels, there is one (Häpeämätön) that is so demoscene-adjacent that the book trailer has a rotozoomer and was released at Altparty. :P The main character Enna is a multimedia/mixed media artist who codes stuff, but demoscene isn't involved as such. Another novel of mine, Adeno, deals with all kinds of games, including videogames of different ages. These are both only in Finnish, though.

I've had quite a bunch of shorter scifi published in both Finnish and English (and some translations in Swedish and French, too), but most of it isn't really tech-oriented except for one story which is about smart contact lenses.

Looks like the fisherman became the fished!

Oh hi, Diamondie! Nice to know you're still alive. This is your novel, right?

https://www.kirjavinkit.fi/arvostelut/hapeamaton/

Interesting theme. I too, have a thing for characters who are broken in some way.

Yeah, hi, I'm indeed alive. :) (Though with some caveats considering the future validity of that sentence, as my health is a total tire fire, currently in heart failure and other not-so-fabulous stuff like that.)

And that's the novel, yes.

Uh... get well, I guess? Or rather, hope you get the most out of what's left.