What is this story from Dragon Magazine in the 80s?

December 10, 2004 8:23 AM

In the mid to late 80s Dragon Magazine published a short story about a woman playing an online computer game. She made friendss with a mysterious stranger in the game who got hugely rich and shared the money with her. It was a very entertaining and prescient story, well predating mainstream online gaming. Anyone know details of who wrote it, when it appeared, etc? Is there a copy online?
posted by Nelson to writing & language (5 answers total)

Some time ago, they released every edition of Dragon magazine on CD-ROM.

(Naturally) I bought it. It's really neat and has all the issues in .PDF. Also, it has a pretty comprehensive search feature that might help you out somewhat. If you gave me a little more to work with, I'd be happy to look through it myself and shoot you the .PDF of the article when if I find it.
posted by absalom at 8:51 AM on December 10, 2004

You might want to try here. It looks to be mainly a collection of articles concerning game data, but there's a list of fiction here. The issues list on the Dragon Magazine site (here) goes back to 1976 if you find out what issue it was in. Good luck!
posted by PantsOfSCIENCE at 8:55 AM on December 10, 2004

I think I remember that one -- didn't the female lead have a brother, who played a different online game? For some reason I recall a major plot point being an armband she got off a giant bug or something.

IIRC, she gave some super-powerful item to the stranger, who then used it to become fantastically successful in the game and repaid her (unexpectedly, I think).
posted by aramaic at 9:27 AM on December 10, 2004

The story was "Catacomb", in issue #97. Drop me an email, and I might be able to point you at a copy somewhere.
posted by majcher at 10:45 AM on December 10, 2004

AxMe rules, particularly you, majcher. It is indeed issue #97, May 1985, pages 56 - 67. The story is "Catacomb" by Henry Melton. Mr. Melton is kind enough to have put the story online for your reading.

I'm suprised that there are basically no references to this story on the net. It's a very early example of writing about online games. Now to read it again and see if it's as good as I remember :-)
posted by Nelson at 12:43 PM on December 10, 2004