187 Upper Street, London N1 1RQ
"What's the oldest computer game based on a book? This is obviously a trick question because I expect people to say The Hobbit (Melbourne House 1982) or if they are feeling clever Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Supersoft, 1981) which was released with the permission of Pan Books. The actual boring correct answer is probably Space War which was inspired by science fiction stories including the Lensmen series by E. E. "Doc" Smith. This game was playable on a PDP-1 mainframe and written in 1961; I said it was a trick question [1].
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| PERSONAL COMPUTING WORLD October 1981 page 123 |
A new company that combines books and software for home entertainment will launch its first list in the new year. Vicky Carne, founder of Mosaic Publishing calls her products 'bookware'; essentially they are interactive adventure games programs in which the 'readers' 'play' the scenes of a novel on their home computers and determine the plot's outcome by their own decisions.
(THE BOOKSELLER October 1 1983 page 1473)
Mosaic Publishing is one of those companies that has been covered in detail elsewhere. A good place to start is Graeme Mason's interview with Vicky Carne for issue 167 of RETRO GAMER and his making of Yes, Prime Minister article for issue 256 [2]. THE CLASSIC ADVENTURER also interviewed Vicky Carne in issue 3. With all that in mind I can jump to the addresses and the games. I think the key takeaway is that Mosaic Publishing was still in business right up to 13 February 2024; yes, that date surprised me as well. Unfortunately the records at Companies House don't extend back before July 1986, and none of the documents online cover the games publishing period.
Mosaic was founded on 4 May 1983 and covered in a MICRO ADVENTURER news piece (November 1983 page 7):
SCIENCE Fiction fans will be interested to hear of a new company... Mosaic will specialise in adventure games based around books by well known sf authors. The software and book will be sold as a joint package, and the games will at first be for the Spectrum, BBC, and Commodore 64 computers...
Adventures are also planned to accompany other books and short stories: Special Deliverance by Clifford D Simak: Solder, Ask Not, one of Gordon Dixon's Dorsai series: The Width of the World by Ian Watson: The World Thinker by Jack Vance: and Technicolour Feudal, one of the Dog Fletcher stories by John Rankin. All of these titles should appear in the first half of 1984...
To write the games the company uses freelance programmers working from schemes either developed by the book authors or by Mosaic's own designer. More than 10 programmers are currently working on the various projects.
Much of Mosaic's success came because it operated more like a book publisher than a software house. Its products were distributed by the book trade and skipped a lot of the gatekeeping by software distributors which caused problems for other small software houses. Mosaic also sold a lot of games via the Home Computer Club. This was a spin-off from the Book Club, whose leaflets offered bestselling books at unbelievably low prices, 49p for the new Jackie Collins or James Herbert. As always the devil was in the small print. The reader committed to buying one new book every eight weeks or so and if you didn't get your order off in time you were automatically sent the Selection Of The Month which was usually one of the most expensive books on offer. The Home Computer Club was the same but their leaflets fell out of SINCLAIR USER rather than the RADIO TIMES. This explains something which always baffled me, how did a small company who exclusively made adventure games keep going? The answer seems to be, a lot of Mosaic's games were made Selection of the Month because the game and book format made them stand out.
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| May 2025 |
187 Upper Street, London N1 1RQ
Right now, 187 Upper Street is home to the Islington branch of ice cream shop Udderlicious. This was my third visit to Highbury & Islington, having previously dropped in to track down the old offices of Thalamus and Ingersol Electronics, who distributed Atari products in the UK before Atari took over directly. I didn't buy an ice cream. This picture was taken at the end of a long, hot, bad tempered day, and all I wanted to do was go home. I should have brought an ice cream.
John Wiley and Sons Ltd, Baffins Lane, Chichester, Sussex, PO19
Vicky Carne had a contact at the UK subsidiary of the veteran US publisher, and they agreed to sell and distribute Mosaic's games. It's their Chichester address which appears most prominently on Mosaic games until the end of 1984.
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| August 2025 |
1984
The Unorthodox Engineers: The Pen and the Dark
Spectrum, BBC, Commodore 64. £9.95.
After a deal for the rights to Isaac Asimov's Foundation series fell through, Vicky Carne licenced The Pen and the Dark a short story by Colin Kapp from his book The Unorthodox Engineers. Keeping with the Bookware idea the instruction manual prints The Pen and the Dark as a 37 page short story [2].
Mosaic's games were presented as much like books as possible with the author and programmer credited on the front cover. The Pen and the Dark game was by Keith Campbell. He spoke about the development of the game to the Classic Adventures Solution Archive in 2005. Campbell was given the Colin Kapp collection UNORTHODOX ENGINEERS and asked to pick the story he thought would work best as an adventure. Keith Campbell developed versions for the Spectrum, BBC, and Dragon 32; a logical choice at the time because in the run up to Christmas 1983 the Dragon looked like it might be the next big thing; ultimately it wasn't and the Dragon version was never advertised. Vicky Carne also requested a Commodore 64 version which was a problem because Keith didn't have one at the time. Mosaic must have had some doubt over whether the C64 version would appear because it was mentioned in the manual but not adverts.
The Pen and the Dark was released in January 1984 and picked up an exclusive early review in the COMPUTER & VIDEOGAME BOOK OF ADVENTURES which came free with issue 27 of C&VG. The uncredited review mentions:
...I was lucky enough to get hold of a pre-production copy of the BBC and Tandy versions...
Now, the author of C&VG's monthly adventure column was Keith Campbell. Surely he wasn't reviewing his own game? Probably not. He's helped out on some of the reviews by Simon Clarke and I choose to believe it was Simon who handled the uncredited, positive, review.
Keith Campbell recalled to CASA that The Pen and the Dark sold over 20,000 copies after it was made a special joining offer with the Home Computer Club. There was supposed to be a sequel, based on The Subways of Tazoo another story in The Unorthodox Engineers collection, but those plans fell through.
My Secret File
Spectrum, BBC, Commodore 64. £9.95.
The companion to The Pen and the Dark was less a game and more a computer diary/database where younger children were encourage to save top secret thoughts and personal facts behind the security of a secret access code. The programme was based on the Puffin book of the same name, by John Astrop, and came packaged with a copy. The BOOKSELLER reported on Bookware in the issue dated 10 December 1983, page 2370, and included the charming note that:
My telephone conversation with Mosaic was slightly constrained by the background sound of staff 'testing' My Secret File.
The Width of the World
Spectrum, £9.95.
The Width of the World, In The Beginning, and Beyond the Arcade formed the second wave of Mosaic releases, arriving around June 1984. The Width of the World was bookware while the other two titles moved away from the format. In The Beginning is a game with no book while Beyond the Arcade is the opposite. Presumably Vicky Carne was keen to expand the material on offer from Mosaic.
The Pen and the Dark was first published in 1966, in NEW WRITINGS IN SF 8. The Width of the World was contemporary and had its first printing in 1983, in UNIVERSE 8. Both short stories acted as a springboard into the game but in different ways. When you played The Pen and the Dark you were playing through the events of the story. To the extent that the game chided you if you tried to use knowledge of the short story to skip ahead: "Anticipating the plot will not improve it." The Width of the World the game was a sequel set 10 years after the events of the story. Ian Watson wrote an additional short introduction for the manual, suggesting he was very open to the idea of a game which potentially provided closure for the more open-ended short story.
In The Beginning
Commodore, £6.95
Starting life as a humble molecule in the Pre-Cambrian age, you progress through this exciting ten-level game to the Dawn of Early Man – if you are clever enough!
A game by Humphrey Walwyn. In the Beginning is pretty obscure and for a long time was assumed to be MIA. It isn't any more and if you visit Games that Weren't you can learn more; including a shot of the packaging which warns of a 13 minute load time.
Beyond the Arcade
Book, £6.95
A book by Nicholas Palmer. "A critical guide to the growing world of adventure games, wargames, games of strategy, games to play at home and games to play by mail." Now this really is obscure. Although you can find listings on sites like Abebooks, nobody seems to have a copy for sale. The Pen and the Dark, My Secret File, and The Width of the World all carried the strapline Bookware on the cover. In The Beginning is labelled as Software. Beyond the Arcade has no equivalent coverline, I guess Mosaic couldn't think of one; Printware, no that's rubbish.
The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World
Commodore 64, £9.95
The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World is also something of a mystery. I get the impression it was supposed to be Mosaic's big title and yet between announcement and release something seems have taken the bloom off the game. It's part of the third wave of games, sold alongside an adventure based on The Nomad of Time by Michael Moorcock and The Saga of Erik the Viking, by Terry Jones which ended up getting all the attention. The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World didn't even rate a mention when RETRO GAMER interviewed Vicky Carne. Yet it was clearly once seen as a big deal because it is mentioned as early as the October 1983 BOOKSELLER article, with the intriguing note that:
US science fiction author Harry Harrison, best known for his Stainless Steel Rat novels, is one of several authors working with computer programmer Phil Nathans to create the programs that tie in with their stories.
The game is plugged again in the MICRO ADVENTURER report of November 1983 and is also teased in the first round of adverts for The Pen and the Dark and My Secret File:
...our spring SF bookware blockbuster (Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat on micro for the first time!)
At the end of 1984, around the time of release, 2000AD started running an adaption of The Stainless Steel Rat for President (they had already adapted The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World in 1980, progs 166-177). Issue 294 included episode two of ...for President and an offer from editor Tharg. He generously promised free copies of the game to the first 20 readers names plucked from his Belelgeusian hat.
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| 2000AD Prog 394 page 2 |
Very little trace of the Mosaic version exists online. It's nowhere near as well archived as you might expect. There are no pack shots or instructions that I've been able to find. The game itself only seems to survive because it later got a re-release from Alternative Software. Mike Carroll, who runs the official Harry Harrison website, posted on Lemon 64 back in 2005:
Just wondering if anyone knows anything about the above game, based on the novel by Harry Harrison.
It's a text/graphic adventure first published in 1984 by Mosaic Publishing (programmed by Shards Software, distributed by John Wiley & Sons, packaged in a VHS-sized box with a copy of the novel). I have a copy of the game myself, but I was never able to get past the first location!
That description of the box was the only information I found about the original packaging. A picture was used on the advert that briefly appeared around Christmas 1984 and it seemed reasonable to assume it's the cover. I thought it would be nice to have confirmation so I fired off a speculative email to Mike Carroll who went above and beyond the call of duty. He tracked down his long packed away copy of the game and sent me some photos. I don't normally like to upload large files but in this case I want to make an exception because otherwise this information isn't available anywhere.
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| Front and back cover |
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| Instructions |
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| Pack interior, with Forbidden Planet price tag |
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| Box and included book |
(with apologies to anyone browsing this blog on dial-up)
It's weird the way The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World goes from one of Mosaic's most high profile releases to one of its most obscure. Maybe it's because Terry Jones made himself available to promote Mosaic's other Christmas 1984 release, The Saga of Erik the Viking. Or maybe there were problems behind the scenes. It is notable The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World game doesn't use the book cover, which makes it an exception. Mosaic's two Adrian Mole games did, as did The Saga of Erik the Viking and even My Secret File. Maybe Sphere books were uncooperative.
Or it could have been something else. It looks like there was a Spectrum version planned but never released. SINCLAIR USER talks about a Spectrum version (August 1984 page 15) but what they describe doesn't sound like the C64 game:
First to receive the treatment is The Stainless Steel Rat, by Harry Harrison. The package is unusual, as Harrison co-wrote the software with programmer Sean O'Connell.
The game has three sections in which you are tested on your eligibility to join the Special Corps, try to escape in your spaceship and explore the planet Freibur. The book and cassette package cost £14.95.
Freibur is a planet in the first Stainless Steel Rat book not The Stainless Steel Rat Saves the World. Sean O'Connell has no other credits I've been able to find. And what's this about Harry Harrison co-writing the software? This ties in with an odd story which ran in issue 40 (October 1984) of Dave Langford's long-running science fiction fanzine Ansible:
Mosaic Publishing Ltd have released computer game versions of Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World and Moorcock's Nomad Of Time (the 'Bastable' Trilogy), £9.95 apiece (CBM-64 version only). Over the phone I mentioned to a Mosaic publicist that I'd heard Harry enthuse about working with a programmer on the Rat adventure-game: "Oh no," was the reply, "that would be the other version that'll be released in the States, he didn't have anything to do with this one." Oh.
So far as I know, there was no other version of the game released in the States. This just piles mystery on mystery.
The Nomad of Time
Commodore 64, £9.95
The Nomad of Time, like The Stainless Steel Rat Saves The World, was written by Shards Software. They were a Barking based company who started out writing games for the Dragon 32 and pivoted to become a developer for hire after Dragon Data went into receivership. The Nomad of Time also got a budget rerelease from Alternative Software.
The Saga of Erik the Viking
Spectrum, BBC, Commodore 64, Amstrad. £9.95.
Adventure specialists Level 9 wrote this game for Mosaic. It was based on the book by Terry Jones who generated the sort of PR photos loved by magazines. He also gave an interview to Keith Campbell for C&VG (November 1984 page 136).
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| HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY 15 November 1984 page 6 |
WHS Distributors, St John's House, East Street, Leicester, LE1
Mosaic took a break for a year. When they came back in the autumn of 1985 they had a new distributor; were WHS Distributors related to WH Smith? I can't find out. I also don't currently have a photo of the Leicester building because it's outside my usual orbit. Keep 'em peeled for updates later.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole Ages 13 3/4
Spectrum, Commodore 64, Amstrad, Atari, MSX, BBC. £9.95 cassette £12.95 discs (BBC and C64)
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was on sale by October 1985; which more or less coincided with the ITV series which ran from 16 September to 21 October. The game was still marketed as Bookware, although it didn't come with a copy of the book or even extracts like The Saga of Erik the Viking. There was a second version on sale at the same time called The Adrian Mole Secret Diary Kit which included a 1986 diary and sold for £14.95 on cassette and £17.95 on disc.
The game had an unusual structure. Instead of typing commands, the player was offered a choice of three options. This departure from the traditional command structure of "tell Gandalf to ask Thorin to kill the vicious warg with the sword" seemed to confuse CRASH magazine who reviewed the game twice. It was given to their regular reviewing team and also adventure correspondent Derek Brewster who gave the game a CRASH SMASH award.
The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole was astonishingly popular. CLASSIC ADVENTURER reports a sales figure north of 300,000; helped by a deal with Commodore that bundled a copy of the game with new C64s.
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| COMPUTER GAMER December 1985 page 81 |
Spectrum and Commodore. £9.95.
All I can tell you is that they got in touch from, I think, Ireland and sent us a game to look at and we agreed to publish it. I never met them as far as I can remember.
The Archers
Spectrum, Commodore, Amstrad, MSX, Atari. £9.95.
Moving into 1986 this was Level 9's third game for Mosaic. The Archers cast the player as a writer for the radio drama, as the instructions said:
As a trainee scriptwriter on the Archers radio programme, you must make plot decisions for four major characters: Jack Woolley, Elizabeth Archer, Eddie Grundy and Nelson Gabriel. But beware, the plot has its own momentum, and events can easily get out of hand.
The aim of the game is to keep up the audience figures and hope for a record number of listeners. At regular points in the game you will be shown the audience figures to indicate how well you are doing. Memos from the Controller Radio 4 will also help alert you to possibly dubious plot lines!
Spectrum, Amstrad. £9.95.
It came at a time of relative turmoil for the developer, and so the C64 version was never started and RamJam ceased trading as a company about 6 months after the Spectrum version was published.
However, somehow COMMODORE USER reviews the game in December 1986 with screenshots that look a lot like the Spectrum version. Did the magazine optimistically review the Spectrum version on assumption a C64 version would be along soon?
Gorley Firs, South Gorley, Hants, SP6
Where is Gorley Firs? Google is ambiguous. The map points to a collection of buildings near a place called Furzehill Farm, on a side road which branches off from the North Gorley road, near South Gorley. Is this correct? Yes. Probably. But it's a house so it's off limits. Also, it's in the heart of the New Forest. If I go there I will be attacked by goblins.
The big question is, why the move away from London? Vicky Carne wraps up the story of Mosaic Publishing very nicely in her RETRO GAMER interview:
“I decided just to stop, actually. I'd had a baby, and we'd moved out of London. I was doing different things, Mosaic wasn't a large corporation, and it was all via freelancers and subcontracts. I sold licences to Nick Alexander at Virgin Games, and I could have gone on and done some more things, but I was planning to stay at home with the baby. I didn't in the end, but that was just a personal decision.”
Yes, Prime Minister
Spectrum, Commodore, Amstrad, BBC. Cassette £14.95. Disc £19.95. IBM PC and compatibles, Amstrad PCW. £24.95.
The last Mosaic game was also their first one based on a television series. Yes, Prime Minister was released just before series two of the television series premiered on BBC2, on 3 December 1987.
Things have changed during Mosaic's year off. The Bookware label has been dropped and the packaging and promotional material leans more into recreating the look and style of the television series. The game comes packaged in a splendid replica of a red ministerial box. The advertising and game loading screen use Gerald Scarfe's distinctive caricatures but in one of those inconsistencies which seem designed to madden me, the loading screen artwork for Bernard, Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby, is taken from the Yes, Prime Minister titles but the artwork for the adverts [4] comes from the Yes, Minister titles.
Unfinished Business
Yes, Minister
When Mosaic announced The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole they also revealed a licenced version of Yes, Minister would be released at the same time, around the end of 1985. HOME COMPUTING WEEKLY reported in September 1985 that:
The game, programmed by the Ramjam Corporation will be available in November... Yes Minister will be available for the Spectrum, C64, Amstrad and BBC (£9.95) and on disc for BBC, C64 and Amstrad (£12.95).
It wasn't. A week later the magazine updated its readers:
Yes Minister, which was to have been released by Mosaic Software in November as stated in last weeks HCW is now to be released in March 1986 to coincide with the new TV series.
That new TV series was the first of Yes, Prime Minister. Yes Minister was upgraded to Yes, Prime Minister and eventually appeared in 1987, not by The Ram Jam Corporation.
The Story of the Amulet
Mosaic Publishing, the specialist adventure house in interactive fiction, have plans to release The Story of The Amulet, based on the children s classic by E Nesbit Written by the Ram (Valkyrie 17) Jam Corporation, this graphic adventure will allow the player to assume the role of one of four characters involved with the Psammead — a sand fairy who takes them back in history.
The future does not look bright for The Story Of The Amulet adventure, based on the book by E. Nesbit. Planned for release this summer, Mosaic Publishing report that there is no sign of the game from The Ram Jam Corporation, commissioned to write the game.
Not the Nine O'Clock News
There's a very throwaway mention of this in the RETRO GAMER article:
A game based around the anarchic hit comedy Not The Nine O'Clock News was some way into development before being judged unpublishable by Vicky and abandoned.
There is no other information beyond that. Keeping with the Bookware format, was the intent to release a game bundled with one of the three books; Not! The Nine O'Clock News; Not the Royal Wedding; or Not the General Election?
The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole
Unlike the two games above this came out but was published by Virgin as part of Vicky Carnes' wrapping up of Mosaic. Virgin gave Mosaic a "Produced by" credit on the box. It was released around February 1987, six months before Yes, Prime Minister, which came out under the Mosaic name. I can only assume there was something in the licence agreed with the BBC that meant Yes, Prime Minister couldn't be sold on to Virgin.
Adverts
I was, and remain, a philistine. I never played any of the Mosaic games because adventures didn't appeal to me. However, what I do remember were a series of adverts the company ran for the release of The Snow Queen, The Archers and Twice Shy. They were postmodern and self aware and advertised the games by talking about the process of advertising the games; presenting advertising copy alongside mock memos, light silliness, and comments from the team of Strutt, Whelk, Poser, and Souzé. There's even a brief running gag about a photo of a dog looking at a monitor. I thought the adverts were clever (although not clever enough to get me to buy the games). There were four in total and I wanted to include them here for no better reason than I really liked them.
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| CRASH June 1986 page 33 |
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| CRASH July 1986 page 38 |
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| CRASH September 1986 page 47 |
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| CRASH December 1986 page 130 |
[1] Well done if you are one of the clever bastards who said Star Trek, based on the 1971 mainframe game and the 1967 James Blish novelisations, try not to dislocate your shoulder as you pat yourself on the back. It doesn't count because the game was based on the TV series, so there.
[2] Another Colin Kapp short story was adapted for the second series of Out of the Unknown. A 1966 BBC2 anthology series. The snag, the episode is Lambda 1 which is a hard watch. Some kind soul has uploaded all the surviving series two episodes to the Internet Archive, so Lambda 1 can be viewed here. Personally I'd recommend watching Level 7 and The Tunnel Under the World first.
[3] Pressreader has a collection of RETRO GAMER going all the way back to November 2017. You can get free access if your local library service has a Pressreader subscription, most do.
[4] Also, there are only two adverts, one with Jim Hacker and the other Sir Humphrey Appleby. Mosaic do not seem to be aware that Bernard, Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey Appleby comprise a dramaturgical triad.
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