A somewhat unexpected discovery at the flea market the other day: this book called "The Troglobytes. There's chaos in computer city" by Graham Philpot. Funny find, as Margot sent me some pics of the French version few weeks ago.

The book aimed at kids describes a team of characters, which live inside computers. There's Professor Processor (the brain of Computer City"), Major Rom (who look after the start up file and knows its secret code), Miss Floppy Disk (in charge of running Level 2 in Disk Drive and take care of copy disk files in case something goes awry), Robot Ticks (patrolling the City to "keep law and order"), Mike Megabike (who carries messages along the electronic highways), the wise Hard Disk Controller (runner of the the Disk Drive Library) as well as the microchippies (builderbytes who expand storage on the New Ram Expansion Site). There's also a bunch of mischievous personages such as Captain Hacker and his gang of Pirate Hackerbytes, who want to take control of the computer; and the Beastiebytes, who make mischief wherever they can.

The story is quite basic (fun though!): Captain Hacker has stolen the start-up file of Computer City, causing the Central Control to shut down half an hour later. Miss Floppy disk is in charge of getting a copy of the file to Major Rom and subsequently save them for disappearing.

Why do I blog this? More than the scenario, I'm intrigued by this idea of describing tiny creatures inside computer machinery. While the angle is aimed at children – educating them about the curious vocabulary of such devices – the way it is framed is quite interesting. The book was published in 1997, which probably explain both the aesthetic and the emphasis on certain things... like the poetic connotations of terms like "ROM", "RAM", "start-up file", "Hard Disk". Of course the author relies on a simple binary trope (good guys/bad guys) but the diversity of characters and expertise is relevant in the sens that it highlights various processes of information and communication technologies.

Besides that, I like the way the book plays on the "tiny creature inside machine" angle, expanding on this idea of living entities that I've always find curious. To some extent, it reminds me of this video game called Bugs Buster I use to play as a kid on my Thomson TO7/70. A game in which the player had to capture another type of weird computer creatures: bugs.