The 1980s and Video Games Inspired This Debut Novel

Added: 2026-05-06

[00:00:00]Homebound is a story that starts in the 1980s. It's about a queer teenager whose beloved uncle dies and he leaves her a floppy disc with an unfinished computer game. And when she finishes that game, it echoes across six centuries touching the lives of a brilliant biologist, a desperate ship captain, and a lonely and sensient automaton. I think I chose the 1980s for a few reasons. One is because I was interested in this sort of early days of computer gaming and the pioneering and the sort of open access to coding between gamers and players that sort of back and forth that was happening then. I think I was also interested in the 1980s because that character in the 80s is wrestling with what does it mean to be queer and some of the larger things that were happening in the '8s for the queer community echo in her life. And so I was interested in exploring that.