The Sinclair ZX Spectrum was one of the most popular home computers in British history, selling over five million units in its 1980s heyday. Amongst the thousands of games released for the Spectrum during its lifetime, the text adventure game was to emerge as one of the most significant genres on the system.
The Spectrum of Adventure chronicles the evolution of the text adventure on the ZX Spectrum, exploring the work of landmark software houses such as Melbourne House Software, Level 9 Computing, Delta 4 Software, the CRL Group, Magnetic Scrolls, and many others besides.
Covering one hundred individual games in all, this book celebrates the Spectrum's thriving interactive fiction scene of the eighties, chronicling the achievements of major publishers as well as independent developers from the machine's launch in 1982 until the end of the decade in 1989.

Dr Thomas A. Christie is a Scottish author with research interests in popular culture, literary analysis, interactive fiction and modern cinema. His books include "John Hughes and Eighties Cinema: Teenage Hopes and American Dreams", "Mel Brooks: Genius and Loving It!", "The James Bond Movies of the 1980s", and "Notional Identities: Ideology, Genre and National Identity in Popular Scottish Fiction Since the Seventies".
Tom has many years of experience as a literary professional, working in collaboration with several publishing companies including Cambridge Scholars Publishing, Crescent Moon Publishing and Robert Greene Publishing. His full-length works to date have focused upon subjects such as cinema history and literary criticism, as well as the production of original prose fiction.
A passionate advocate of the written word and literary arts, over the years Tom has produced original writing for respected organisations such as the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum and the Dementia Services Development Centre, a leading independent higher education research unit based at the University of Stirling. Additionally, he is regularly involved in public speaking events and has delivered guest lectures and presentations about his work at many locations around the United Kingdom.
Tom holds a PhD in English Studies, on the subject of Scottish Literature, from the University of Stirling. He has also been awarded a first-class Honours degree in Literature and a Master's degree in Humanities, specialising with distinction in British cinema history, from the Open University in Milton Keynes.
For more details about Tom and his work, please visit his website at www.tomchristiebooks.co.uk.