Dylan Smith

Dylan Smith

Dylan Smith is an author of Frontier stories, and maintains the Alioth.net website.

Elite biography

Dylan Smith first encountered Classic Elite on the BBC Microcomputer, and was lucky enough to start on the disk version. Since the only access to the BBC Micro was at school, and games were banned, most of his early Elite experience was performed in an illicit and underhand manner while trying to dodge staff - with the right hand never far away from the 'Break' key. His first experiences of Elite without causing rule infractions were some time later, with the Sinclair Spectrum 48K version.

He first made a genuine Elite rating in 1990 on the PC version, which was considered to be "too easy"; it certainly seems that the original PC Elite required less than 6,000 kills for the coveted rating. The only other genuine Elite rating that he holds is from Frontier: First Encounters - this rating received after keeping a commander going for many years, kills often being accumulated in the name of research for the Alioth.net website. This commander was tragically killed by an exploding PC power supply, along with the computer's motherboard, CD-RW drive and graphics card (and needless to say, the hard disk on which the commander file resided).

He is actively involved in maintaining the Oolite-Linux port, and is currently working to unify the Mac OS X and 'everything else' source tree into the Grand Unified Source Tree for Oolite (GUSTO) - which despite first looks, is not a backronym.

Alioth.net

Alioth.net is a very extensive fan-fiction site, named after the planet Alioth, the capital of Alliance, mainly devoted the Alliance and Alliance citizens.

The EliteWiki (the website you are on now) is hosted from the Alioth.net server.

Private life

Dylan Smith is currently owned by three cats, something he may have in common with Ian Bell.

Non-Elite interests

• Holds a private pilots license for gliders as well as single engine and multi engine airplanes, and is instrument rated.
• Plays the piano
• Plays the balalaika (very badly)
• Enjoys a good game of Enemy Territory or TCE.

Stories

Smith has written several stories about his alter ego James K. Winston (and Mack).

• [1] The Disappearance of the AJN Lion
• [2] Space Psychosis
• [3] The Hunter & The Hunted
• [4] An Expensive Trip
• [5] Tionisla Rising
• [6] Deceit, Harmony and Pleasure (first two parts)
• [7] The Virtuous Misfortune