The story of how a Port Alfred man stumbled upon a mysterious fantasy novel on a government computer – and then spent 20 years editing the manuscript before self-publishing the final draft – is almost as fantastical as the novel itself.
IT expert Derek Rowswell’s History of Gragorix probably would never have seen the light of day if he had not been tasked with upgrading the computer system at the Department of Public Works in Pretoria in 1993 and stumbled across a mystery Wordstar text file called B1.
“I was upgrading electrical engineers’ computers when I came across a strangely named file called B1 that was completely different to all the other five-letter DOS files I was transferring.
Intrigued, Rowswell copied it onto a floppy disk and took it home to read.
“Once I started reading it, I could not put it down.
“I thought wow, this is an incredible novel and decided to try and find out who wrote it.”
Back at work the next day, Rowswell tracked down the engineer who used the antiquated computer and asked if the manuscript was his.
“He just shrugged his shoulders and said he did not know who had written it.
“I said you must have it published and he said he was not interested.”
Undeterred, Rowswell finished reading the rough draft and then went back to the engineer again urging him to try get it published.
“He again said he was not interested in the story. He did not say he had written it and did not ask me to give it back to him.”
Rowswell and the engineer both later took early retirement packages and lost contact with each other.
Instead of just giving up on ever getting the novel published, the 66-year-old persisted with minor editing of the manuscript over the next two decades before deciding to self-finance a limited print run with Partridge Publishing Africa earlier this year.
“I do not take any credit for authoring such an ‘epic’ story. All I did was prepare it for publishing.
In the “editor’s note” on the front page of The History of Gragorix, Rowswell explains in detail how he found the manuscript on a government computer and highlights the fact it is not his work.
“It is not my work, I did not add anything to it, I did not change the wording, all I did was fix the punctuation.”
Set on the planet Gragorix, the story begins during caveman times and spans several generations.
The main character is a Gresh chief called Exnif and although Rowswell admits that the fantasy genre “may not be everyone’s cup of tea” he sees parallels between it and JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit or Lord of the Rings stories.
“The origins of the file B1 are still a mystery. It is not my work and it may not even be the work of the person who used the computer.”
The book can be ordered via Amazon.com or eBay.
‘Discovered’ novel in print after 20 years
IT expert Derek Rowswell’s History of Gragorix probably would never have seen the light of day if he had not been tasked with upgrading the computer system at the Department of Public Works in Pretoria in 1993 and stumbled across a mystery Wordstar text file called B1.
“I was upgrading electrical engineers’ computers when I came across a strangely named file called B1 that was completely different to all the other five-letter DOS files I was transferring.
Intrigued, Rowswell copied it onto a floppy disk and took it home to read.
“Once I started reading it, I could not put it down.
“I thought wow, this is an incredible novel and decided to try and find out who wrote it.”
Back at work the next day, Rowswell tracked down the engineer who used the antiquated computer and asked if the manuscript was his.
“He just shrugged his shoulders and said he did not know who had written it.
“I said you must have it published and he said he was not interested.”
Undeterred, Rowswell finished reading the rough draft and then went back to the engineer again urging him to try get it published.
“He again said he was not interested in the story. He did not say he had written it and did not ask me to give it back to him.”
Rowswell and the engineer both later took early retirement packages and lost contact with each other.
Instead of just giving up on ever getting the novel published, the 66-year-old persisted with minor editing of the manuscript over the next two decades before deciding to self-finance a limited print run with Partridge Publishing Africa earlier this year.
“I do not take any credit for authoring such an ‘epic’ story. All I did was prepare it for publishing.
In the “editor’s note” on the front page of The History of Gragorix, Rowswell explains in detail how he found the manuscript on a government computer and highlights the fact it is not his work.
“It is not my work, I did not add anything to it, I did not change the wording, all I did was fix the punctuation.”
Set on the planet Gragorix, the story begins during caveman times and spans several generations.
The main character is a Gresh chief called Exnif and although Rowswell admits that the fantasy genre “may not be everyone’s cup of tea” he sees parallels between it and JRR Tolkien’s Hobbit or Lord of the Rings stories.
“The origins of the file B1 are still a mystery. It is not my work and it may not even be the work of the person who used the computer.”
The book can be ordered via Amazon.com or eBay.
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