Derek Hipkin - Author of Cosmic Cosmiads & Cosmic Jailbreak

Thank you for your letter that I received today from Canada. Your research has served you well as Derek Hipkin is my brother. Unfortunately, he has now passed away but would be pleased to help if can.

It was a long time ago now but here is some background which you may find useful.

Derek was born in Hammersmith, London on the 3rd July 1953. He has two brothers and a sister and we were all brought up by my mother in a single-parent family.

Derek was the 'bright one' in the family and always had an interest in maths and electronics.

During his school years (1960's), he obtained high marks in maths and I recall that my mother purchased a calculator from Casio to help with his studies. A salesman came to our home to demonstrate the machine and my mother purchased it using hire purchase over a few years. I recall the cost of the calculator being in the region of £80.00 GBP!

Derek studied computers towards the end of his schooling and gained an entry to Manchester University to study computer science where he gained his degree in computer science.

Prior to my brother going to university and whilst studying at school, he wrote a program called Cosmic Jailbreak. The game was launched by Commodore for a UK release, which I believe was quite successful. I was quite young at the time but I believe there was some dispute between my brother and Commodore because Commodore insisted that the game was only released in the UK but my brother discovered that the game had also been released in the USA and possibly Canada. I am not too sure of the outcome, but I think some compensation was paid to my brother by Commodore.

He also wrote another game called Cosmic Gorilla (I think). From memory, the game has a gorilla held in a cage and was similar to Cosmic Jailbreak.

After gaining his degree, he took up a position in management with BP where he worked for a few years, and then left BP to write a bespoke program (a database) for Angel Publishing on a contract basis. This was at a time when databases didn't really exist as an 'off the shelf' product. After his time with Angel Publishing, he retrained in Lotus Notes and became a self-employed contractor writing specialist databases for clients.

I hope the above information is helpful but please do not hesitate to contact me should you require any additional information.

Kind regards
Keith Hipkin