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When I first spoke to Richard Garriott, the creator of Ultima, five years ago, I accused him of being weird. He had just told me he owned "a dungeon filled with macabre items" to be fair; five vampire-hunting kits, three shrunken heads, two mummies, three skeletons in coffins, human hearts and a human foetus. That's weird, isn't it? But he just laughed. "You might call it weird," he said. "I call it fascinating." The same is true of the man himself. From afar he appears aloof, a man an income apart, made wildly rich by gaming. He built a mansion called Britannia Manor and has been to space, a trip that cost millions and millions of dollars. How can we forgive him something like Tabula Rasa when he does gaudy things like that? Up close, though, Richard Garriott is different.
His new memoir Explore/Create, out today in the US, 26th January in the UK, reintroduces him on a personal level, a human who is headstrong and bubbling with enthusiasm but as fallible as the rest of us. It explains him, what he's done and why, and doesn't pull punches about challenges faced along the way. It's fascinating, a rich compendium of stories from an extraordinary life - and my god does he have some stories to tell.
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