The No Man’s Sky Interview – Can Happiness be Found in Plutonium?

Jim Trinca. You know his name. Recently returned from his historic trip exploring the galaxy in No Man’s Sky, and now releasing his extraordinary story as episodes of a Captain’s Log, Trinca’s narrative both on and off screen has captured the nation – the world – with how powerfully human and vulnerable he is.Trinca is from Scotland, a throwback country that makes you think of simpler times, when women were women and men were Mel Gibson. England is in such turmoil we must go to Scotland to find our heroes, and sitting across from him in zeroG, London’s hottest new themed restaurant, it’s easy to see why this is the man we’ve chosen.

Trinca had poured himself into a Star Wars t-shirt: casual but sophisticated; on brand but winking slyly from the sidelines. The room we were in was illuminated only by reclaimed airplane aisle lights and the air was thick with clouds of vape mist, yet somehow everyone knew Trinca was there, and whispers followed him like the tail of a comet. We were served astronauts’ rations by men and women in spacesuits with blacked out helmets; every so often they threw themselves against the floor or walls theatrically, pretending the restaurant had been hit by an asteroid or similar. Trinca says he finds it comforting and it reminds him of his time in space. Some bits of freeze dried banana dusted his ginger beard seductively.

I asked him how it felt to be the most coveted man in games right now. “It’s bittersweet. I mean, I like the attention, the free booze, the parties with goodie bags that have eight-grand watches in them and all that,” he said, sighing slightly and brushing a lick of hair from his eyes (painfully blue and magnified by square glasses). “I’m mostly pissed off about having to risk death on Planet Tosspot Prime or something just to get the fawning, gin-supplying bulwark of fast friends I frankly have always deserved.”

His publicist, reading Bloomberg Businessweek and hiding behind aviator sunglasses even though we were inside, sat a few tables away, and made no motion to interject or censor Trinca’s frankness at any point. His candor is refreshing, and it’s hard to begrudge Trinca his success. It has, after all, come with sacrifices. Trinca has three beautiful daughters that he left on Earth when he went into space; it must be impossible, I suggested, to balance having a family with the rest of his life. “I kept facetiming them from space so they knew I was ok and not dead, and I try to involve them in everything I do, even from several billion light-years away. I remember describing to them the endlessly beautiful, saturated purple sunsets of a planet I found which is now called F*** Polygon because I named it, but there weren’t any diamond swords or zombie mushroom cows involved so they weren’t arsed.”

Yet coming back to real life has been hard for Trinca as well; as a prisoner becomes accustomed to the system so to has he grown used to the unspoken rules of how life out in the vast galaxy operates. “The other day I saw a cat on the street. He came up to get petted, and I’m so used to befriending extra-terrestrial animals that I kinda didn’t know what to do with him. My instinct was to feed him 10 units of iron ore until he agreed to find me some plutonium. The cat is now dead, so that was sobering.” Trinca paused in his chewing to sip some diet coke out of a futuristic baggy. He looked away, silent. He was thinking of the cat. So was I.

I hastily changed the subject to the wonder of creation. Trinca described some amazing sights for the plucky adventurer to seek out, if they dare. “I know everyone’s totally expecting me to say, like, “I found a planet made of dicks”, or something absurd. But here’s the thing, and I swear to god, I found a planet made of dicks. Plain as day, as sure as I’m sitting here,” Trinca said, waving his hands excitedly to sketch out the shape of a phallus in the air. “Everything living on it looked like a penis, from the shrubs to the 40ft space worms. And I don’t mean that they looked phallic, I mean they were all dicks, with little defined bellend ridges and holes in the top and that.”

It sounded like heavy going for the psyche of one so creative. Had all the time observing the vastness of space, contemplating one’s own tininess in the universe, affected him emotionally at all?

“No,” he replied, effortlessly.

Yes, for all that it has made him, Trinca’s incredible mission doesn’t seem to have awed him, or changed him at all. We spoke about the routine of living one can settle in, even in the strangest environments. “No two days are the same, really. Well, I say that; most days were sort of the same, but with minor cosmetic variations, and a different colour palette. So each day was different but only different enough that if you packaged moments from a few of them together into some kind of, I dunno, “trailer”, it would look like my life was full of variety.” Trinca sprayed some crumbs of dried spaceman ice cream over the table; all eyes in the room were on him. “Really I just fannied around doing the same s*** all the time.”

Talk turned to whether his trip was an experience he wished for everyone, and for the first time Trinca looked almost wistful. “It was the first time I’d gone outside the M25 in ages, and I didn’t see a single Pret in that f***ing galaxy. So, my advice is to stay at home, because all the cool s*** is right here, and you don’t have to do stupid stuff like – for example – learn three alien languages one word at a time. I had to do that. Are you f***ing joking.”

Trinca’s Captain’s Log is appearing on VideoGamerTV on YouTube