In high school (late 1970s) I inherited (from my deceased father), a white book with red/yellow titling as "The Basic Programming Language" (the lettering on the front appeared to be in IBM check-writing font). In the appendix were about 10 basic programs including one in particular that would produce a meaningless technical report of arbitray length! I read the book, learned basic, and typed in a few of the programs (I had access to the UIUC CSL Dec-20 system). What a great time to be alive!
I am aware that the first STAR TREK game was written in Basic, using 10x10 quadrants and maybe a 10x10 quadrant universe. I eventually wrote an enhanced version of this called "Swords and Sorcery" but using a fantasy theme, not a space theme ...
I was so enamored with the BASIC programming language that a couple of years later I wrote a miniature interpreter on the PLATO system, at first trying to do a primitive BASIC language, but later I settled on doing a forth interpreter because RPN was so much easier to execute ...
Thank you, Dr. Kurtz. Your project helped make my youth a never ending joy of discovering new things! :-) :-)