[bartread]

I’ve still got a copy of this on a shelf somewhere in the house. Mine is the paperback edition with the funky comic style artwork of a dishevelled guy hunching over a computer in the middle of a tip of a room though.

I can’t remember whether I bought it or was given it, but it would have been some time around 1988 or 1989, because I think I still had my ZX Spectrum at that point. Or I might have picked it up on a choir tour in the early summer of 1990 - by which time I was into a relatively brief ownership of a C64 - because I have distinct memories of reading it on a narrow boat.

I enjoyed it quite a lot but, even then, its somewhat satirical take on microcomputers and the culture around them already felt quite outdated in many ways, so it was like a slightly jaded insider’s view into a past I hadn’t quite experienced - especially user groups.

At any rate it obviously made an impression because 36 years later I still own it - even though I probably haven’t read it in 35 years (though I did read it several times) - which I cannot say for a lot of books I had from my childhood and teen years.