And that, quite literally, was the first time I ever touched a computer. And I still don't know very much about them. The revealed truth of which, as I've said, sometimes perturbs my readers, or in any case those readers with a peculiarly intense computer-tech bent, of whom I seem to have more than a few.

But Neuromancer and its two sequels are not about computers. They may pretend, at times, and often rather badly, to be about computers, but really they're about technology in some broader sense. Personally, I suspect they're actually about Industrial Culture; about what we do with machines, what machines do with us, and how wholly unconscious (and usually unlegislated) this process has been, is, and will be. Had I actually known a great deal (by 1981 standards) about real computing, I doubt very much I would (or could) have written Neuromancer. Perhaps it all goes to prove that there are situations (literary ones, at least) in which a little knowledge is not only a dangerous thing, but the best tool for the job at hand.

A mimeograph stencil, by the way, is a piece of tissue-paper impregnated with wax. You punch through the wax with a typewriter, creating a stencil through which ink can be forced onto paper, allowing the reproduction of multiple copies. For many years, and not so long ago, these curious devices were very nearly as common as typewriters. They were what people did before laser printers. The mimeograph is one of many dinosaurs recently brought to the verge of extinction by the computer. They are dead tech, destined to make up part of the litter engulfing the Finn's back room. As is my Hermes 2000. As is my Apple IIc, which my children play with only reluctantly, its black-and-white graphics no competition for their video-games. As is my old SE/30 here; as is, eventually, whatever sort of unit, however slick and contemporary, you happen to be reading this on.