Micromania: The Whole Truth about Home Computers

Charles Platt with David Langford

ISBN 978-1-916508-45-3 (trade paperback)
ISBN 978-1-916508-44-6 (PDF)

Ansible Editions, September 2022

Trade paperback released in June 2026: 184 pages, 51,000+ words. Many internal illustrations by Carl Lundgren. All proceeds from sales go to the TransAtlantic Fan Fund.

Charles Platt’s 1984 book Micromania (known in the USA as The Whole-Truth Home Computer Handbook) examined the current state of the art in home computers, mingling solidly factual and jargon-free explanation with sardonic exposure of industry hype and lampoons of hackers and other “creatures of the computer continuum”. David Langford adapted and slightly expanded the US text for Britain, where it was published by Gollancz in hardback and Sphere in paperback. As stated in an internal warning, this “revived” PDF edition “should be regarded as a snapshot of the past – an exercise in sometimes horrified nostalgia for the computer scene of the early 1980s – a symptom of its time. Apart for minor corrections of typos, small omissions, inconsistencies and so on, the text has not been updated.”

To put it all in context, there’s a new foreword by Platt and a new afterword by Langford.

What the reviewers said (from the Sphere edition):
• ‘I cannot recommend this book too highly. It is the only computer book I have read in a single sitting... it should be available on the National Health’ – Computer Weekly
• ‘Knowledgeable, rude, very funny and... written in English rather than computerese. Lots of information and lots of laughs’ – Time Out
• ‘Read Micromania while you too can still see the funny side of chips, floppy disks and video games...’ – Evening Standard
• ‘A practical guide for those who really don’t know anything about computers but think they’d like to... a marvellous book’ – Brian Matthew, Radio 2
• ‘An entertaining sceptical approach... that is also one of the best introductions... that I have come across’ – The Bookseller