In 1985, when all the world was young and dot-matrix printers stalked the primeval swamps of computing, David Langford won his Hugo Award and began a long-running column for 8000 Plus magazine (later PCW Plus). This notoriously became the page readers turned to first.

The magazine was devoted to the Amstrad PCW, a bestselling home computer that pioneered affordable word processing in Britain. Langford's popular column used this official subject as a launch pad for witty coverage of life, the universe and everything.

Freelancing writing and how to survive it, science fiction (especially that), secrets of editors, manuscripts, indexes, submission letters and padding, serious and spoof advice columns, parodies of Adventure games, legal proceedings, noir fiction and more, causes, scams and literary horror stories, timeless satire on shabby practice in the computer industry, awful "Thog's Masterclass" lines from SF . . . Langford shows all the wit and skill that brought him 28 Hugo Awards.