It took at least a decade for me to realize that many of my readers, even in 1984, could never have experienced Neuro- mancer's opening line as I'd intended them to. I'd actually composed that first image with the black-and-white video- static of my childhood in mind, sodium-silvery and almost painful-a whopping anachronism, right at the very start of my career in the imaginary future.

But an invisible one, interestingly; one that reveals a pecu- liar grace enjoyed by all imaginary futures as they make their way up the timeline and into the real future, where we all must go. The reader never stopped to think that I might have been thinking, however unconsciously, of the texture and color of a signal-free channel on a wooden-cabinet Motorola with fabric-covered speakers.